On May 2, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. a talk called “Islam and Civil Society-Perspectives from Egypt and the USA” will be given by The Rev. Dr. Bruce Lawrence. The talk will take place at the Church of St. Asaph in Bala Cynwyd, PA. (Click on the link for directions.)
Parking is free at the Church, which is located adjacent to the Mall. Church buildings are handicap accessible, and public transportation is available.
We anticipate there will be a large crowd, so the lecture will be held in the Church beginning at 7:30PM. It will be followed by a reception in the parish hall.
This is a free program co-sponsored by EDS, PTI, The Church of St. Asaph and Eerdmans Publishing Company.
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Bruce Lawrence is a 1962 magna cum laude graduate of Princeton in History and Middle East Studies. After a tour of duty with the US Navy, he earned a Masters of Divinity from Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge) in 1967, and then in 1972 received his Ph.D. from Yale, specializing in History of Religions, with emphasis on Islam and Hinduism. He joined the Duke faculty in 1971 and continues to teach at Duke, though he has also taught abroad (first at Aligarh Muslim University and later Oxford), while also enjoying brief stints at Dartmouth and also the University of Chicago. Since 2000 he has been the Marcus Family Professor of the Humanities, and since 2006 Inaugural Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center. He has authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited fifteen books, many of which have won prizes. His research focuses on Islam in all phases and all disciplines, with special attention to institutional Islam in Asia, Indo-Persian Sufism, the religious masks of violence, and contemporary Islam as both Abrahamic faith and religious ideology. In 2008 he was awarded a Carnegie Scholarship on Islam, in order to pursue his current project on minority citizenship in Africa as well as Asia. He is also an ordained Episcopal priest, serving first in the Diocese of Connecticut but, since 1972, canonically resident in the Diocese of North Carolina.