Douglas Hicks, Ph.D.

"Is Creativity a Religious Concept?"

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Creativity is a popular concept in business and other professional contexts, but the term itself means many different things to different people. Some scholars and practitioners see it as a secular idea, distinguishable from any spiritual or religious worldviews. Others assume creativity is a spiritual concept, often without describing or defining which spirituality they have in mind. This lecture will examine the ways in which these views of creativity draw upon accounts of creation and human nature in various religious traditions. The analysis suggests that a clearer distinction among the disparate religious, spiritual, and secular uses of the term helps to clarify and illuminate our understanding of creativity within the professions.

Dr. Douglas Hicks is Associate Professor of Leadership Studies and Religion at the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies and in January 2004 he was named director of the new Bonner Center for Civic Engagement. During the spring of 2003, he served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School.

Hicks holds an A.B. with honors in economics from Davidson College, an M.Div. summa cum laude from Duke University, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in religion and economics from Harvard University. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), he is author of two books, Inequality and Christian Ethics (2000) and Religion and the Workplace (2003), both published by Cambridge University Press. He is an editor, with J. Thomas Wren and Terry L. Price, of the three-volume reference work The International Library of Leadership (2004, in press). In 2001 he received a summer research stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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