We are very excited that Dr. W. David O. Taylor will be joining Eastern and Templeton for two events. Please join us!
1) Dr. Taylor will present for Honors Forum on Thursday, April 11th at 6pm in McInnis Auditorium: "Hardwired to Sing: Entrainment, Interactional Synchrony, and the Spirit-ed Magic of Corporate and Corporeal Song"
How can science help us to understand what happens when Christians sing together in a common physical space? And what are the particular neural and relational benefits of corporeally rich singing? This talk will explore how the Holy Spirit, as the Lord and Giver of material life, works through what Christians in previous centuries have called "the second book of God," namely, nature, or the gifts of the physical world.
2) He will also present for Windows on the World. Friday, April 12th at 10am in McInnis Auditorium: "Anger, Profanity and the Therapeutic Rhetoric of Violence in the Psalms."
Are the curse psalms off limits for Christians, as many have alleged throughout history? Are they not directly contrary to the peaceable kingdom that Christ preached? Or might there be a good therapeutic purpose to praying these angry, seemingly profane, poems? In this talk, Dr. Taylor suggests that, prayed rightly, they point to a way out of slavery to revenge and into the freedom of forgiveness.
Biography: W. David O. Taylor is Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of several books, including Prayers for the Pilgrimage (IVP, 2024), A Body of Praise (Baker Academic, 2023), Open and Unafraid (Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins, 2020), Glimpses of the New Creation (Eerdmans, 2019), and The Theater of God’s Glory (Eerdmans, 2017). He has also written for the Washington Post, Image Journal, Religion News Service, Theology Today, and Christianity Today, among others.
An Anglican priest, he has lectured widely on the arts, from Thailand to South Africa. In 2016, he produced a short film on the psalms with Bono and Eugene Peterson. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas, and you can usually find him on Twitter/X (@wdavidotaylor) or Instagram (@davidtaylor_theologian).