This year’s annual Kavanagh Lecture will be given by Dr. E. Byron (Ron) Anderson (M.Div. ’84). The event is sponsored by the Kavanagh Lecture series and Liturgy Symposium series.
In a contemporary social context in which we are increasingly “distracted by design,” Christian liturgy has the potential to serve as a counter-practice. It offers an opportunity to form and inform the ways in which communities give attention to some thing or things, give attention together, and, through such shared attention, become attuned to one another and to the Other/God.
This event will be livestreamed.
Speaker bio:
E. Byron (Ron) Anderson is the Styberg Professor of Worship and Associate Dean for Institutional and Educational Assessment at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois. His publications include Worship and Christian Identity (Liturgical Press, 2003), Taught by God: Teaching and Spiritual Formation, co-authored with Karen-Marie Yust (Chalice Press, 2006), Common Worship: Tradition, Formation, Mission (Foundery Books, 2017) and several edited collections. He has also published articles in Worship, Studia Liturgica, and Religious Education. From 2004-2015 he served as president of The Liturgical Conference, for which he edited and contributed to several issues of its journal Liturgy, and from 2021-2023 was president of Societies Liturgica. A long-time member of the North American Academy of Liturgy, he has served for several years as convener of its Liturgical Hermeneutics seminar. He is an ordained minister of word and sacrament in The United Methodist Church and has served parishes as pastor, Christian educator, and musician. He received the BA from Carthage College, the M. Div. from Yale University Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music, and the PhD from Emory University.