What role do the stories that religious communities tell themselves about the past play in present and future religious conflict? Using recent research in the cognitive sciences, I will describe three narrative patterns that can be identified and explain why they matter.
This research can prove helpful for understanding why groups clash and why, when a religious community divides, each group can find it so difficult to understand the other.
Wendy is known internationally for her research on early Christian preaching and the life and works of the eastern church father and preacher John Chrysostom. Her research currently embraces two additional strands: the reception of Greek medicine in Christian thought in Late Antiquity; and the root causes of religious conflict and radicalisation in both past and present.
ALC is shaping tomorrow’s pastors, teachers, and church workers who think imaginatively about issues that affect all of life in the church and the world. They are learning to think faithfully and vitally about life and faith in the light of biblical and church teaching, and be effective spiritual leaders, educators, and workers who bring life and renewal in the church and communities they serve.
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University of Divinity
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