Annual Campus Theme

The Compelling Questions We All Face

The Campus Theme program facilitates and coordinates a host of events, lectures, and discussions throughout the year centered around an enduring and ultimate question of human experience — a fresh question each academic year.  Events are part of the North Park Dialogue program but are also open to the general public.

2009-2010 Theme: What Is Justice?

Asking "What is justice?" befits our North Park identity as a Christian, urban, and multicultural institution and challenges us to reconsider how we understand this basic virtue of societies and individuals.

The question of justice is fundamental to who we are as global citizens and Christians. The question of justice guides how people live and flourish together amidst diverse communities and limited resources. It guides us in righting an imperfect world, lifting up the oppressed, and cultivating a vision for shalom within and across cultures.

Upcoming Events

• Tuesday, February 8, 2010: "Hip-Hop and Justice" by Dr. Paul Butler of the Law School at George Washington University
• Tuesday, February 25: "The Particular Injustice of Genocides" by Dr. Terry Lindsey of North Park University

Later in the Spring semester, the Campus Theme and a host of other organizations are currently planning a multi-day "Justice Experience Week" that will include several lectures on political, environmental, and theological conceptions of justice, workshops on urban justice and community renewal, and worship services centered on the theme of justice in the Christian life. The dates for these events have yet to be finalized, but we will get the word out soon.

Past Events

Plato and Rawls: Political Philosophy and the Problem of Justice

Tuesday, September 29, 2009, at 7:30 in Anderson Chapel

A lecture and discussion that presented the philosophical foundations of the meaning of justice and shows how the initial conception offered 2500 years ago by the Greek philosopher Plato compared to the contemporary American view of justice articulated by John Rawls. (Summary)