Previous Annual Lectures

January 2016, "Undiluted Inclusivity: How Moving Beyond a Fundamentalist View of God and Gender Promotes Deeper Inclusivity”

Benjamin L. Corey, a doctoral candidate at Fuller Seminary who specializes in theology and missiology,is the author of Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus (2014). Brian D. McLaren writes: “Corey has a way of capturing the heart of Jesus and his message…You’ll find in…[his] book a jolt of full-strength gospel and high-test challenge along with undiluted encouragement.” Corey’s blog “Formerly Fundie” can be found at www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/

Co-sponsored by the Anabaptist- Mennonite Centre for Faith and Learning 


March 2015,  "You are Beloved and Sex is Good: What Does a New Covenant Understanding of Sexuality Look Like?"

Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD
Clinical Professor in the Graduate Family Therapy Department, Seattle Pacific University 


April 2013 , "The Truth About Girls and Boys: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children"

Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Barnett

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Professor Caryl Rivers is Professor of Journalism at the College of Communication at Boston University. A recipient of the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, she is an internationally renowned novelist, journalist, and scholar. Dr. Ros alind C. Barnett is senior scientist at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. She is the recipient of the Radcliffe College Graduate Society's Distinguished Achievement Medal and the Anne Roe Award from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She is also a practicing clinical psychologist. Professors Rivers and Barnett are co-authors of: Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, and Our Jobs; She Works/ He Works: How Two-Income Families are Happy, Healthy, and Thriving; and The Truth About Girls and Boys: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes about our Children.

"For the past 20 years we've been hearing the claims from pop psychology to neuroscience: men and women, boys and girls, have different brains. Rivers and Barnett put forward evidence from both neuroscience and psychology to suggest something entirely different: seeing girls and boys as different produces unhealthy gender stereotyping. "

Together they wrote The Truth About Girls and Boys, a best-selling book about toxic beliefs and gender differences in children. Their work was featured in late 2012 on CBC Ideas with Paul Kennedy in a program called “The Gender Trap.”

Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett are widely acclaimed for their analyses of women, men, and society. In The Truth About Girls and Boys, they tackle a new, troubling trend in the theorizing of gender: that the learning styles, brain development, motivation, cognitive and spatial abilities, and “natural” inclinations of girls and boys are so fundamentally different, they require unique styles of parenting and education.

Ignoring the science that challenges these claims, those who promote such theories make millions while frightening parents and educators into enforcing old stereotypes and reviving unhealthy attitudes in the classroom. Rivers and Barnett unmake the pseudoscientific rationale for this argument, stressing the individuality of each child and the specialness of his or her talents and desires. They recognize that in our culture, girls and boys encounter different stimuli and experiences, yet encouraging children to venture outside their comfort zones helps them realize a multifaceted character. Educating parents, teachers, and general readers in the true nature of the gender game, Rivers and Barnett enable future generations to transform if not transcend the parameters of sexual difference.


March 2012 -   “Courting Trouble? The Revolution in Love, Courtship, and Marriage”
Professor Stephanie Coontz

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Professor Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She also serves as Co-Chair and Director of Public Education of the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-profit, nonpartisan association of family researchers and practitioners based at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work has been featured in many newspapers such as the New York Times, as well as scholarly journals such as the Journal of Marriageand Family, and she is frequently interviewed on national television and radio. She is the author of several books, including The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia TrapThe Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing FamiliesMarriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, and her most recent book, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s.