Past Orr Lectures
| Invited Speaker | Lecture Title | Date |
| C. Pierce Salguero, The Abington College of Pennsylvania State University | Meditation Sickness | Wednesday, May 1, 2024 |
| Amy-Jill Levine, Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace | Jesus and Judaism: How Bad History Creates Bad Theology | Thursday, April 20, 2023 |
| William Chester Jordan, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University | Now Avenge Us: Jewish Martyrdom and the First Crusade | Thursday, October 16, 2022 |
| Abdullahi An-Na'im, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law, and senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University | The Islamic State is a Post-Colonial Mirage | Thursday, May 12, 2022 |
| Robert Wilson-Black, CEO, Sojourners | The End of College: Religion Departments and the Battle Over An Ideal | Thursday, January 13, 2022 |
| Eddie S. Glaude, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and Chair, Department of African American Studies, Princeton University | The Third American Founding: Re-imagining America After Donald Trump | Thursday, February 20, 2020 |
| Edward Slingerland, Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Asian Studies and associate member of the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, University of British Columbia | Mind, Body, and the Myth of Holism in Early China | Tuesday, April 9, 2019 |
| Judith Weisenfeld, Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion, Princeton University | Spiritual Madness: Race, Psychiatry, and African American Religions | Tuesday, October 9, 2018 |
| Christine Helmer, Professor of Religious Studies & German, Northwestern Universty | How Luther Became the Reformer | Monday, November 6, 2017 |
| David Shulman, Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem | Meditations on Wickedness from South India and South Hebron |
Thursday, May 4, 2017 |
| E. J. Dionne, Jr., Paul Elie, Marian Ronan, Simone Campbell, Jeffrey N. Steenson | Vatican II: Past, Present & Future | Thursday, October 29, 2015 |
| Robert A. F. Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion, Columbia University
|
Buddha: Scientist, Realist, Educator, Social Reformer | Thursday, October 23, 2014 |
| Farid Esack, Head, Department of Religion Studies, University of Johannesburg | The Contemporary Democracy & The Human Rights Project: Challenges for the Progressive Muslim Intellectual | Thursday, April 24, 2014 |
| Robert Bellah, Elliott Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley | The Modern Project in the Light of Human Evolution | Thursday, May 9, 2013 |
| Anthony Aveni, Russell B. Colgate Professor of Astronomy and Anthropology and Sociology, Colgate University | The End of Time: Maya Apocalypse Soon? | Monday, January 30, 2012 |
| Adam Nicolson, author of God's Secretaries: The Making Of The King James Bible | God's Secretaries: The Making Of The King James Bible | Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 |
| Gary Dorrien, the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University | Turbo Capitalism, Social Ethics, & Economic Democracy | Thursday, May 5th, 2011 |
| Ian Buruma, The Henry R. Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. | Religion: Friend or Foe of Democracy? | Thursday, April 14th, 2011 |
| Annette Gordon-Reed '81, Wallace Stevens Professor of Law, New York Law School; Winner, 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History | Slavery, the Enlightenment, & Religion at Monticello | Thursday, May 6, 2010 |
| Rudiger Schmitt, Harris Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Munster | Magic, Ritual Healing, and the Discourse on Ritual Authority in the Hebrew Bible | Thursday, February 18, 2010 |
| Mark Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School | Christian Moms Beat Homosexual Recruiters Over and Over Again | Friday, April 17, 2009 |
| Randall Balmer, Professor of American Religious History, Barnard College, Columbia University | God in the White House: Faith and the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush | Wednesday, February 6, 2008 |
| Dale Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University | The Christian Case Against Marriage | Tuesday, May 1, 2007 |
| James H. Cone, Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary | Strange Fruit: The Cross and the Lynching Tree | Thursday, April 20, 2006 |
| Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Department of Anthropology, Political Science & International Affairs, Columbia University | Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: The Politics of Culture Talk | Thursday, October 19, 2006 |
| Elaine Pagels, Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion, Princeton University | The Secret Gospel of Thomas: Conflicting Images of Jesus in Early Christianity | Thursday, April 28, 2005 |
| Steven Pinker, author | The Blank Slate, The Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine | Monday, November 5, 2001 |
| Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge | Tolerance and Religion | Monday, October 29, 2001 |
| Karen Armstrong, author | The Sacred, Disaster, and the Media | Monday, October 22, 2001 |
| Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley | The Theology of the Touch: Merleau-Ponty and Malebranche | Tuesday, October 9, 2001 |
| Gita Mehta, author | Religion and Literature: Religion and Culture at the Start of the Twenty-First Century | Monday, October 1, 2001 |
| Robert J. Wuthnow, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University | Tuesday, October 12, 1999 | |
| Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York | Agency and the Suffering Body | Tuesday, October 27, 1998 |
| Bruce Lincoln, Professor of History of Religions, University of Chicago | October, 1997 | |
| Richard Rorty, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia | Religious Belief, Intellectual Responsibility, and Romance | Tuesday, October 10, 1995 |
| Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Philosophy, Brown University | Citizens of the World: A Classical Defense of Radical Reform in Higher Education | Thursday, October 13, 1994 |
| Donald Davidson, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley |
Can Values be Objective? |
Tuesday-Thursday, November 2-4, 1993 |
| Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago Divinity School | Will the Real Mortal Please Stand Up? Myths of Divine Disguise and Adultery | Monday, May 10, 1993 |
| Thomas Lawson, Professor of Religion, Western Michigan University | April, 1992 | |
| R. C. Lewontin, Professor of Biology and Zoology, Harvard University | Biology as a Social Weapon | Tuesday, May 7, 1991 |
| Carolyn Walker Bynum, Professor of History, University of Washington, Seattle | Attitudes Toward the Female Body in Medieval Religion | Thursday, April 7, 1988 |
| Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago | The Cosmology of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of the World System | Tuesday, May 5, 1987 |
| Edward Shils, Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago |
The Limits of Religious UniversalismThe Internal and External Expansions of Transcendental Knowledge |
Wednesday, October 17, 1984 |
| Michael Harrington, Queens College, City University of New York | Wednesday and Thursday, October 19 and 20, 1983 | |
| Mary Douglas, Professor of the History and Literature of Religion, Northwestern University | Perceptions of Danger in Modern Times, Part 1 and Part 2 | Wednesday and Thursday, October 14 and 15, 1981 |
| Mary Daly, Boston College | The Metaethics of Radical Feminism | Wednesday and Thursday, October 17 and 18, 1979 |
| René Girard, James M. Beall Professor of French and Humanities, The Johns Hopkins University | Primitive Religion, Sacrifice and Judaeo-Christian Scriptures | Tuesday, May 15, 1979 |
| Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University | The Genetic Evolution of Social Behavior | Tuesday, October 18, 1977 |
| Peter Gay, Yale University | Defenses and Aggressions in Imperial Germany | Wednesday and Thursday, October 13 and 14, 1976 |
| Sydney Ahlstrom, Yale University | The Making of a Redeemer Nation: The Rise and Decline of the American Patriotic Tradition | Wednesday, October 21, 1975 |
| Paul Ricoeur, Professor of Philosophy, University of Paris, and John Nuveen Professor at the University of Chicago | The Conflict Between Explanation and Interpretation in the Human Sciences | Wednesday, November 13, 1974 |
| Lionel Trilling | Art, Will, and Necessity | 1973 |
| Mircea Eliade | Sacred City, Sacred Time | 1972 |