Over the summer I attended the Tyndale Fellowship Quadrennial conference on Marriage, family and relationships. It was fantastic.
I have been to many Tyndale Fellowship conferences before. The Tyndale Fellowship conferences are normally comprised of several separate groups that meet at the same time and venue but never attend each other’s talks (well, unless you dare). These separate groups are subject specific. For example, there’s a New Testament group, a Systematic Theology group, and a Philosophy of Religion group (the one I attend). Every four years, however, we break out of our groups and have a conference of a slightly more interdisciplinary flavour. Our keynote sessions are mixed (we’re all together) and they all focus on a single theme. This year it was ‘Marriage, family and relationships.’
The conference opened with Dr. Onesimus Ngundu providing a fast and furious history of Marriage. His talk entitled ‘Glimpses of Some Interesting Elements of the History of Marriage’ was both thrilling and enlightening. I learnt the etymology of the words ‘honeymoon’ and ‘best man’ (I won’t relieve you of the joy of doing the research yourself). I was challenged over whether or not the utterance ‘who gives this woman to be married to this man?’ was really biblical (my wife and I subsequently disagreed on this point, but not in the way that you may think!).
Part way through the conference I was deeply moved by Dr. Elaine Storkey’s paper ‘Scars Across Humanity.’ In it she presented her research on global violence against women. She covered topics such as child marriage, female infanticide, rape and domestic abuse, among others. Her talk was not a mere documentary, however. She also challenged us to think about the role that Christianity has played in the past and the role it might play in the future. She provided compelling arguments that Christians can and do have the best true story of hope for these women and that this should move us into action.
Finally, after being jolted awake by the Rev. Dr Ian Paul’s suggestion that Jesus is depicted as having female breasts in Revelation and what that (among other things) might mean for our being sexed in heaven, we were given the treat of having two lectures, one after the other, arguing for opposing theses. First, Dr Daniel Hill (one of my supervisors) very persuasively argued that the connection should be cut between marriage and the state. Second, Prof. Julian Rivers argued (equally persuasively) that English law would not fare so well without it. Both talks were exemplary, as was the manner in which they were conducted. Both Prof. Rivers and Dr Hill engaged one another with the utmost charity and care…although Dr Hill’s argument, of course (!), won out.
Overall the conference, as I said, was fantastic. Yes, there were some blunders made because we have highly specific subject-dependent terminology (not everyone knew the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition!), but those few blunders aside, this interdisciplinary conference was a treat. Our Lord’s creation is multifaceted and we’re to understand it in all its glory, to find new connections between disciplines and explore new avenues of research. This was encouraged by this year’s Quadrennial. I look forward to the next and hope you will join us!
- Report on the Tyndale Fellowship Quadrennial Conference: Marriage, family and relationships - September 5, 2016
- Whole-life fruitfulness - June 6, 2016
- Common Good and Kingdom of God: Implications for Christian Scholarship - March 22, 2016
