David Hurd and John Hall

Organ Virtuoso David Hurd to Perform at St. Paul’s, Fayetteville, October 9-10

In 1977, two separate panels of distinguished judges of the International Congress of Organists, listening “blind,” awarded First Place in both Organ Performance and Organ Improvisation to a young church music director from Harlem. In just two days, David Hurd had walked away with the two most prestigious organ prizes in the world at that time, the only occasion when the same person has won both prizes in the same year. Now, three decades after that triumph in Philadelphia, David Hurd is widely recognized as one of the foremost church musicians and concert organists in the country, with a long list of awards, prizes, honors and achievements to his credit. Professor of Church Music at the General Theological Seminary and Music Director at the Church of the Holy Apostles, both in New York City’s Chelsea district, he is the composer or arranger of dozens of hymns and settings which appear in hymnals from many publishers.

Hurd will present a lecture-demonstration at 7:00 p.m. and organ recital at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, October 9, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville. The evening begins with a reception at 6:00 in the parish hall, featuring the tantalizing appetizers and sweets of St. Spatula’s Guild. All are invited to attend and there is no admission charge.

On Saturday, October 10, Hurd will lead a hymn and choral workshop beginning at 10:00 a.m., also at St. Paul’s. Designed primarily for church musicians and choristers, both volunteers and professionals, this two-hour workshop is open to all and there is no fee to attend. Lunch will be available after the workshop, $10 suggested donation.

David Hurd’s appearances in Fayetteville are sponsored the McMichael Lecture Series, Friends of Music at St. Paul’s and the Northwest Arkansas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. St. Paul’s is located at 224 N. East Avenue, at the corner of Dickson Street, one block west of College Avenue (U.S. 71-B). Child care will be provided in the parish nursery both Friday evening and Saturday morning. For more information, visit www.stpaulsfay.org, or telephone (479) 442-7373.

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John R. Hall

Professor of Sociology, University of California

Apocalypse in the Long Run

Saturday, October 16, 2010 — 7:00 pm

Appetizers and Sweets by St. Spatula’s Guild at 6:00 pm

Time and Eternity: A Sociological Guide to Salvation

Sunday, October 17, 2010 — 10:00 am

For most people, “Apocalypse” suggests the cataclysmic end of the world. Yet in Greek “apocalypse” means “revelation,” and the real subject of the Book of Revelation is how the sacred arises in history at a moment of crisis and destiny. With origins in ancient religions, the apocalyptic has been a transformative force from the time of the Crusades, through the Reformation, the French Revolution, and modern communism, all the way to the present-day “Islamic Jihad” and “War on Terror.” In his talk on Saturday evening, Professor John R. Hall will explore the significance of apocalyptic movements over this long run of history and consider the real challenges that we face at the present historical moment, which is often described as "apocalyptic."

Christianity, like many other religions, offers believers hope of salvation. But there is not one single idea about the nature of salvation and how it is attained, in either Christianity or other religions. Sociologists have long been interested in how ideas about salvation are connected to other aspects of religion and society, but they have seldom given the varieties of salvation themselves the attention they deserve. On Sunday morning, Professor Hall will take up this challenge. He plans to explore different Christian visions about salvation and how they might challenge us to think about our own ways of being religious. Professor Hall’s research focuses on relationships between religion and violence.

Prof. Hall is quoted in the introductory article of the September, 2010, special issue of Scientific American, “Eternal Fascinations with the End: Why We’re Suckers for Stories of Our Own Demise.” Here is an excerpt:

Some researchers think that apocalyptic dread feeds off our collective anxiety about events that lie outside our individual control. The fear of nuclear war and environmental decay that gripped the nation in the 1960s was a big factor in the rise of the counterculture, says John R. Hall, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis, and author of Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity. In this decade, civilization has suffered through even more fundamental threats. “After events like 9/11 and the Great Recession, as well as technological disasters like the BP oil spill, people begin to wonder—not just people who are fringe zealots or crazies—whether modern society is any longer capable of solving its problems,” Hall says. If the world appears to be going to hell, goes the thinking, perhaps that’s just what is happening.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eternal-fascinations

Hall grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was on the Atherton High School debate team and served as business manager of a high-school rock group, the Louisville Falcons (video on You Tube). He received a B.A. in Sociology from Yale University, worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s as a social science consultant studying migrant farm labor issues, and, in 1975, obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle for his dissertation on religious and secular utopian communal groups. Before accepting a position at the University of California in 1989, he taught at the University of Missouri in Columbia. His published books include a highly regarded cultural and historical study of Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and the 1978 murders and mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana. He is the author, most recently, of Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity (Polity Press, 2009). Professor Hall enjoys photography and hiking. He is an "older dad": he, his wife, Jenny Broome, and their daughters Phoebe (aged 9) and Nicola (aged 5) live in Davis, California.

Hall is the first speaker in the eleventh season of the McMichael Lecture Series at St. Paul’s. Both presentations will be in the St. Paul’s Parish Hall, 224 N. East Avenue, Fayetteville. The Saturday lecture will be preceded at 6:00 p.m. with a reception prepared by St. Spatula’s Guild. There is no admission charge and childcare will be provided in the parish nursery. Copies of Prof. Hall’s book will be available for purchase and can be signed by the author.