Annual Templeton Lecture on Religion and World Affair

Back to the Future: Pre-modern Religious Policy in Post-secular China

Richard Madsen, Professor of Sociology and Director, Council on East Asian Studies, University of California, San Diego

October 26, 2009 / Philadelphia, PA.

Richard Madsen is the author or co-author of eleven books on Chinese culture, American culture, and international relations. He has also written scholarly articles on how to compare cultures and how to facilitate dialogue among them. His best known works on American culture are those written with Robert Bellah, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton: Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995) and The Good Society (New York, Knopf, 1991). These books explore and criticize the culture of individualism and the institutions that sustain it. Habits of the Heart won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was jury nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His books on China include Chen Village under Mao and Deng (co-authored with Anita Chan and Jonathan Unger, Berkeley, UC Press, 1992), Morality and Power in a Chinese Village (UC Press, 1984, winner of the C. Wright Mills Award), Unofficial China (co-edited with Perry Link and Paul Pickowicz, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), China and the American Dream (UC Press, 1994), China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (UC Press, 1998), and Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a Globalizing Society (co-edited with Perry Link and Paul Pickowicz, Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard.

The Templeton Lecture on Religion and World Affairs was established in 1996, with a gift from John M. Templeton, Jr., M.D., president of the John Templeton Foundation. In 1995, Dr. Templeton retired from his medical practice to serve full-time as president of the Foundation. After receiving a B.A. from Yale University, Dr. Templeton earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He trained in pediatric surgery under Dr. C. Everett Koop at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. After serving two years in the U.S. Navy, in 1977 he returned to CHOP, where he served on the staff as pediatric surgeon and trauma program director. He also served as professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Templeton has published numerous papers in medical and professional journals, in addition to two books, A Searcher’s Life and Thrift and Generosity: The Joy of Giving.

Video

You must have Javascript activated and the latest Flash Player installed to play this clip.

Audio

You must have Javascript activated and the latest Flash Player installed to play this clip.


FPRI Wishes to Thank its 2011 Partners
Who help make all our programs possible.

On November 15th at the FPRI annual dinner Fouad Ajami was presented with the Seventh Annual Benjamin Franklin Public Service Award. The event was attended by over 360 people.
Dr. John M. Templeton, Jr. was dinner chairman.

FPRI 2011 Annual Dinner

Video of keynote address
Reflections on the Arab Spring
Fouad Ajami

Special Partner Event
Al Qaeda and Jihadi Movements After Bin Laden
Christopher Swift

Special Partner Event
The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al Qaeda
Peter Bergen

FPRI Dinner Booklet and Annual report