National Conversations to address important issues

IWU's voice will be heard concerning national issues.

In Indianapolis on Feb. 19, a conference of select experts will address culturally relevant issues in a forum called National Conversations. The project, which is sponsored by Indiana Wesleyan University, will address the increasingly important topic of healthcare during its first session.

Several faculty members from IWU will be involved in the event, including Dr. Henry Smith, IWU’s president, who will act as a host during the Indianapolis discussions.

“The National Conversations initiative seeks to involve IWU in important conversations of our day,” said Smith.

Dr Jerry Pattengale, executive director of National Conversations and assistant provost at IWU, uses the word “irenic” to describe the proceedings. Pattengale further explains the mindset behind National Conversations and its proceedings as “approaching discussions in a peaceful way.”

The idea for National Conversations grew out of discussions between IWU faculty members like Smith, Pattengale and Dr. David Wright, provost at IWU and founder of the National Conversations project.

Besides IWU, the National Conversations project is cosponsored by the Sagamore Institute, Christianity Today and WFYI Indianapolis.

Together, the sponsors are working to create an atmosphere where ideas about current issues can be discussed and talked about in a nonthreatening, productive way.

For Pattengale and others, National Conversations is the result of the lack of discussion between Christian academia and the world community about critical issues. At its core, IWU’s mission statement relates closely to the purpose of National Conversations.

“By holding these, it helps us to have a place at the table as well. That’s very difficult in the academy as a Christian university to have a place at the table to join these dialogues,” said Pattengale. “As Christians we’re able to at least have our position considered along with others.”

Two other sessions have been set up for National Conversations, including a meeting on Oct. 21 at The National Press Club in Washington D.C. and a third session in London, England in Feb., 2011. The meeting in Washington DC will cover national education and the discussion in London will center on economic justice.

The National Conversations planning team has high hopes for the sessions.

“We’re going to be summarizing each of these events and giving some white papers to legislators so they have updated information from these dialogues to help them make decisions,” said Pattengale. “We expect that there will be thousands of people that will in some way watch these, either live or online.”

The three National Conversations events will be available as a webcast on the project’s website at www.nationalconversations.com.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 8:00 AM and is filed under Frontpage.
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