Faith in Public Life: Force for Good or Obstacle to Progress?

Presentation + Panel Discussion

16th October 2024 | 1800-2000
University of Birmingham, Room TBC

Join us as we explore key questions surrounding the relationship between faith and public life. Is religion an obstacle or a stepping stone to social advancement? Is faith a catalyst for positive change in society? How can people of all faiths, and none, work together for the good of the widest community?

The conversation will include diverse perspectives from religious leaders, scholars, policymakers, and activists.

Don’t miss out on this amazing event!

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A modern day Society with a historical heart

The present-day Lunar Society provides a dynamic forum for its membership to influence change through focusing and informing debate, linking social, economic, scientific and cultural thinking, and catalysing action on issues critical to the common good. In the 200-plus years since the original Society, Birmingham and the region have changed beyond recognition. It is now a lively, multicultural city, open to the world. Its industrial base has high technology, medicine and legal services as well as modern manufacturing. It is also notably a young city, with a high proportion of under-35s. Yet what is still the same is the need to adapt continuously, to connect across different agendas and perspectives, and the need to engage local energy and effort in making change succeed. We are at the forefront of this, contributing to an innovative agenda throughout this region and beyond.

Today’s Lunar Society has several hundred members and includes leading practitioners from all walks of life in Birmingham and the wider region, people who are prepared to help shape the scientific, political and social agenda not just here in Birmingham and the West Midlands, but nationally and internationally.

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In the late eighteenth century, the meetings of a few fertile minds changed an age…

The original Lunarmen gathered together for lively dinner conversations, the journey back from their Birmingham meeting place lit by the full moon. They were led by the larger-than-life physician Erasmus Darwin, a man of extraordinary intellectual insight with his own pioneering ideas on evolution. Others included the flamboyant entrepreneur Matthew Boulton, the brilliantly perceptive engineer James Watt whose inventions harnessed the power of steam, the radical polymath Joseph Priestley who, among his wide-ranging achievements discovered oxygen, and the innovative potter and social reformer Josiah Wedgwood. Their debates brought together philosophy, arts, science and commerce, and as well as debating and discovering, the ‘Lunarticks’ also built canals and factories, managed world-class businesses — and changed the face of Birmingham.

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"Mr. [Boulton] is proof of how much scientific knowledge may be acquired without much regular study, by means of a quick & just apprehension, much practical application, and nice mechanical feelings."
James Keir
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I have been tolerably lucky yett; I have cut some more than a mile of canal besides a most confounded gash in a hill & made a bridge & some tunnels for all which I think I am within the estimate.”
James Watt - 1770
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"I scarcely know without a good deal of recollection whether I am a Landed gentleman, an Engineer or a Potter, for indeed I am all three by turns.”
Josiah Wedgwood
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'[The Lunar Society] are now seen as leading British contributors to the Enlightenment, so much more impressive than the French philosophers because they were practical instead of being merely intellectuals preaching from ivory towers.'
Dr Desmond King-Hele