Rethinking Religion in an Age of Science:
From Institution to Evolution

The Center for Christogenesis 2025 Conference

Join us in returning religion to evolution

We will hold our annual conference virtually Friday, May 2 through Sunday, May 4 (in Eastern US time zone). Sessions will be held Friday evening and all day Saturday, with closing remarks and a shared liturgical service on Sunday morning. Learn more below and contact us with questions.

For student scholarships, submit this application and our team will follow up with registration instructions.

Speakers

Session Schedule

Vision

According to recent Pew Studies, religion is waning as spiritual secularism is rising. While the data has sounded alarm bells, there may be good reason why religion has become irrelevant while spirituality has become a cultural icon.

This conference aims to suture the relationship between religion and spirituality by relocating religion at the heart of cosmic life.

Religion has not gone away but it is advancing in new ways. Formal or institutional religion has sidetracked the modern person by placing constraints around religion and segregating its core energies in creeds and doctrines. Teilhard de Chardin realized that religion is essential to the direction of evolution. We will explore how a renewed sense of religion in evolution can reinvigorate planetary life, especially in an age of technology.

Conference Speakers

Bayo Akomolafe

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Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Local Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute, where he acts as the Forum’s “provocateur in residence”, guiding Forum members in rethinking and reimagining our collective work towards justice in ways that reject binary thinking and easy answers. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. Read his introduction penned for the Democracy & Belonging Forum here. To learn more about his work, visit Bayo's website at here, and view the work of the Emergence Network here.

Ilia Delio

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Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD, is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC, and an American theologian specializing in the area of science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics, and neuroscience and the import of these for theology.

Ilia currently holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University and is the author of twenty books, including "Care for Creation" (coauthored with Keith Warner and Pamela Woods), which won two Catholic Press Book Awards in 2009: first place for social concerns and second place in spirituality. Her book "The Emergent Christ" won a third-place Catholic Press Book Award in 2011 for the area of Science and Religion. Her recent books include "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love" (Orbis, 2013), which received the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a third-place Catholic Press Association Award for Faith and Science. Ilia holds two honorary doctorates, one from St. Francis University in 2015, and one from Sacred Heart University in 2020.

John F. Haught

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John F. Haught (Ph. D. Catholic University, 1970) is Distinguished Research Professor, Georgetown University, Washington DC. He was formerly Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University (1970-2005) and Chair (1990-95). His area of specialization is systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to science, cosmology, evolution, ecology, and religion. He is the author of 24 books including God After Einstein: What’s Really Going on in the Universe? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022)  and The Cosmic Vision of Teilhard de Chardin (Maryknoll: Orbis Press, 2021) .

Thomas Jay Oord

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Thomas Jay Oord, Ph.D., is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. Oord directs the Center for Open and Relational Theology and doctoral students at Northwind Theological Seminary. He is an award-winning author and has written or edited more than thirty books. A gifted speaker, Oord lectures at universities, conferences, churches, and institutions. He is known for his contributions to research on love, science and religion, open and relational theology, the problem of suffering, and advocacy for the full inclusion of queer people.

Grace Ji-Sun Kim

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Grace Ji-Sun Kim (Ph.D. University of St. Michael’s College) was born in Korea, educated in Canada and now teaches in the USA as Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion. She is the author or editor of 24 books, most recently, When God Became White, Surviving God, Invisible, and Spirit Life. Kim is the host of Madang podcast which is sponsored by the Christian Century. She blogs on her substack: Loving Life and has written for Huffington Post, The Nation, Sojourners, Baptist News Global, Faith and Leadership and TIME. Kim has appeared on MSNBC, PBS and C-Span. She has been a guest on BBC Radio, ABC Soul Search Radio, WBEZ Radio, and Keep Hope Alive Radio. She is a book series Co-Editor for Palgrave Macmillan Series, “Asian Christianity in the Diaspora,” and has served on the American Academy of Religion’s Board of Directors. Kim is honored to be included in the Englewood Review of Book’s list of “Ten Important Women Theologians That You Should Be Reading” and Sojourners included Kim as one of “8 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2023.” Englewood Review of Books included her latest book, When God Became White, in their list of “15 Important Theology Books of 2024”. She is an ordained PC(USA) minister and enjoys being a guest preacher on most Sundays.

Session Schedule and Details

We are currently planning our conference proceedings. Check back soon or follow us on social media for conference updates, talk titles and abstracts.

Register

Register now to receive our 20%-off early-bird special (starting April 1, general registration will be $175)

For student scholarships, submit this application and our team will follow up with registration instructions.

Registration grants online access to all programming via Zoom. Access information and other updates will be sent to the email provided. All registrants will receive recordings of the sessions within two weeks of the event.

Rethinking Religion in an Age of Science:
From Institution to Evolution

Join us in returning religion to evolution

Vision