Environment, Economics, and Equity

 2007 Spring Trialogue

Environment, Economics, Equity
Sponsored by the Center for Applied Christian Ethics

Wednesday, February 21 through Thursday, February 22

This years Spring Conference held February 21 - 24. Tuesday featured Science lunch, and a "Brewed Awakening" event where Dean Ohlman, Restoring Eden spoke to Wheaton students. On Wednesday Dean Ohlman, lectured on "The Lord Says to Take Care of His World, and CACE featured two plenary speakers, Dr. Doug Moo, Wheaton College on "Nature in the New Creation: New Testament Eschatology and the Environment" and Dr. Matt Halteman, Calvin College speaking on Animal Rights and our responsibility. On Thursday, Rev. Ed Brown lectured to two classes "The Care of Creation and Sustainable Development" & "Development and the Environment" and Vince Morris, Wheaton College addressed the campus on "The Greening of Wheaton College".

Dean Ohlman, Restoring Eden, is an associate producer with RBC’s Day of Discovery television broadcast and a writer for the Discovery Series booklets. He’s an amateur “naturalist” who enjoys speaking in churches and Christian colleges on the subject of caring for creation. He helps produce Day of Discovery's annual documentary series on “Celebrating the Wonder of God’s Creation,” and writes Discovery Series booklets on the same theme. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in education from Bob Jones University. Dean and his wife Marge have three grown sons and five grandchildren.

Matthew C. Halteman is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. His teaching and research interests include hermeneutics, deconstruction, and the philosophy of animal rights. His work has appeared, among other places, in Books and Culture and Continental Philosophy Review. He has an insatiable appetite for vegan desserts.

Rev. Ed Brown, Board Chair. Executive Director, Care of Creation
Ed and his wife Susanna both grew up in the country of Pakistan as children of missionaries. Ed is an ordained minister and received the Master of Divinity degree from Gordon Conwell Seminary. Ed has worked within a variety of organizational structures and is a talented writer and public speaker. His years with Au Sable have given him a deep passion for Christian environmental stewardship, and he believes that the creation of Care of Creation will allow him to pull together his organizational development skills, his overseas and missions experience, and his concern for the cause of environmental stewardship. The Browns are living in Madison, Wisconsin, and have four children.

Dr. Douglas J. Moo, Blanchard Professor of New Testament, Wheaton College. Education: Ph.D. University of St. Andrews in Scotland, 1980
For over twenty years my ministry was based at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in Deerfield, IL. Now that I am at Wheaton Graduate School, I am enjoying the challenge of adapting to a new institution, discovering the delights of new colleagues, and meeting the challenges posed by a different type of student. My academic interests revolve around the interface of exegesis and theology. I seek to model to students a rigorous approach to the Greek text that always asks the "so what" questions of ultimate significance and application. The Pauline and general letters have been my special focus within the NT canon. In the next few years I will be writing commentaries on Colossians, Galatians, and Hebrews and working on developing a theology of creation with special reference to environmental issues. My wife Jenny and I have five grown children.

After an enjoyable decade as a youth minister, in 1998 Vincent Morris came to work at Wheaton College , where he became the Director of Risk Management. His days are filled with general troubleshooting and the management of a wide variety of risks similar to those of a small city. Along with a handful of risk management certifications, Vince holds an M. B. A. in finance and strategy from the University of Chicago and an M. A. in Theology from the Wheaton College Graduate School, where he wrote a thesis exploring the involvement of evangelicals in environmental movements-or the lack thereof. In 2005 he was appointed by the College President, Dr. Duane Litfin, to form and chair the Environmental Stewardship Advisory Committee at Wheaton College, a group charged with the tasks of 1) determining how Wheaton College is doing on creation care, 2) determining what "best practices" for creation care at Christian institutions might be, and 3) recommending changes to move the College from where we are to where we should be.

Promoting and encouraging the formation of moral character and the application of biblical ethics to contemporary moral decisions