Spring 2022 Lecture Schedule
Join us for Friday night lectures in person or on Zoom.
We would like to invite you to join us in-person again for our Spring term lectures. If you would like to attend one of the lectures, please send an email to bookings@englishlabri.org and wait for the confirmation. To help us plan well, please contact us a week prior to the lecture you wish to attend.
If you are attending in person, please come at 7:30pm for coffee and dessert. Otherwise, we will still be streaming our lectures online on Friday evenings at 8pm London Time.
The password is Lecture.
For a printable version of this lecture schedule, click here.
We look forward to welcoming you again!
21st of January — Life Matters: abortion in the past, present and future
Philippa Taylor, CARE
In December 2021 a significant and tragic milestone was reached: 10 million abortions took place in the UK since the UK Abortion Act was passed in 1967. How have we got to such a milestone? What are some of the consequences for us as a society? What developments are ahead? And what can we do?
28th of January — Rating culture: a reflection about reality and its representations
Josué Reichow, L’Abri worker
This lecture reflects on the ways we represent reality and how it expresses what it means to be human on one hand, and how, on the other hand, that can go wrong, leading us to reduce reality, losing the meanings given to humanity by the Creator. We will be exploring questions such as: What is a representation? How different dimensions of reality can be represented? Are there things that cannot be represented? And finally, in the background of this reflection we will analyse the current growing rating culture and its implication for how we live our lives.
4th of February — Drawing Closer to God through Liturgy: An Invitation to the Book of Common Prayer
Peter Merz, L’Abri worker
Many of us don't find prayer easy. However, there is much that those who have gone before us over many centuries have left behind that can teach us and help us as we seek to rest in and struggle before God. In this lecture we will consider the liturgy of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer as a rich framework for drawing close to God, enjoying Him, and being reminded of who He is and who we are before Him, with a particular focus on the form of prayer known as the collect.
11th of February — Humility and the upside down Kingdom of God
Joel Barricklow, L’Abri worker
If pride is the root of all sin (and therefore death), then humility is the root of all that leads to life. But what does it actually look like to be humble? Where do we begin a journey towards humility? Should we be willing to ‘consider others better than yourselves’? Must we deny our own abilities or needs? We’ll explore all of this as we see that ‘humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all…’.
18th of February — The Beatitudes: An Invitation to the Good Life
Phillip Johnston, Hope Church and former L’Abri worker
Jesus begins his teaching with what have long been called the beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12). These statements of ‘blessing’ are some of the most comforting words in all of Scripture, but there is much confusion about what they mean. Is Jesus providing entrance requirements for the kingdom of God? Is he telling us about God’s favourite people, the ones who get blessed? In this lecture, we’ll make the case that Jesus stands on the mountain as a philosopher casting his vision for true human flourishing. The beatitudes are Christ’s invitation to the good life.
19th of February — L’Abri Film Festival
Cultivating the Garden: Work and Human Flourishing
25th of February — Lear on Screen
Peter Sinclair, Associate Producer for The Pitch Film Fund
Akira Kurosawa’s film RANis one of the greatest Shakespearean adaptations ever brought to screen. As well as a visual masterpiece, it illuminates how one man’s hubris can have catastrophic effects on nature, family and society. The themes of Lear have become resurgent in recent prestige drama - from The Terror, to Chernobyl, to Succession. What do the themes of Learand its heirs tell us about a world that is haunted by tragedy?
4th of March — The image of our bodies
Lili Reichow, L’Abri worker
Our physical selves, how they look and what others think of them demand a lot of thought and work from us. We are daily confronted with images, ideas and advice on how we should be dealing with our bodies. In this lecture, we'll be thinking about body image and what it means when we understand that we are made in the image of God.
11th of March — A World Charged with the Grandeur of God: An Apologetic of Meaning
Andrew Fellows, Christian Heritage Cambridge and former L’Abri worker
Apologetics typically grounds itself in the truth that Christianity is reasonable. This talk looks at how meaning provides another important starting point – one that is vital in our engagement with sceptics.
18th of March — Sunday School lessons: an exploration of the surprising history of Sunday Schools and their impact on society
Dr. Miriam Sampson, Education Consultant
Going to Sunday School was a familiar routine for many of us in our childhoods, but when Sunday Schools began in the late 18th century they were both radical and controversial. Their meteoric growth over the next 50 years on both sides of the Atlantic opened up opportunities for women to contribute to Christian education and had a transformative effect on many poor communities. Can the history of the Sunday School movement teach us any lessons regarding Christian social engagement today?
25th of March — Reclaiming Shame
Dr. Richard Winter, psychologist and former L’Abri worker
Shame has consistently bad press in the popular psychology world. At the same time we see shame being widely used as a tool of social control, mostly online. With Te-Le Lau, in his book Defending Shame, we will compare contemporary ideas of shame with Graeco-Roman, Chinese, and Judeo-Christian ideas. We will explore the relationship of shame to guilt and the possibility of healthy and unhealthy shame.