Karl Barth, The Jews & Judaism

June 15-18, 2014, Princeton Theological Seminary

The 2014 Annual Karl Barth Conference will be held on June 15-18, 2014 at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.

The theme of the conference is “Barth, Jews, & Judaism” and the plenary speakers include Victoria Barnett (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), Eberhard Busch (Georg-August-Universitἅt-Gὂttingen), Ellen Charry (Princeton Theological Seminary), George Hunsinger (Princeton Theological Seminary), Mark Lindsay (MCD University of Divinity), David Novak (University of Toronto), and Peter Ochs (University of Virginia).

2014 Speaker Profiles

Victoria Barnett

Victoria Barnett is Director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is also one of the general editors of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, the English translation series of Bonhoeffer’s complete works being published by Fortress Press. She is a graduate of Indiana University, Union Theological Seminary (New York), and George Mason University. Her dissertation was a historical case study of the National Conference of Christians and Jews from 1933 – 1948. She is the author of For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (Greenwood Press, 1999), and editor/translator of Wolfgang Gerlach’s And the Witnesses were Silent: the Confessing Church and the Jews (University of Nebraska Press, 2000) and the new revised edition of Eberhard Bethge’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Fortress Press, 2000). She has written numerous articles and book chapters on the churches during the Holocaust, and is the author of the website article on Dietrich Bonhoeffer published on the Museum’s website (http://www.ushmm.org/bonhoeffer/).

Eberhard Busch

Eberhard Busch is professor emeritus of reformed theology and Director of the Karl Barth Research-Centre at Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, Germany. Busch served as the pastor of the Reformed Church in Uerkheim in the Swiss canton Aargau from 1969-1986 and a radio preacher from 1973-1981. He is also the author of many works on reformed theology, the German kirchenkampf, and Karl Barth, including Karl Barth: His Life and Letters from Autobiographical Texts (Wipf & Stock, 2005), The Barmen Theses Then and Now: 2004 Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary (Eerdmans, 2010), and Drawn to Freedom: Christian Faith Today in Conversation with the Heidelberg Catechism (Eerdmans, 2010). Busch’s most recent work, Meine Zeit mit Karl Barth (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), is a diary of the time he spent as Barth’s assistant from 1965 until his death in 1968.

Ellen T. Charry

Ellen T. Charry is the Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned the M.A. and the Ph.D. in religion from Temple University following the M.S.W. from Yeshiva University and the B.A. from Barnard College. Her interest is in human flourishing in Christian perspective. Her monographs are Franz Rosensweig on the Freedom of God (1987), By the Renewing of your Minds (1997), and God and the Art of Happiness (2010). Her edited works are Inquiring after God (2000), Same-Sex Relationships and the Nature of Marriage: A Theological Colloquy (Anglican Theological Review, 2011), and Austin Dogmatics of Paul M. van Buren (2012). She is past editor of Theology Today (1997–2004), and was a member of the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (1998–2010), and a member of the Pursuit of Happiness Project at the Center for Law and Religion at Emory University sponsored by the Templeton Foundation (2007–2010). Charry has served on the editorial boards of the Scottish Journal of Theology and Pro Ecclesia. She currently serves as an editor-at-large for The Christian Century. 

George Hunsinger

George Hunsinger teaches theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a delegate to the official Catholic/Reformed International Dialogue (2011-2017). In 2006 he founded the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. In 2010 he received the Karl Barth Prize awarded by the Union of Evangelical Churches in Germany. His most recent book is The Beatitudes (Paulist Press, 2014).

Mark Lindsay

Professor Mark Lindsay is Director of Research at the University of Divinity. A systematic and historical theologian, Professor Lindsay has published three books on Karl Barth and the Jewish people, including Covenanted Solidarity (2001), Barth, Israel and Jesus (2007) and Reading Auschwitz with Barth (forthcoming 2014). He has also published well over 30 book chapters and articles on various aspects of Barth, Bonhoeffer, post-Holocaust theology and inter-faith relations. Soon to be ordained in the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, Professor Lindsay has a strong commitment to interfaith and ecumenical dialogue, and to the promotion of the role of theology in Australian public debate. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and in 2005 was the Sternberg Fellow at the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge.

David Novak

David Novak was born in Chicago, Illinois on 19 August 1941. He received his A.B. from the University of Chicago on 10 June 1961, and from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America he received his M.H.L. (Master of Hebrew Literature) on 7 June 1964 and his rabbinical diploma on 5 June 1966. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown University on 23 May 1971.

Since 1997 Dr. Novak holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of Religion and Philosophy in the University of Toronto, where he is a member of University College and the Centre for Jewish Studies. During 1989-96 he was the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia. He has also taught at Oklahoma City University, Old Dominion University, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Baruch College of the City University of New York, and the New School for Social Research. During 1966-69 he was the Jewish Chaplain to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, National Institute of Mental Health, in Washington, D.C. During 1966-89 he served as the rabbi of several U.S. congregations. He has been a consultant to the governments of Canada, the United States, Israel, and Poland, and is a contributor to the Religion and Ethics website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

David Novak is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (F.R.S.C.) and a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He is a founder, President, and Coordinator of the Panel of Inquiry on Jewish Law of the Union for Traditional Judaism. He is a founder and Vice-President of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, and a member of the Editorial Board of its monthly journal First Things. He is a Consulting Scholar and a member of the Board of Advisors of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions of Princeton University. In 1992-93 he was a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. In fall 1995 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Religion and Business Ethics at Drew University. In February 1996 he delivered the Lancaster/Yarnton Lectures in Judaism and Other Religions in Oxford University and then in Lancaster University. In fall 2004 he was the Charles E. Test, M.D. Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Princeton University, and in spring 2006 he was Visiting Professor of Religion at Princeton. In 2006 he was appointed to the Board of Directors of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada (A.H.R.C.), a federal agency, by the Governor-General of Canada, and served during the entire tenure of this agency (2006-12). In 2008 he founded the Tikvah Fund Summer Seminar of Princeton University. In 2011 he was appointed a Project Scholar in the Religious Freedom Project of the Berkley Center of Georgetown University.

Peter Ochs

Peter Ochs is the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at The University of Virginia, where has served since 1997. Ochs holds a Ph.D. and B.A. from Yale University and an M.A. from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Ochs is an influential thinker whose interests include Jewish philosophy and theology; theology, pragmatism, and semiotics; and the logic of inter-traditional, scriptural dialogue. He is cofounder of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, which seeks to bridge the gap between faith and reason in scriptural interpretation among the Abrahamic traditions, and of the (Jewish) Society for Textual Reasoning. His most recent books are Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (2011) and The Free Church and Israel’s Covenant (2010).