Class: Christianity in Process
2022-07-12 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
A Six-Week Exploration of Christianity & Process Theology

In this six-week course, John Cobb will elucidate six of the themes in Christianity and process theology that he considers vital to his faith. Each session will include a mini-lecture by John, a conversation between John and Tripp, and responses to questions submitted by class participants.

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Learning Circle: Process & Coffee
2022-07-13 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-07-20 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-07-27 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-08-03 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-08-10 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-08-17 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-08-24 08:00 - 09:00, 2022-08-31 08:00 - 09:00 | Online Event
Process & Coffee is about spiritual integration and exploration. We meet weekly to dive into books by mystics and sages. The discussion that follows helps to deepen our own spiritual lives.

To learn more or join, send an email to learninglab@cobb.institute.

Learning Circle: Readings on Faiths Around the World
2022-07-14 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-07-28 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-08-11 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-08-25 08:30 - 09:30 | Online Event
Readings on Faiths Around the World is a book group that meets twice a month to read and discuss texts that deal with the vast diversity of world faiths, those that have had a very large influence for many centuries as well as those that may be newer and less well-known. The only prerequisite for this group is a desire to learn about the wide variety of religion expressions.

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Learning Circle: Beginning Process and Reality
2022-07-17 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-07-24 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-07-31 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-08-07 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-08-14 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-08-21 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-08-28 16:00 - 17:00, 2022-09-04 16:00 - 17:00
Encountering Whitehead’s Magnum Opus for First-Timers

Designed for beginners, this learning circle will involve a close reading of Whitehead’s seminal work, discussing passages together in-depth as we work our way through the text.

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Process Pop-up: The Deeper Roots of Mass Shootings
2022-07-21 16:30 - 17:30
Facilitated by Sheri Kling, PhD

Join a dynamic discussion on the deeper roots of mass shootings, inspired by process scholar Sheri Kling’s recent piece on the Cobb Institute blog Process in Praxis titled “Are Fragmentation, Trauma, and Demoralization at the Root of Mass Shootings?”

“Rather than just arguing about whether the problem stems from the individuals or the guns, I’d like to suggest that the roots may lie even deeper. And until we are willing to follow the threads all the way down, we will never find a way out of the crisis of mass shootings. I strongly believe that the roots of this problem are cultural fragmentation, an epidemic of trauma, and widespread demoralization. In other words, we are living in a sick society that is producing mass shootings out of its sickness.”

Sponsored by Process & Faith and the Cobb Institute.

To find out more and receive Zoom info…

RSVP at Process & Faith

Learning Circle: An Awakening Planet?
2022-07-26 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-08-09 08:30 - 09:30, 2022-08-23 08:30 - 09:30 | Online Event
A Discussion Group Contemplating the Vision of Teilhard de Chardin

Facilitated by Dr. Ernie Tamminga, this group meets every two weeks to carefully consider how and whether Teilhard de Chardin’s hope-filled perspective on the human evolutionary future can still inspire us in a time full of conflicts and division.

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John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Pauline Doty
2022-08-09 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Bringing Hope to Our Future

Presenter(s): Pauline Doty

Since taking her first classes and practicums in pastoral care and counseling fifty years ago, Pauline’s ministry has supported individuals and families as they deal with mental illness, trauma, loss, and broken relationships. With the National Alliance on Mental Illness for 12 years, she has provided leadership, peer education, and facilitation of weekly support groups.

Questions of faith about God and evil, God and suffering, confronted Pauline as a teen. She was raised in the Church of God (Anderson, IN) and attended church often – Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and many Wednesday evenings. Her Dad coached his children in memorizing many chapters in the Bible. Her mother suffered with untreated depression and often wasn’t feeling well. Too often Pauline had very painful and angry encounters with her father. She was seriously seeking to follow Jesus, and to surrender to God’s will for her life. During high school she had the support and gifts of a woman pastor who loved her, and a caring church family. However, at age 20 and a sophomore in college, she suffered a mental breakdown with serious mental illness crisis. Acute schizophrenic episode was the initial diagnosis.

When Pauline returned to campus after hospitalization and some months away, she took courses in philosophy and theology. Learning about Whitehead and process philosophy with Delwin Brown, along with a supportive community and psychotherapy, enabled growth in her Christian faith perspective, moving her to affirm a radical message of God’s redeeming love. No more sheep and goats to be separated at judgment day. All are sheep – beloved children of God! Just some are more seriously wounded “children” and needing more caring and healing relationships.

Pauline completed graduate degrees at Chicago Theological Seminary and Columbia Theological Seminary. In 1987 she completed her thesis: Responding to Persons in Despair: A Process Theology of Hope for Pastoral Care and Counseling. In Echoes of Mercy, Whispers of Love: My Journey and A Theology of Hope (AuthorHouse 2010), and From Despair Into Healing: Workbook for Spiritual Change (AuthorHouse 2022), Pauline shares her process theology of hope as a framework for counseling despairing persons. Her faith perspective informs her spiritual care with persons on the healing and recovery journey. She believes this faith perspective can crucially enable resiliency when illness, tragedy, and loss strike again. Of her first book, John Cobb has written,

“I am impressed by the sensitivity of her presentation of the ideas of Whitehead and others in his ‘process’ tradition. She represents this position with scholarly accuracy but also with literary skill and personal appropriation. Hence her work is of value not only to scholars but also more widely to a lay audience.”

With the rising numbers of children, teens, and adults experiencing serious depression and mental health issues, including suicide attempts and suicide, churches, faith groups and communities are challenged to find answers and meaningful ways to “keep hope alive.” Pauline will share key themes from her Process Theology of Hope that were very important for her own recovery and healing and have informed and supported all of her pastoral care and counseling ministry. These themes are important for her in support groups, coaching, book events, and workshops. She welcomes dialogue as we share together on August 9.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Ben Bowler
2022-08-16 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Networking Toward World Unity

Presenter(s): Ben Bowler

SCobb and Friends regular Bill McLellan introduced us to Yanni Maniates, Board Chair of Unity Earth, who introduced us to Ben Bowler, its Executive Director. Ben has agreed to join us at 3 a.m. Melbourne time for our 10 a.m. gathering with John Cobb and Friends! In October 2015, at the Parliament of World Religions, Ben launched 1GOD.com, an online platform aimed at countering religious fundamentalism, relativism and western materialism. Since then he has worked to build UNITY EARTH into a global platform that can support and empower the many grassroots movements working towards unity and peace in the world.

See further information about Unity Earth and Ben Bowler here. Among the gifts brings to the table is his experience with aboriginal peoples in Australia. Ben suggests that you check out this YouTube explanation of 1God.com. Among their many projects are World Unity Week, 99 Days of Peace, and Universal Day of Peace. One of our Friends who has been much involved in the launch of the Living Earth Movement is Charles Betterton. (Read about his background at the LEM about page.) He will be able to launch our responses by sharing his experience with the kind of online networking that facilitates a Unity Earth perspective.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

Process Pop-up: Process and Religious Pluralism
2022-08-18 16:30 - 17:30
Facilitated by Bruce Epperly & Sheri Kling

Join a dynamic discussion on process and religious pluralism, using Bruce Epperly’s recently published book The Elephant is Running: Process and Open and Relational Theologies and Religious Pluralism as a springboard for conversation.

How should Christians respond to the dynamic changes in the North American and global religious landscape? What resources do process and openness theologies provide for interspiritual seekers and religious adventurers? Process theologian and pastor Bruce Epperly reflects on his latest book.

Sponsored by Process & Faith and the Cobb Institute.

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RSVP at Process & Faith

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Andrew Davis
2022-08-23 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Ideas in Process–Ten Whiteheadian Transitions

Presenter(s): Andrew Davis

Dr. Davis, Program Director of the Center for Process Studies, is sharing a presentation he made for Tom Oord’s ORTCON conference in July. Andrew M. Davis is a philosopher, theologian, and scholar of world religions. He holds B.A. in Philosophy and Theology, an M.A. in Interreligious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology (CST). He is a poet, aphorist and author or editor of four books including How I Found God in Everyone and Everywhere: An Anthology of Spiritual Memoirs (2018, with Philip Clayton); Propositions in the Making: Experiments in a Whiteheadian Laboratory (2019, with Roland Faber and Michael Halewood); Depths as Yet Unspoken: Whiteheadian Excursions in Mysticism, Multiplicity, and Divinity (2020, with Roland Faber); and Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (2020, Lexington). For more about Andrew’s work and research interests, visit his website at andrewmdavis.info.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.

John Cobb & Friends Gathering: Ahmed Afzaal
2022-08-30 10:00 - 12:00 | Online Event
Topic: Teaching at Twilight – The Meaning of Education in the Age of Collapse

Presenter(s): Ahmed Afzaal

Dr. Ahmed Afzaal, Associate Professor of Religion, Concordia College in Minnesota, will be discussing his soon to be published book, expressing his concern about the values taught in our institutions of higher education. A native of Pakistan, his approach to a process-relational way of thinking comes through his encounter with the thinking of Iqbal. He comes to us highly recommended by Marcus Ford, who is engaged in an innovative model of higher education at Flagstaff College in Arizona. See Dr. Afzaal’s curriculum vitae here, and also his article that caught the attention of Marcus Ford, “Education in a Time of Collapse.” To see his website and find him through social media, go here.

Information about how to access each gathering is made available via email. To find out about a single meeting, send an email to events@cobb.institute. If you would like to receive regular meeting announcements and updates about the Institute, please join our list of Friends.

Can’t make it to the live session? Click here to access our archive of Cobb & Friends recordings.
