Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 24, 2004|Volume 33, Number 4

Cultivating a culture of trust was
topic of inaugural conference

The erosion of trust and its impact on society was the focus of a conference on Sept. 17 at the Divinity School.

The event, titled "A Crisis of Trust? Trust in a Culture of Suspicion and Spin," was hosted by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.

The conference opened with an address by Philip Lader, former U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James's and chair of WPP Group, the world's second largest advertising and media services conglomerate.

Lader called for the renewal of civic engagement, and said, "In a culture of suspicion and spin, trust can best be restored by enhanced transparency, admission of self-interest, and confidence in the common wisdom of engaged, informed citizens."

Onora O'Neill, a principal of Newham College, Cambridge University, and a member of the House of Lords, gave the second plenary address, titled "Intelligent Trust and Intelligent Accountability."

She maintained that the current public debate often sees trust as obsolete in public and institutional life, and recommends accountability as its successor. "However, this thought is only made plausible by advancing unintelligent conceptions of each idea," she said, adding that more intelligent conceptions of both are available. She concluded by asserting that only "intelligent" systems of accountability -- meaning they are informed, independent and intelligible -- support the intelligent placing or refusal of trust.

Jürgen Moltmann, professor emeritus of theology at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and one of the world's foremost religious thinkers, delivered the third plenary address whose title reversed Lenin's well-known quote: "Trust is good, but control is better." In describing the value of trust over control, Moltmann said, "Control is good, but trust is better."

The conference also included workshops by O'Neill; Eric Pillmore, senior vice president for corporate governance at Tyco International Inc.; Oliver Williams, director of the Center for Ethics and Religious Values in Business at the University of Notre Dame; and Gustav Niebuhr, associate professor of religion and the media at Syracuse University.

This event was the inaugural Smith Memorial Conference on Moral Leadership, dedicated to the life and ministry of Sarah Smith (1941-1999), a graduate of the Divinity School who had a passion for moral leadership. This conference is one of a series of programs undertaken by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture to help promote the practice of faith in all spheres of life through theological research and leadership development.

In closing the conference, Miroslav Volf, the Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology and director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, noted: "American democracy, American economy and American culture in general critically depend upon trust. Our faith traditions provide us with untapped resources for countering an increased erosion of trust, and provide a framework for the cultivation of trustworthy leaders and honest institutions."

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Cultivating a culture of trust was topic of inaugural conference

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Reimbursements now available through direct deposit

IN MEMORIAM