20/20 - Conversing with the Culture: Giving Reason for the Hope Within

20/20 Collegiate Conference

Believers are often confronted with hard questions: Why do you believe what you believe? Why does God allow suffering in the world? Is Christianity the only way to salvation? Why should I believe that God exists? What about homosexuality and abortion? Christianity gives answers, but sometimes those answers are at odds with the prevailing cultural mood. Can Christians love truth and at the same time strive to win those around them? How do those conversations go?

This conference uses theology, literature, philosophy, real-life conversations, and reason to explain how faith in the Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people who can communicate their faith in a way that is persuasive and compassionate. As always, we will explore God's witness and his gospel in the midst of a skeptical, morally confused culture.

Speakers

Daniel Akin is president of Southeastern and a respected theologian, preacher and evangelical leader. He and his wife Charlotte have four sons, three daughters-in-law, and six grandchildren. He is the author of a number of books including God on Sex, Five Who Changed the World, and several biblical commentaries. He served as editor of A Theology for the Church. His teaching resources may be found at danielakin.com.

J. Budziszewski received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1981, and is a professor in  the departments of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Budziszewski is an ethical and political philosopher. He is also a nationally-known authority on the tradition of Natural Law.

Much of his work focuses on the repression of moral knowledge - on what goes wrong when we try to convince ourselves that we don't know what we really do. Another of his interests is the intersection of philosophy with theology. Budziszewski's scholarly books include Evangelicals in the Public Square (2006), What We Can't Not Know: A Guide (2003), The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man (1999), and Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (1997), which received a Christianity Today book award. Budziszewski's works appear in both scholarly and popular venues, and he has also written several books for young people.

Michael Green is one of the world’s leading evangelists, and was for many years a Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University. He taught Evangelism, Apologetics, and New Testament Studies at Wycliffe, was Principal of St John’s College, Nottingham, was Rector of St Aldate’s Church, Oxford, was Professor of Evangelism at Regent College, Vancouver, and is currently the Chaplain for the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

He has written a vast number of books, and those on apologetics include The Books the Church Suppressed, But Don’t All Religions Lead to God, and I’d Like to Believe, But…

Bruce A. Little was born and reared in a small town near the quaint coastal village of Damariscotta, Maine. He presently teaches at Southeastern as Professor of Philosophy and Director of the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture. In addition, he serves as Adjunct Professor of Apologetics for Evangelical Theological Divinity School (High Point, NC) and Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary (Penang, Malaysia).

Dr. Little is published in various professional journals, and some of his other publications are A Creation-Order Theodicy: God and Gratuitous Evil (2005) and two articles ("Thomas à Kempis" and "A Course In Miracles") for InterVarsity’s New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics (2005).

Albert Mohler, Jr serves as the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. 

Dr. Mohler also serves as the Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology at Southern Seminary. His writings have been published throughout the United States and Europe. In addition to contributing to a number of collected volumes, he is the author of several books, including Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth (Multnomah), Desire & Deceit: The Real Cost of the New Sexual Tolerance (Multnomah), Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheists (Crossway), He Is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World (Moody), and the forthcoming The Disappearance of God: Dangerous Beliefs in the New Spiritual Openness (Multnomah).