A former Fulbright Scholar and instructor on international relations, peace and justice issues will deliver a lecture this month at La Sierra University as part of an annual series that began in 1999.
The 20th Annual Paul J. Landa Memorial Lecture on Faith Learning will be held on Thursday, April 25 and will feature Ronald Osborn, a visiting professor with La Sierra University’s H.M.S. Richards Divinity School who is also a former postdoctoral fellow at Wellesley College and 2015 Fulbright Scholar in Burma/Myanmar. He will give a talk titled "Violence in the Book of Joshua: A Canaanite Reading” at 6:30 p.m. at Hole Memorial Auditorium. Admission is free.
Osborn’s lecture will confront some of the most troubling passages of scripture and argues for the necessity of a Canaanite reading of the biblical book of Joshua. He will address such dilemmas as to whether God’s love for humanity includes divinely orchestrated genocide, and whether there is any way to reconcile the depiction of God in the conquest narratives of the Hebrew Bible with the God revealed in the person of Christ in the New Testament.
Speaking as a lay theologian who is convinced that reading the Bible is the task not only of certified experts or officials in high places but of all believers, Osborn notes that he offers a plain reading of text, but one that seeks to recover the perspective of those who are defeated. Rejecting the path of easy answers and confident apologetics, he states that his objective is to urge listeners to confront morally disturbing facts in scripture from the perspective of a radically Christocentric hermeneutic.
Osborn’s varied background includes teaching courses for Chapman University’s Peace Studies program, for the Peace and Justice Studies program at Wellesley College, and serving as a lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He also served last year as program manager for the Adventist Development and Relief Agency and has engaged in field research in East Timor, Peru, and Guinea.
Osborn holds a Ph.D. in politics and international relations from the University Southern California and master’s degrees from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and from the Graduate Institute of St. John’s College, Annapolis, Md.
He is the author of several books, including “Humanism and the Death of God: Searching for the Good After Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche” published by Oxford University Press in 2017. His teaching, research, and writing have bridged the humanities and social sciences, focusing in particular on questions of violence, moral theory, human rights, and religious studies. His scholarship has been shaped in important ways by his experiences growing up in Thailand, Taiwan, and Zimbabwe which left him with a passion for travel, a commitment to cosmopolitan values, and adaptability to diverse cultural settings and challenging environments.
The Paul J. Landa Memorial Lecture is sponsored by La Sierra University’s H.M.S. Richards Divinity School. Landa taught at Loma Linda and La Sierra universities for 26 years. He is remembered as a professor of the history of Christianity and was also a futurist of great vision. He developed expertise in strategic planning for churches and educational institutions. Landa devoted his career to fostering a healthy conversation among church, campus, and community in which each informed and inspired the other.