Dr. Allen Verhey of the Hope College religion faculty will present the 1998 Collins Lectures in Portland, Ore., on Friday-Sunday, Nov. 13-15.
The lecture series, now in its 32nd year, began as
the Portland Christian Lectureship in 1967. The series is
intended to provide the clergy, lay leadership and public of
the Portland area with the opportunity to explore the
ramifications of the Christian faith.
Verhey, who is the Evert J. and Hattie E. Blekkink
Professor of Religion and chair of the department at Hope,
will present two addresses within the general topic of
"Suffering, Compassion, and Piety." The first lecture will
be "Suffering and Compassion: Looking Heavenward," and the
second will be "Lessons of Lament for Responding to
Suffering."
The Collins Lectureship emerged from discussions
between the Greater Portland Council of Churches, the Roman
Catholic Archdiocese of Portland and the Holy Trinity Greek
Orthodox Church, which wished to bring great scholars to
Portland during the Pentecost season each year to discuss
questions of paramount importance to members of many
communions. The goal has been to foster inter-
denominational and inter-faith learning.
Verhey's fields of interest and inquiry are the
New Testament and Christian ethics. He has focused a good
deal of his attention on questions of medical ethics.
His book "The Great Reversal: Ethics and the New
Testament" was described as "a standard for all future work
in this area [on the relation of scripture and Christian
ethics]." The anthology he edited on medical ethics, "On
Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives on Medical
Ethics," won a CHOICE award as one of the outstanding
academic books of 1987. In addition, he is the author or
editor of seven other books.
He has written nearly 200 articles which have
appeared in journals, as chapters of scholarly books or as
contributions to encyclopedias. His work is discussed in
the 1997 book "Theological Ethics and Holy Scripture: The
Use of Scripture in the Works of James A. Gustafson, R. Paul
Ramsey, and Allen D. Verhey," a dissertation written by
Laurens Wouter Bilkes.
Verhey has served on the Board of Directors of the
Medical Ethics Resource Network of Michigan and the National
Advisory Board on Ethics in Reproduction, and as a member of
the editorial board of the "Journal of Religious Ethics,"
"Ethics and Medicine," and "Christian Bioethics."
He joined the Hope faculty in 1975. From 1992 to
1994, he was director and a fellow with the Institute of
Religion at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. During
1993-94 he was an adjunct professor with the Department of
Community Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, and with the
Center for Ethics, Medicine and Public Issues. During the
spring of 1994, he was a Rockwell Distinguished Scholar and
Visiting Lecturer in Religion at the University of Houston.
He holds a bachelor's degree from Calvin College,
a bachelor of divinity from Calvin Theological Seminary and
a doctorate from Yale University.