Religious Scholar Speaks of God and Humanities, Church and State at Yale

New Haven, Conn. — Rémi Brague, a leading authority on the Abrahamic religions, will deliver two lectures at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center (WHC), 53 Wall St., on March 4 and 5.

The first lecture, titled “God and the Humanities,” takes place on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m., and continues the 2007–2008 Humanities Program Lecture Series.

The second, “Church and State—Ever Separate?” is part of the 2008 Franke Lectures on Religion and Law in Historical Perspective, and takes place on Wednesday at 5 p.m. Both talks will be held in WHC, Room 208, and are free and open to the public.

Professor of Arabic and Religious Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Brague has been honored by the French National Research Council and the Academy of Moral and Political Science. He is the author of numerous books on classical and medieval culture, religion, national identity, literature and law. He is best known in the English-speaking world for his “Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization” (2002); “Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought” (2003); and “Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea” (2007). He is currently at work on a book about Charles Baudelaire.

The Franke Lectures are made possible by the generosity of Richard and Barbara Franke, and are intended to present important topics in the Humanities to a wide and general audience. The 2008 series explores the historical relation between religion and law in Jewish, Christian and contemporary legal thought. The Franke Lectures are organized in conjunction with the Yale College seminar thought by Christine Hayes, the Robert F. and Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Religious Studies.