Talk Probes Christian Efforts to End Slavery

Paul Lim, associate professor of the history of Christianity at Vanderbilt Divinity School, examines the global movement and commitment by evangelical Christians to stop the spread of human trafficking Thursday, Feb. 5, at 3:30 p.m. in Founders Room in the Westmont Kerr Student Center. The Erasmus Society Lecture, “Calvin, Calcutta, and Corinth: Trinity, Trafficking, and Transformation of Theologia,” is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Helen Rhee, associate professor of religious studies, at (805) 565­-6834.

The talk will explore the divergent strategies that evangelical freedom fighters employ, offering a thicker narrative of evangelical involvement in the global pandemic of human slavery. “I will explore themes of evangelical neo­-colonialism, re­-articulation of holistic mission, and the nature and extent of incarnational ministry in their Indian, Korean and American contexts,” Lim says.

An award-­winning historian of Reformation and post-­Reformation Europe, Lim wrote the book, “Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England” (Oxford, 2012). He won the 2013 Roland H. Bainton Prize as the best book in history/theology by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. He has published two other books in that area, “The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism” (Cambridge, 2008) and “In Pursuit of Purity, Unity, and Liberty: Richard Baxter’s Puritan Ecclesiology in Context” (Brill, 2004).

His research also focuses on the history of evangelicalism and global Christianity. He is writing a book on the transformation of global evangelical attitudes toward and endeavors on eradication of human trafficking and structural poverty.