PasT EventS
Gratitude to God Conference
No matter what age, circumstance, profession or season we are at in our lives, we all have a natural tendency to be ungrateful due to feelings of jealousy or by making comparisons based on the differences we see in others. We also rather freely complain, whether it be about taxes, traffic, the weather, in-laws, work colleagues and conditions, or even our not so perfect spouses and children. To help counter such a tendency, we hand-picked a team of researchers in the theology, psychology and philosophy fields to investigate how the nature of gratitude and ingratitude are experienced and expressed both in personal relationships as well as in a vertical relationship with God.
You are invited to a one-day event on “Gratitude to God,” where we will have in-depth discussions on the meaning of gratitude by a team of researchers who have collaborated on a 3-year study funded through a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation and how our society, both secular and non-secular, express gratitude. Research topics range from nonbeliever and cosmic gratitude to gratitude shaping suffering and how it is demonstrated among society. Our goal is to provide key takeaways that will invoke gratitude in the daily missions you are on in your career, education and personal relationships.
Concerned that this will be a dry academic conference? No worries! This one-day conference will include panel discussions, interactive sessions and dynamic plenary speakers. Most importantly, what will be discussed is based on solid research by our team comprised of research psychologists and theologians/philosophers from Christian and secular universities across the country. The targeted audience includes pastors and other religious leaders, educators, corporate leaders, and parents so there are plenty of people, just like you, to connect with. Come and be a part of an engaging discussion on how we can better establish a culture of gratitude that you can carry back to your churches, classrooms, work places, and homes.
This event will be held at the Anaheim Marriott Bonvoy on Saturday, December 3, from 9am–4pm. A $30 ticket includes lunch and free parking. For more information on this event, email gina.turner@biola.edu. We look forward to your attendance at this enriching opportunity.
Conference Speakers
Dr. Pamela Ebstyne King is the Executive Director of the Thrive Center and the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science in Fuller’s School of Psychology and Marriage & Family Therapy. Her research is at the intersection of human thriving, spirituality, and virtue. Her work combines theology, empirical research, and community engagement to further understand how diverse people thrive in different settings. Pam is an ordained minister in the PC(USA).
Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He was educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, earning doctoral and post-doctoral degrees (with highest honors) from the University of Tübingen, Germany. He has written or edited more than 20 books and over 100 scholarly articles. His most significant books include Exclusion and Embrace (1996), winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion, and one of Christianity Today’s 100 most important religious books of the 20th century; Allah: A Christian Response (2011), on whether Muslims and Christians have a common God; A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (2011); and Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World (2016). His latest book, co-authored with Matthew Croasmun, is For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference.
Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, where he has taught since 1988. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana‑Champaign. He is the author of over 250 original publications in peer‑reviewed journals or chapters and has written or edited eight books, including Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Gratitude Works! A Twenty-One Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity and The Little Book of Gratitude. A leader in the positive psychology movement, Dr. Emmons is Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology. He has been Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI on $20M of grant projects. His ground-breaking work on gratitude has been featured in dozens of popular media outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, Time, NPR, PBS, Consumer Reports, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Today Show.
Capstone Conference
A large research conference was convened toward the very end of the project. All grant awardees were expected to participate, and project leaders shared the results of their research, insights, and discoveries. The purposes of this capstone conference were:
• To strengthen ties among leading researchers and other scholars on gratitude to God
• To allow PIs to provide feedback to one another that will improve their future work on gratitude to God
• To share ideas and knowledge with the broader intellectual community (for a portion of the conference only), including graduate students and other young researchers who may select gratitude to God as a research topic.
Research Workshop
We conferred an informal three-day workshop where researchers discussed and presented their work. Individuals were in the early stages of their projects and provided updates on their work-in-progress and got feedback from attendees. The workshop was held virtually from February 4-6, 2021.
We ran two tracks: one empirical (Day 1) and one non-empirical (Day 3) with all investigators attending Day 2. This allowed one day for interdisciplinary dialogue (Day 2) but without the potential detrimental consequences of skewing the empirical projects in a normative rather than a descriptive or explanatory direction. It also allowed researchers, both empirical (in Day 1) and non-empirical (in Day 3), to dig deeply into methodology and content without a concern that they must reach across a disciplinary divide. Thus, though the workshop was scheduled for three days, each attendee was required to attend two days only (Days 1 and 2 for empirical researchers; Days 2 and 3 for non-empirical researchers).
Watch recordings of the online meeting (password required) →