October 3, 2003

Vernon Gregson delivers fall Yamauchi Lecture

Professor of Religious Studies Vernon Gregson, Ph.D., will deliver the fall Yamauchi Lecture Sunday, October 26, at 7:30 p.m. in Nunemaker Auditorium.

Gregson explains the focus of his lecture titled, "Beyond the Dialogue of Religions: Integrating Other Traditions Into One's Own."

"We live in a unique period of human history. Because of large migrations of persons, instantaneous world news, global religious strife, and the Internet's connection of people throughout the world, we are exposed on a continuing basis to religions which have lived primarily separate.

"Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were largely centered in the Mid-East and Europe; Hinduism and Buddhism were primarily in India and the Far East; Confucianism and Taoism were in China and Korea. Now practitioners and centers of worship of all of these religions can be found in major cities throughout the world. And this will only increase.

"Exposure to these various traditions, which have historically been foreign to each other, are now near at hand. How should, and how do, we react to this diversity? Practitioners of these diverse religions now become members of our families and our friends, sometimes through conversion, sometimes though intermarriage. How do, and how should, we react to this new situation, especially when elements of traditions, different from our own, at times appeal to us religiously?

"We will address in this lecture both how religions in the past have integrated new elements, religious and otherwise, and suggest how we may do so today, respecting both fidelity to our own traditions and our new world situation."

Vernon Gregson, Ph.D., J.D.

Gregson's work ranges broadly over matters of ethics, psychoanalysis, and law. He holds a doctorate in theology from Marquette University, a juris doctor from Loyola University School of Law, and a graduate certification as a psychoanalyst from the Tulane University School of Medicine. Gregson has authored Lonergan, Spirituality and the Meeting of Religions and editor co-author of Desires of the Human Heart. He directs the psychiatry and religion course at LSU Medical Center Department of Psychiatry and serves on the Medical Research Committee of Touro Infirmary.

The Yamauchi Lectures in Religion series began in 1985 in memory of the Rev. H. James Yamauchi, S.J., former chair of the Department of Religious Studies who taught at Loyola University New Orleans from 1956 ­ 1966. The New Orleans community knew Yamauchi for his effective communication of knowledge about religion, and this lecture series seeks to perpetuate his work by bringing the results of religious scholarship to a wider audience.