My evening at the Brian McLaren lecture

Posted by Helen on: 10.17.2007 /

Last night I went to hear Brian McLaren give a lecture on Truth-Telling in “Christian” America: Globalization, Poverty and the Environment at the Siena Center at Dominican University.

I found out about this talk from an up/rooted e-mail from Mike Clawson. Mike said he couldn’t be there because the new Chicago up/rooted group was having their first meeting last night. He asked me to take good notes (my lecture notes are here). I’m very pleased a Chicago up/rooted group has formed - it will be the closest one to me and everyone who lives in the city. I hope they had a great meeting. But I really wanted to take the opportunity to hear Brian when he was speaking less than a mile from my house.

I’d never been on the campus of this university and I didn’t know anything about Dominicans. I sort of assumed they were rather a group unto themselves since I never hear about them. Until about a week ago I had no idea they had lecture series open to the public with guest speakers such as Brian McLaren.

I met Bryan Froehle, the director of the Siena Center, when I arrived. Bryan was very friendly and welcoming, as were the other staff of the Siena center. I was surprised to hear that he knew Mike Clawson since I had assumed this was a different world from Mike’s.

I watched people come in. I was surprised to see quite a few older ladies arriving for the lecture because I wouldn’t have expected Brian to have such a following in that demographic. Then I heard someone say “Are you nuns?” and it all made sense.

It looked like there were maybe 100-150 people there - a nice size audience for the room - a mixture of students and people who came from outside. I didn’t see any local publicity for it; my guess is that more outside people would have come had they known Brian was lecturing there last night. Brian’s viewpoint is very compatible with Oak Park, where I live.

It crossed my mind to tell some local people but I didn’t know the lecture would be this accessible, since it was an academic lecture. I also On the other hand I can’t envisage Brian giving a lecture that’s hard to understand or particularly abstract because his passion seems to be making issues of contemporary importance understandable. So maybe I could have guessed this would be a very accessible, relevant lecture. I wish I had guessed because I can think of one or two people who would probably have loved it.

In view of my failure to tell anyone, I was there by myself, but a woman named Rachel came over and asked if she could sit with me. It turned out she recognized me from the up/rooted meeting I went to recently with Spencer Burke, although we hadn’t spoken there. So we got to chat before it began and that was fun.

My lecture notes are here. It was an excellent lecture, delivered well, with helpful slides, in a friendly way, with a little humor although it was a very serious topic. Brian talked for about an hour, then answered questions for another half-hour. Then there was a book-signing/reception with him. I saw Brian on the way to the reception from the auditorium - he said hi and was very friendly. I gave him a copy of my review of Everything Must Change, which I’d printed out for him.

I talked to Rachel some more at the reception then after she left I went over to three friendly-looking guys at a table. I thought I recognized one and it turned out he came to my workshop at the Midwest Emergent Gathering. They’re all bloggers: Jason (I didn’t catch Jason’s last name) of Conversation outside the bubble, Glenn Hager of Redreaming the Dream and Aaron Monts of re:generate. Glenn said he knew of CatE (!) and was surprised to meet me there since he figured I lived in Seattle. I enjoyed meeting and chatting with the three of them.

Overall I had a fun, interesting evening and I was pleased and impressed to learn that Dominicans care about the problems facing our world today.

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Semi-Related Posts

• Brian McLaren on Evangelicals, the Religious Right
• Why I am a…
• Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren
• Conference Highlights
• Shrek the Third
• Brian McLaren: Truth-telling about Globalization, Poverty and the Environment
• The value of many voices

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