For Immediate Release

South African Justice and Reconciliation Advocate to Receive Princeton Theological Seminary’s Annual Kuyper Prize

—Dr. Charles Villa-Vicencio, executive director of South Africa’s Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, to speak about political renewal on
April 11—

Princeton, NJ, April 4, 2004—Dr. Charles Villa-Vicencio, executive director of South Africa’s Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, is the recipient of Princeton Theological Seminary’s 2005 Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life. He will receive the award when he delivers the Abraham Kuyper Lecture in the Seminary’s Miller Chapel on Monday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m.

Villa-Vicencio’s lecture, titled “Aeolian Harp of Renewal: The Private and the Public in Political Engagement,” will focus on nation-building and the implementation of democracy and the manner in which these ideals have been, and can be, so easily distorted.

“The existential mutations of nation-building and social identity, no less than those of unbridled nationalism and social reconstruction, are both intriguing and frightening,” said Villa-Vicencio. “Intriguing, especially for emerging nations that seek to build a common future; frightening within nations that succeed in the creation of a common identity that turns so easily into the arrogance of a battle won.”

As executive director of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, Villa-Vicencio has worked for the promotion of sustainable reconciliation, transitional justice, and democratic nation-building in South Africa and a number of other African countries through research,analysis, and targeted intervention. His career has spanned tenures in both academia and the public realm. He has authored five books, including Trapped in Apartheid: A Socio-TheologicalHistory of the English-Speaking Churches and Civil Disobedience and Beyond: Law, Resistance, and Religion in South Africa, that examine human rights and nation-building through the lens of theology and politics. In 1994, Villa-Vicencio was name a Fellow of the University of Cape Town and in 2000, he was named as an emeritus professor at the university.

Abraham Kuyper, a Dutchman for whom the Seminary’s Abraham Kuyper award and lecture are named, was a nineteenth-century Reformed theologian who founded the Free University of Amsterdam and served as prime minister of the Netherlands. He was committed to the conversation between Christian faith and public life. Princeton Theological Seminary owns one of North America's most complete set of his writings, housed in the Kuyper collection of the Abraham Kuyper Center for Public Theology.

Funded through the generosity of Dr. Rimmer and Mrs. Ruth de Vries of Washington State, the Kuyper Prize has been awarded to luminaries such as Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and Andrew Young, a former U.S. Congressman, United Nations ambassador, and Atlanta mayor.

The de Vries’s gift also established an endowed professorial chair and a grant fund for graduate students.“I want to thank Rimmer and Ruth for their generosity and for their commitment to Princeton Theological Seminary as a primary locus for studying the fuller range of the Reformed tradition,” said Max Stackhouse, a Seminary professor and first incumbent of the endowed chair. “I pray that the next many generations of theologically grounded ethicists who occupy this chair will also feel inspired by the de Vries’s generosity and the Kuyperian legacy.”

Villa-Vicencio’s lecture is open to the public and free of charge. For more information, call 609-497-7760.