Michael Welker, Chair for Systematic Theology at the University of Heidelberg, will explore the Bible's teachings on mercy when he delivers CSLR's annual Alonzo L. McDonald Lecture in Christianity and Law March 27 at 12:30 p.m. at Candler School of Theology.

Michael Welker

The lecture is free and open to the public. Those who sign up to attend by March 22 will receive a free brown bag lunch.

Welker, in residence this spring at CSLR as Alonzo L. McDonald Senior Fellow in Law and Religion, will investigate how major biblical law codes show that mercy — the care for the weaker — is not a surplus and luxury in common human life. Instead, it is a fundamental component of legal systems, institutions, and organizations that want to promote justice and are rightly called "humane."

Ordained in the Protestant Church of Palatinate, Germany, Welker is a world-renowned theologian who works through the biblical traditions and through philosophical and sociological theories to address questions of contemporary culture. He is director of the University of Heidelberg’s Research Center for International and Interdisciplinary Theology, and studied with Jürgen Moltmann, one of the most celebrated theologians of modern times.

The Alonzo L. McDonald Lecture in Christianity and Law was founded in 2005 with a generous grant from the McDonald Agape Foundation. The lectures explore the fundamental issues at the intersection of law, religion and society from various Christian perspectives.

This year's lecture is co-sponsored by Candler School of Theology and takes place in Candler's Rita Anne Rollins Building, Room 252.