Conference on Religious Freedom announced
February 20, 2018
The McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life has opened registration for its conference ‘Is Religious Freedom Under Threat? Trans-Atlantic Perspectives.’
The conference will take place on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday 23-25 May 2018 in the Sir Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre (formerly the Blue Boar Lecture Theatre) at Christ Church, Oxford.
The centre has invited a distinguished group of leading international scholars and legal practitioners to discuss a wide array of topics, including the historical backdrop to contemporary debates on freedom of religion and conscience, the distinction between religious and conscientious belief, perceived tensions between freedom of religion and rights to equal treatment, and the contested place of religious establishment.
This event marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of the McDonald Centre in 2008. The conference will open with the McDonald Distinguished Scholar Lecture by Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and former United States Ambassador to the Holy See. Professor Glendon will deliver her lecture in the Sir Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre at Christ Church at 5pm on Wednesday 23 May.
A second McDonald Distinguished Scholar Lecture will be delivered by Sir John Laws, a former Lord Justice of Appeal, Privy Counsellor, and Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. He will deliver his lecture in the Sir Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre at Christ Church at 5:30pm on Thursday 24 May.