Alfred Stephen, president of Societas Homiletica 2013-2014. Dr. Stephen is Professor of Homiletics and Academic Dean of Graduate Studies at the Tamilnadu Theological Seminary.
As President of Societas Homiletica I am pleased to invite you for the upcoming conference in Madurai, India.
Madurai which is called a Temple city and a ‘City that never sleeps’ is situated in the southern part of Tamilnadu state. It is known as Christian Missionary field and educational centre. It is also known for its Literary Tamil cultural heritage and temples. Multi Religious and cultural and caste context of Madurai pose unbelievable challenges to preachers and call for creative contextual paradigm of theology.
To expose the teachers of Homiletics to the unique phenomenon of Indian preaching context and to be realistic to it, the Board of Societas Homiletica has decided to hold the theme of the conference as
Preaching Vulnerability: Naming and Neglecting Reality.
Vulnerability is a reality of one group of people who are called Dalits, in India. They are succumbed to violence, abuses of all kinds, discrimination, lose of dignity, bonded labourer system, subjective educational system, denial of access to public places etc. Vulnerability does not elude atrocities on women who are doubly vulnerable. Few years back media flashed a news about a Dalit young little lad punished for drinking water from the pot which was kept for the high caste pupils. Out of tongue drying thirst and in all his innocence he reached the pot and drank water from it. He was beaten as mark of punishment which led to lose of sight. Dalit children are also vulnerable. In this context of reality, what are the factors which are named and what are neglected in preaching, what is the role and response of preaching to this context? is what we will explore in the conference. For the benefit of those who are preparing the present papers, I am giving a write up in a separate page.
Coming to Madurai
In Madurai, we will experience exiting scholarly Keynote addresses from India, Europe, South Africa and the United States. We will also have colourful and (Dalit) cultural verities of dances and culture based mimes as well as thought provokingly disturbing movie, all of which are based on the theme. We are happy to receive papers which have focus of the theme within it. As it is our regular practice, you are requested to sign up for paper presentation, workshops, sending your names to the webmaster or President or Secretary of the Societas Homiletica. Papers will be reviewed by members of the Board before confirming the acceptance. Societas Homiletica assures you of a deep insights on variety of Homiletic paradigms, especially Contextual Homiletics.
We are happy to inform the participants that JC Residency Hotel has agreed to reserve 60 rooms for accommodation. Bookings are taken during the process of registration. Besides this accommodation, we also have twelve rooms at the Tamilnadu Theological Seminary with air conditioning. In the registration form, you find the details of the various rooms. Information regarding Registration, city of Madurai, Travel Guide is available on our website. The International Board of Societas Homiletica is happy to invite you to join us in Madurai for the Conference in July 2014. We are ready to welcome you and give you rich experience and make you feel at home. We look forward to seeing you all here in the great city of Madurai. There will also be a package tour arranged for those interested to historical, coastal cities at the distance of around 250 kilo meters. Please contact the President at alfredstephen@hotmail.com for further information on this.
Prof. Dr. Alfred Stephen, President of Societas Homiletica