The Scottish Religious Cultures Network will host a conference in Belfast on ‘Religion in Scotland: At Home and Abroad,’ 28-29 May at Queen’s University.
The conference features a range of keynote addresses and panels by academics from a variety of fields. Unlike many academic conferences, it is free and open to the public.
Locals may be particularly interested in the first keynote on the first day (1-2 pm on 28 May), ‘Why Scottish Religion Matters in Ireland,’ with Robert Armstrong from Trinity College Dublin and Andrew Holmes from Queen’s.
The conference also will feature Prof Lyndal Roper of Oxford University in a keynote address on, ‘Luther, Subjectivity and Biography: The Power of Names’, at 5 pm on 28 May in the Bell Lecture Theatre, Physics Building.
This conference is part of the Royal Society of Edinburgh-funded Scottish Religious Cultures Network which comprises the following partners: Professor David Bebbington (Stirling), Professor Jay Brown (Edinburgh), Professor Jane Dawson (Edinburgh), Dr Gladys Ganiel (Queen’s University Belfast), Professor Crawford Gribben (Queen’s University Belfast), Dr Charlotte Methuen (Glasgow), Dr Leah Robinson (Glasgow), Professor Daniel Szechi (Manchester) and Dr Scott Spurlock (Glasgow).
Additional financial support has been provided by the University of Glasgow’s Chancellor’s Fund.
All enquiries should be directed to the network address:
The full programme is below:
Timetable – Thursday 28 May 2015
1:00pm-2:00pm Welcome and first plenary lecture
Chair: Scott Spurlock
Robert Armstrong (TCD) and Andrew Holmes (QUB)
‘Why Scottish Religion matters in Ireland’
2:20pm-4:20pm
Session 1A: Early Modern Religion and Politics
Chair: Crawford Gribben
Chris Langley (Newman) – ‘“We trust all other Reformed Kirks shall wiselie consider our doeings”: The National Covenant and breaking the Calvinist International’
Neil McIntyre (Strathclyde) – ‘Presbyterian Conventicles in the Restoration’
Mary Hardy (Aberdeen) – ‘“A Love of Piety Wherever it is Found”: The seventeenth-century reception of Francis de Sales’
Jennifer Novotny (Glasgow) – ‘Artefacts or relics?: the material culture of the Jacobite wars, 1688-1750’
Session 1B: Religion and Cultural Narratives
Chair: Charlotte Methuen
Deryl Davis and Zanne Lyttle (Glasgow) – ‘From Creation to Apocalypse: Robert Pollok’s Calvinist Epic’
Ryan Mallon (St Andrews) – ‘James Begg and ‘Christian Patriotism’: Presbyterianism and identity in mid-nineteenth century Scotland’
Eleanor Harris (University of the West of Scotland) – ‘Caledonising Laud: the Scottish origins of Walter Hook’s liturgical revival’
Liam Sutherland (Edinburgh) – ‘Religion and National Identity in the 21st Century Scottish Public Eye: Representation, Heritage, Diversity and the National Norm’
5:00pm QUB Roper Wiles Lectures 2015 (Bell Lecture Theatre, Physics Building)
Professor Lyndal (Oxford) – ‘Luther, Subjectivity and Biography: The Power of Names’
7:00pm Dinner at Union Theological College
Friday 29 May 2015
9:00am-11:00am
Session 2A: Multiconfessional Scotland
Chair: Leah Robinson
Felicity Loughlin (Edinburgh) – ‘Eighteenth-Century Approaches to Non-Christian Religions: The Case of Thomas Blackwell (1701-1757)’
Mark Gilfillan (Ulster) – ‘Jewish Immigrant Interactions with Presbyterian Culture in Scotland, 1880-1920’
Michael Munnik (Edinburgh) – ‘Not one or the other. Media perceptions of Islam in Scotland’
Chris Duncan (Edinburgh) – ‘The role of the temple in the community (re)production process among the Hindu community in Edinburgh’
Session 2B: Religion, Politics and Identit
Chair: Scott Spurlock
Joe Webster (QUB) – ‘The Sacred Power of the Parade: Orange Domination, for a Moment or Two’
Ian Hazlett (Glasgow) – ‘The Bible, enlightened religion and enlightened politics in Ulster: the example of Glasgow-educated William Steel Dickson (1744-1824), Irish Presbyterian minister’
- J. Morris (Edinburgh) – ‘The Saving of John Knox House’
Stephen Mullen (Glasgow) – ‘The Scots Kirk in Colonial Kingston, Jamaica’
11:30–12:30 Second plenary Lecture
Chair: Crawford Gribben
Charlotte Methuen (Glasgow)
‘Scottish Preaching during the First World War’
12:30pm–2:00pm Lunch
2:00am–3:00pm Session 3: Scottish Religion Abroad
Chair: Ian Hazlett
Stuart Lange (Otago) – ‘The Scottish character and identity of the Presbyterian tradition in New Zealand: from pervasive to barely remembered’
Catherine Jamieson (QUB) – ‘“Being so closely linked together on the field”: an exploration of Irish constructions of the relationship between Scottish mission societies and the Irish Presbyterian Mission in Gujarat and Manchuria, 1840-1900’
3:00pm Concluding remarks