New Copernican Empowerment Dialogues

New Copernicans are those who embrace a new and emerging social imaginary that is post-Enlightenment and post-secular in its ethos. Carried predominately by millennials, the New Copernican perspective is both the hope for the American evangelical church and the emerging soul of American culture.

The purpose of the Sider Center’s New Copernican Empowerment Dialogues is to foster and accelerate a generational transfer of leadership from boomers to millennials.  These are conversations designed to empower emerging millennial leaders with the vocabulary, perspective, and respect they need to assume national institutional leadership in the next 20 years.

It is our belief that most of what is being said in the national media about millennials is both pejorative and wrong. The purpose of these dialogues is to correct this wrong. This project will involve developing fresh content, sponsoring university-based salons, and creating a national community around the New Copernican thesis. This project is being coordinated by social impact consultant and scholar John Seel.

Previous speakers in this series include “Science Mike” McHargue on “Giving Doubt a Voice” (September 2016) and his new book, Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science; and Christopher West on “The Why of Sex: Sex & Spirituality” (March 2017), where West led an interactive discussion on the connection between our sexuality and our spirituality.

Learn more about New Copernicans by watching this video series produced by the Windrider Institute.

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Living a Theology of Contrast Instead of Opposition

By Bridget Eileen Rivera

Originally published Jul 27, 2020 

I’ve been thinking a lot about “positions” lately and what it even means to hold a position.

When people ask about my “position” on “homosexuality,” it’s rarely in the interest of broadening their own perspective, understanding my own, or (God forbid) adjusting their beliefs.