An internationally renowned theologian will lecture at Bethel during Fall Fest, thanks to the efforts of one alumnus.
Miroslav Volf, a Croatian Protestant and professor of theology at Yale University, speaks at 10 a.m. Oct. 4 in Bethel College Mennonite Church. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Volf comes to Bethel through the efforts of Djordje Maricic, who graduated from Bethel in 2007 and now lives and runs a consulting business in Belgrade, Serbia, his home country.
Peter Goerzen, another 2007 graduate and chair of the Bible and religion department at Bethel, said, “Djordje heard Miroslav Volf on a podcast and liked what he heard, so he reached out to [Volf] personally.
“Djordje thought that his alma mater would be a great place for Miroslav to speak,” Goerzen continued. In several subsequent Zoom meetings, Goerzen, Maricic and Volf decided that Fall Fest would be the best venue to feature Volf.
Goerzen said Maricic had originally envisioned bringing a small group of people from Serbia to be part of a panel discussion on “what we do after war.” However, that plan didn’t work out.
“Djordje connected what [Volf] was saying in the podcast to Bethel [and its values] and, as Djordje does, he made it happen,” Goerzen said. “That’s his gift. It was so kind of him to think of us at Bethel.”
Volf is probably best known in theological and scholarly circles for his 1996 book Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Study of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation.
His lecture at Bethel, however, will be connected to the subject of his most recent book, The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to be Better than Others Makes Us Worse, published in May this year.
“He offers a critique of how we think about excellence and success, and how striving after these can be self-destructive,” Goerzen said.
Volf’s Bethel lecture is entitled “Striving for Superiority and Striving for Excellence.” The Staley Lecture and Bible Lecture funds at Bethel are helping to make Volf’s visit possible.
Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and is the founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.
He has published or edited nine books (in addition to dozens of scholarly articles), including Exclusion and Embrace, which won the 2002 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Christian Century also named it one of the “20 most influential books of the 20th century.”
Volf studied philosophy and theology in his native Croatia and in the United States, and earned doctoral and post-doctoral degrees from the University of Tübingen, Germany, where he was a student of the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann.
Volf has been described as a “theological bridge builder.” His aim is to bring Christian theology into various realms of public life, such as culture, politics and economics, and he often explores dialogues between different groups in the world, for example, denominations, faiths and ethnic groups.
Bethel is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1887 and is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel was the first Kansas college or university to be named a Truth, Community Healing and Transformation (TCHT) Campus Center, in 2021. For more information, see www.bethelks.edu
