Since the end of the Cold War, several commentators have remarked that the new flashpoint for international conflict has become ethnic and religious identity. Despite the evidence from the Muslim world, India, Bosnia, and elsewhere, remarkably few people take seriously the intersection between ethnicity and religion. David Seljak will look at the power of ethno-religious identity (including religious nationalism) in the world and in Canada. Can Christians develop an ethic to deal with these potentially destructive social forces?
David Seljak
Former Director of the St. Jerome’s Centre for Catholic Experience, David Seljak is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at St. Jerome’s and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo. He is co-director of the Religion and Ethnicity in Canada Project at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. With Paul Bramadat, he published Religion and Ethnicity in Canada (2005). Bramadat and Seljak are currently working on Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada, set for publication in 2007.
This lecture was endowed by a special fund created by family and friends in memory of the late John J. Wintermeyer