The 2025 Cole Lecture with Jung Mo Sung

Vanderbilt University Divinity School announces the 2025 Cole Lecture

to be presented by

Jung Mo Sung

Professor of Graduate Studies in Religious Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University, Retired, University of São Paulo

Monday, October 13, 2025

6:00 p.m.

The Space, Vanderbilt Divinity School

Sacred Versus Holy and the Inversion of Ethical Values in the Contemporary World

We live in a time of polarization in which notions of ethical-theological values, such as cynicism, selfishness, empathy, or love for one's neighbor, have become confused or even inverted. Is there a truth that humanizes us, or is everything a matter of political or cultural choices? How can theology contribute to this debate? Joan Robinson, an economist, talking on the endless pursuit of profit and social prestige by business people, said, “No one likes to have a bad conscience. Pure cynicism is rather rare. Even the Thugs robbed and murdered for the honor of their goddess.” On the other hand, Weber said that, whether in pre-modern or current societies, there has always been and always will be the offering of sacrifices to the gods of society, whether these gods are personal or impersonal. Whether because of a bad conscience or a necessity for unequal social systems, the notion of the sacred and its demand for sacrifices are essential in the process of inverting what is good and evil. To gain a better understanding of this dynamic, it is important (a) to distinguish between the logic of the sacred and that of the "holy" (which breaks sacred laws in the name of compassion) in social and religious relations; (b) to analyze the current dialectic between the social division of labor and the social division of workers.

Jung Mo Sung

Born in South Korea in 1957, he moved to Brazil in 1966, where he became a naturalized citizen. He holds a bachelor's degree in Philosophy (1984) and in Theology (1984), a doctorate (PhD) in Religious Studies from the Methodist University of São Paulo (1993), and postdoctoral degree studies in Education from the Methodist University of Piracicaba (2000). He was a professor of graduate studies in Religious Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and at the Methodist University of São Paulo, where he retired after 30 years of teaching. He has experience in Religious Studies and Theology, with a focus on the theological critique of political economy, liberation theology, and the role of religion and education in promoting solidarity; and has published more than 20 books, some of which have been translated into Spanish, English, Korean, and Italian. In English, “Desire, Market and Religion”; “Subject, Capitalism and Religion”; “Beyond the Spirit of Empire” (co-authored with Joerg Rieger and Nestor Miguez).

About the Cole Lectures

Philanthropist Edmund W. Cole, president of Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and treasurer of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust, endowed the annual Cole Lecture Series in 1892 "for the defense and advocacy of the Christian religion." Cole's gift provided for the first sustained lectureship in the history of Vanderbilt University.

The lectures have been delivered by such distinguished scholars as Harry Emerson Fosdick, George Buttrick, Rudolph Bultmann, H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Walter Brueggemann, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, James Barr, Gustavo Gutierrez, James Cone, Edward Farley, Don Beisswenger, Gene TeSelle, David Buttrick, Jim Wallis, Lamin Sanneh, Mark Noll, Randall Balmer, James Lawson, John O'Malley, R. Scott Appleby, M. Shawn Copeland and many others.