Interdisciplinary Studies
Winter Conference:
Symbiotic Grace
January 18-19, 2024
Over half a century ago, intellectuals began pointing to Christian beliefs about humanity and salvation. Christianity is accused of overestimating the centrality and superiority of humanity while diminishing and marginalizing the rest of the world.
With teachings about humans being made in the image of God, and with the story of a God who chooses to become human, and with humans narrated as those who are “very good,” how else are Christians supposed to engage the “natural world”? Are a thriving planet and thriving Church at odds? Or are they symbiotic? Over the past two decades, new understanding of the microbiome suggests that being human has never been a single-species project.
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Aminah Al-Attas Bradford is a research scholar at NCSU where she works in the department of Applied Ecology blending issues of science and religion and hosting cross-disciplinary conversations. She is currently writing a book on the Spirituality of the Microbiome. She has worked in Higher Education for eighteen years and worked in Chaplain’s offices for more than eleven years. Dr. Bradford is also a Fellow at the Berggruen Institute where she serves as an ethics and religion consultant.