Date: June 23, 2022
We are delighted that VTS’s Reinicker Lecture will take place next week, Wednesday, June 29 at 7:00 p.m., during the doctoral residency. All are welcome to join us for this special event! It will be in Addison 101. Our lecturer this year is the renowned Islamic ethicist Abdulaziz Sachedina, whose lecture is entitled “Islamic Spiritual Life with Jesus and Muhammad as the Paradigms of Spirituality.” Dr. Sachedina is Chair of Religious Studies and Endowed IIIT Professor of Islamic Studies at George Mason University. He is author of many books including Islamic Ethics: Fundamental Aspects of Human Conduct, Islamic Biomedical Ethics, and Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights.
The lecture on comparative spirituality will focus on the development of ethical societies that Jesus and Muhammad envisaged about the future of humanity. The Bible and the Qur’an embodied the message that would function as eternal guidance for humanity at all times, that the faith communities will strive to attain a perfect society that reflects the divine attributes of compassion and forgiveness. The spiritual journey, in both traditions, began with encouragement to develop sincerity and authenticity to earn divine blessings through the creation of ideal human society. The matter was urgent and required enormous capacity to move in the right direction that the scriptures laid bare for the faithful to adopt. Spiritual progression was to be measured by overcoming the human tendency to pretend what they were not, and religious faith taught humans to objectify their claim to spirituality by living a life of moral uprightness. Both traditions wanted to do away with institutional hypocrisy and revive the true faith in God by seeking to edify humanity with exemplar life that combined a deep sense of divine presence in the biblical dictum: “Love thy neighbor, as you love thyself.”
Rev. Ross Kane, Ph.D.
Director of Doctoral Programs
Assistant Professor of Theology, Ethics, and Culture