This essay appraises the history of the International Academy of Practical Theology (IAPT), arguing that competing aims have pulled it in different directions. The essay arose initially out of a roundtable on IAPT at an international congress in São Leopoldo, Brazil, in preparation for the next biennial conference there in 2019. Why is there a need for the IAPT? What are some of its developments? Why is it important for South America and Brazil? In response, the essay suggests that the IAPT has struggled to sustain at least two prominent commitments – a desire to enhance practical theology’s scholarly visibility and acumen and a real need to become a genuinely international organisation in terms of representation and inclusion. A secondary argument woven through the essay is that collegial friendships across complicated differences of location and perspective have the capacity to moderate and even heal conflicts.
Little attention has been directed at the 25-year history of the International Academy of Practical Theology (IAPT).
Learned societies that support disciplines have been around a long time, all the way back to the Académie des Jeux floraux created in 1323 to promote poetry and literature. Theological associations in the United States appeared more recently. Between 1880 and 1930, as historian Clark Gilpin observes (
Practical theologians are no different on this score. But by comparison to longer standing organisations such as the Society of Biblical Literature founded in 1880, we have been late to the game. I say ‘we’ because I write from inside as a scholar whose trajectory dovetails that of the IAPT. I had just begun teaching when a handful of people gathered in Princeton in 1991 to create the fledgling association. Growing up academically alongside the association, so to speak, offers a distinct perspective from which to consider its history. I am certainly not objective – a modernist ideal that has come under increasing suspicion during this period in any case. I share some of the organisation’s growing pains, I know inside stories that merit telling, and other people would, no doubt, tell different stories. Nonetheless, although my aim is not to air dirty laundry, as the English idiom goes, I do want to go beyond the official record and explore missteps and achievements from which we can learn as we go forward. For truth be told, we – the 150 or so members elected by invitation only based on academic accomplishment – have had our fair share of quarrels and differences.
In answer to the question of IAPT’s evolution, I tell a ‘tale of two cities’, arguing that competing values and aims have pulled IAPT in different directions. Specifically, I suggest that IAPT has struggled to sustain at least two prominent commitments – a traditional desire to enhance practical theology’s
Delving into the strife and value of IAPT may seem fraught with peril, but the endeavour seems particularly worthwhile and relevant for a
The question of IAPT’s history and purpose arose for me because of a friend. Valburga Schmiedt Streck invited me to participate in the Congresso Internacional da Faculdades at Escola Superior de Teologia (EST) in São Leopoldo, Brazil, in 2016. As part of that invitation, she asked me to join several people in a roundtable on the topic of IAPT – Wilhelm Gräb, an IAPT colleague attending the congress from Humboldt University in Berlin, and three scholars who have taught at EST over the years, Valburga herself, Júlio Adam and Christoph Schneider-Harpprecht. Why is there a need for the IAPT, Valburga asked us to consider? What are some of its international developments? Why is it important for South America and Brazil? I had recognised for quite a while that IAPT is often stretched between warring convictions. But I began to see that Brazil, like most IAPT constituencies, is also caught in the crossfire between divergent ambitions that characterises the organisation’s history. The roundtable provided opportunity to articulate these thoughts for the sake of a larger cause – preparing the way for the first IAPT conference in South America in 2019.
I first met Valburga at an IAPT conference in South Africa in 2001, 6 years after the country elected its first post-apartheid government, on the campus of Stellenbosch University in the early years of its transformation from a bastion of Afrikaner nationalism. Valburga and I forged an immediate bond. Making our way as white women in a male-dominated profession wedded to patriarchal religious traditions had something to do with our tie, although gender and race similarity never assures instant connection. That we laughed at the same peculiarities is, I think, what really drew us together. I am also grateful to have met Yolanda through IAPT 2 years later when she joined in 2003. As the first Dutch Reformed woman in practical theology in South Africa, she has been a pioneer in her research and teaching. Indeed, her work cuts across the ‘two cities’ – deserving academic recognition for its scholarly heft but also making a case for greater recognition of minoritised voices.
Through an exploration of IAPT’s mixed desires, this essay celebrates Yolanda’s success navigating within the ‘sacred grove’ of the academy. She once told me when I wondered about women’s progress (or lack thereof) in practical theology in South Africa that ordination has been a requirement for teaching appointments in her tradition; and, if only men are allowed ordination, only men will hold faculty positions in theology. The Dutch Reformed Church is certainly not unique in this respect. Many Christian traditions and most religious traditions have used scriptural and ecclesial reasoning to keep women silent in congregation and academy. Yolanda, Valburga and I all occupy ambiguous positions as white women in complex race contexts, descendants of European immigrants in countries with notorious race histories. The three of us negotiate the tensions surrounding the divergent aims that mark IAPT history as insiders
The current IAPT website includes two first-person accounts of its history from a couple of original founders, the sole woman, Riet Bons-Storm, then on faculty at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and Friedrich Schweitzer from the University of Tübingen in Germany. We can garner an initial grasp of the rationale behind the organisation not only from their brief recollections (two pages each) but also from the By-Laws drafted during the 1991 gathering.
The IAPT emerged fairly recently, sparked by a renewed interest in practical theology among scholars in German, Dutch, Canadian and US universities in the 1980s. There was, as Schweitzer reports, a ‘convergence of … developments in different countries’ (
Clearly, at the forefront of the founders’ concerns, the IAPT grew out of a desire to insure and enhance practical theology’s place as a university discipline, supporting scholars in their own intellectual development and fostering international conversation, collaboration and publication. The ‘need was felt’, Bons-Storm observes ‘for a broader organization, where practical theologians from all over the world could communicate’ (
Anxiety about academic stature–practical theology as ‘scientific and critical’ (Browning
For Van der Ven, as for most of the founders, recognition as a science within the modern university was of special, even primary, importance. He was teaching at Radboud University in Nijmegen where the Department of Pastoral Theology had just been renamed the Department of Empirical Theology after a 15-year history of what he describes in his book as an ‘intradisciplinary approach’ (
Even though Van der Ven did not get his wish in naming the new academy, he continued to pursue the dream of ‘empirical-theological measurement and experimentation’ (
In the end, the debate over the organisation’s name did lead to what we might call a
In the years following IAPT’s creation, scholars tried nonetheless to make it a place for many voices. For example, in an attempt to shape the organisation’s future, another Dutch colleague Ruard Ganzevoort advocated during his tenure as president from 2007 to 2009 an intellectual structure that divided scholars for conferences and conversations into three groups – ‘ministry formation, liberating practice, empirical research’. These ‘three approaches’, he proposed, have ‘different objects, aims, and central questions and methods, that is, to different practical theological discourses’ (
As Ganzevoort’s and Dreyer’s efforts reveal, even though people such as Van der Ven questioned IAPT’s orientation and intellectual credibility, IAPT members have certainly used its structures for scholarly advancement, thus fulfilling an originating intention, the tale of one city. Among IAPT’s most tangible contributions are several key publications. The
Landmark collections have also emerged as a result of IAPT. After the second conference in Bern in 1995, Denise Ackermann and Bons-Storm organised an international collection of feminist work,
Hence, despite a divergence of opinions about name and approach, a variety of intellectual advances have occurred. Although the meaning of ‘practical’ in the discipline’s name raises perpetual, even tiresome, questions, the discipline has succeeded in establishing itself as equipped to study theology-in-action through a variety of methods. As
Another purpose and hope percolated below the surface from the beginning. In fact, a tale of two cities is apparent in the opening mission statement of the By-Laws ( The purpose of the International Academy of Practical Theology is the study of and critical reflection on practical theological thought and action. This
So, the By-Laws situate critical reflection in intricate connection to respect for diversity. Even the inclusion on the website of two accounts of IAPT history testifies to the desire and willingness to make space for differences. Struggles around diversity, however, have arisen in at least three areas, all of which reflect the growing influence of liberation theology and emancipatory theories: gender and race; international representation; and attention to location, politics and poverty.
The photo of the founders on IAPT’s website tells its own story.
Few women and people of colour had faculty positions in practical theology in 1991, and it is likely that fewer still were involved in the international interchanges that preceded the IAPT’s creation. Many were, like me, at the beginning of our careers. However, there were women and people of colour who could have been invited. So, it is likely that these early founders, with the exception of Bons-Storm, did not see greater inclusion as important nor their own gender and race as problematic. Questions of diversity and representation were simply not primary for the white European and European-American men interested in renewing practical theology as a university discipline. If anything, such matters were disconcerting. As Bons-Storm herself observes, ‘Some founding fathers were not yet used to have [
Bons-Storm, however, could not
Why was there a ‘one-generational lag’, as I describe it in 1999, in women’s progress in practical theology compared to other disciplines (p. 86)? One obvious reason is the discipline’s proximity to congregational life. Congregations are inherently conserving institutions, adept at sustaining traditions over long periods of time. Equally challenging, ‘why would one choose further marginalization’, I point out, by taking up dicey political issues of inclusion in a discipline already overly aware of its precarious position (Miller-McLemore
As a consequence, women have sought each other out as advocates and allies over the years. One particular moment of solidarity merits recording for posterity. At the 1999 biannual conference in Quebec City, marking the end of IAPT’s first decade, some of us could not help but notice the predominance of white men among the newly elected members paraded up front after their introduction in the opening session. The all-male cast was the final straw, so to speak, that broke the camel’s back for those of us already underrepresented and disempowered during plenaries. In a gestalt of conversation that arose over a shared meal before the meeting concluded (Denise Ackermann, Riet Bons-Storm, Pam Couture, Mary Elizabeth Moore, and Elaine Graham were among those around the table), we found ourselves dreaming up an idea: we would put a motion on the floor at the final business meeting to mandate 50% female nominees for the next round in 2001. Believing we did not have anything to lose and figuring the motion would go down in any case, Denise said, ‘why not go all out? How about eighty per cent women?’ So, we drafted a motion that two of us stood up to read the next day, identifying gender inequity as one of several categories needing redress. A few US men spoke in its favour, others who were seldom without words seemed unusually dumbstruck, and, to everyone’s surprise, the president called the question and the vote went through (20 for, 6 against, 7 abstentions).
There was fallout, of course. One prominent British scholar took offense, perhaps at the US approach of forcing equality through quotas, and made clear his intention to drop his membership. Van der Ven was also angry, and his decision a year later to support a separate organisation (ISERT) whose membership is largely male and northern European seems a likely consequence. Others worried that there simply were ‘not enough qualified women’ out there; we could not and would not reach our goal, they predicted.
Obliviousness to sexism and sexist condescension has reared its head over the last few decades in other seemingly harmless incidents that nonetheless conveyed injury and devaluation. The first woman president, Mary Elizabeth Moore, did not receive a slot on the programme for a presidential lecture during the 2001 conference at Stellenbosch. Perhaps simply an oversight, she and other women interpreted it otherwise, as an omission reflective of gender bias in that context and in general. As Heather Walton remarked as she looked forward with some unease to her own presidential address at the 2017 conference, the ‘academy does not have a history of treating its female presidents well’, although her own positive experience (and my own) attest that change is indeed possible. Looking back, however, Elaine Graham weathered unmerited dissent during business meetings while president in 2007, and the first question Claire Wolfteich fielded when she concluded her 2013 address could easily be interpreted as less than friendly, even antagonistic and disparaging, or at least the question reflected an unwillingness or inability to respect her argument. I use the term
At least women have served as presidents; the academy has yet to elect a person of non-European descent. IAPT members have been even more oblivious of the role and impact of race, racism and our own participation in Western colonial history. In the introduction to their otherwise groundbreaking book of international women authors, Ackermann and Bons-Storm (
At the conclusion of our latest conference in Oslo, when I raised white supremacy and racism as an area needing address during a panel on ‘reforming practical theology’ (
It behoves all of us, however, to reconsider our entanglement in global race history and politics. Phillis Sheppard ( Practical theology rarely considers the perspective of those who are not white, and even more rarely allows such persons to speak for themselves. In addition, we see the negative work of racial categories by looking at citation practices across the discipline: we rarely include the work of people of color. Instead, we cite certain field-defining scholars and mentors over and over again. The result is that we reproduce particular perspectives … and avoid … expanding our knowledge … of raced bodies. This leaves (the unacknowledged) white bodies in the driver’s seat. (p. 222)
White practical theologians have made our own whiteness invisible. This distorts our reality and our comprehension of other peoples’ realities. Sheppard joins womanists, such as Shawn Copeland, in stating the agenda ahead in stark terms: ‘telling the truth about white racist supremacy is a theological obligation’ (Copeland
Back in 2001, despite the naysayers we came close to the 80% women directive in our nominations for new members prior to the biennial conference. But reaching this quota or any other, on race for example, is partly beside the point. That people had to think about difference as they decided who to nominate, with gender as a temporary category, is of equal or greater consequence. The motion fostered an awakening, a turning point of sorts. However, diversity remains an issue, especially in places around the globe where faculty positions remain intricately linked to prejudiced and patriarchal religious traditions. We especially need to attend to our own on-the-ground actions because they sometimes betray our greater ideals. At the 2017 conference, for example, the first two people to stand and speak after the first plenary were white men, not coincidentally from among the seven founders, perhaps out of a need to re-establish their authority. The sense of male entitlement to take the floor and hold forth never ceases to catch me by surprise, even though it should not. We live with an almost inevitable pendulum swing back to white male dominance in plenaries and elsewhere. Perhaps this tendency is natural in countries with fewer women and people of colour in ranked positions.
Or, is the cause of male dominance in our plenaries something as seemingly innocuous as the stadium seating in venues in Berlin, Pretoria and Oslo, seating which conveys, even if unintentionally, assumptions about hierarchy, expertise and priority of voice? Knowledge lies at the centre of the panopticon, as Michel Foucault (
The academy has also struggled from the start, according to Bons-Storm, with ‘how to be really international, open to the scholarly traditions and possibilities of all national and cultural contexts, willing to learn form [
The effort to host a conference in South America offers an instructive illustration of the challenges and merits closer examination. In the years that followed our first introduction, Valburga and I knew that the academy needed to get to Brazil. Members have gathered from around the globe biannually since 1993 – the United States (1993, 2009), Switzerland (1995), South Korea (1997), Canada (1999, 2013), South Africa (2001, 2015), Britain (2003), Australia (2005), Germany (2007), the Netherlands (2011) and Norway (2017) – but never in the southern American continent. Valburga and I plotted and planned before, during and after my tenure as IAPT president from 2009 to 2011, along with several other committed parties. A turning point arose, for instance, when Jaco Dreyer made a special trip to São Leopoldo while IAPT president from 2013 to 2015 to explore the feasibility. With Valburga’s ongoing work and that of her EST colleagues such as Júlio Adam, Iuri Reblin and Nilton Herbes, the idea is coming to fruition at last.
A Brazil conference, considered for years as a marker of international progress, has been long in coming. One of my primary reasons for attending the 2016 Congresso Internacional da Faculdades EST that sparked this essay was to present the first plenary on practical theology in the history of the congress (Miller-McLemore
Why the difficulties? What have been some of the impediments? There is no simple answer to these questions. There are reasons internal to South America and reasons particular to IAPT of relevance to this essay. Although a vibrant engagement with practical theology has occurred naturally in the German Lutheran seminary in São Leopoldo, a city built in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul to support German immigration in the mid-nineteenth century, scholars in South America have had far greater interest in the longer standing movement of liberation theology with its parallel but distinct contextual interests. Liberation and contextual theologies receive greater recognition in part because of their deep commitment to grass roots political involvement (see Miller-McLemore
Given the important place of liberation theology and the ambiguous position of practical theology within Catholicism, does Brazil and South America even need practical theology as it has been conceived in its northern, largely Protestant context? Or might this be another instance of imperialist imposition of colonialist ideology on the southern hemisphere? We need to take these questions seriously. In the United States and countries of northern Europe influenced by Lutheran and Reformed Protestant traditions, such as Germany, Norway and the Netherlands, practical theology developed as a twentieth-century discipline in Protestant-dominated institutions, and its history is often told in strictly Protestant terms through figures such as Friedrich Schleiermacher. This biased telling ignores Catholicism’s unique contributions and distinctive forms of practical theology, evident in its social teachings, for example, or in its spiritual traditions, moral casuistry and sacramental orientation. Will the rising discipline of practical theology complement the work of liberation and contextual theologies in Brazil and Latin America? Or, as Wolfteich worries, will it ‘impose an unnecessary or alien discourse on existing Catholic praxis-oriented theology’ (
There are also institutional and pragmatic challenges internal to IAPT. To host a meeting, there must be a sufficient number of faculty in a venue with active interest and participation in IAPT to make the site viable, and, by and large, practical theology has lacked recognition and place as a discipline in its own right in South America. But this reasoning perpetuates a double bind that we need to question: without a conference, we do not foster the discipline; without supporting the discipline, there are not enough scholars to host a conference. And there we are – no conference in South America.
More troubling, in considering Brazil or other southern or eastern hemisphere conference locations, I have occasionally heard colleagues from the north say, usually on the side, ‘it’s too far to travel’ or ‘it costs too much to get there’, unaware of the privileging behind these words, expecting at the same time our southern and eastern colleagues to travel to Europe or North America. Worries about cost, distance and time are real. But they run both ways, and people in southern and eastern hemispheres often bear the brunt of the expenditure. Given the wealth in northern countries, the offense seems particularly egregious. But it is hard for the privileged to see our own faults. As another example, when members from Brazil proposed a conference theme of decoloniality, a white European woman asked whether ‘there would be a place for European theology’, implying that colonialism and its legacy have little to do with Europeans? Even though Europe is the font of modern colonialism? As these comments suggest, IAPT members need to be more conscientious and self-reflective about the colonialist roots of modern theology and about our complex locations and interconnections, our reasons for global excursions and our mission in general.
There have also been more credible worries about language difficulties. How would an academy that uses English as the lingua franca function in a country where many people, faculty members included, do not speak English? Language seems like a more legitimate concern than cost and travel time. But these qualms also reflect a bias of another sort. The IAPT has necessarily but rather unselfconsciously adopted English as its working language. Under the heading ‘Working Language of the Academy’, Item XI, the By-Laws allot one line to what seems a simple matter of fact: ‘English shall be the working language of the Academy’. Given the worldwide dependence on English for instant global communication in a market economy, the decision seems self-evident. However, in a continent where Spanish and Portuguese predominate, there is less need to master English than in other contexts. English has this honour, we must also remember, as a result of imperialism, initially of Britain and now of the United States.
In fact, as I discovered in São Leopoldo, some scholars find themselves unfairly judged as inadequate or even unintelligent if they cannot converse easily or well in English. Even though they also speak a language with an ambiguous colonial legacy, today they experience English as a colonising language. Native English speakers in IAPT do not recognise overtly and often enough the advantage we wield or the harm that results from English language dominance. We do not appreciate the work people are doing to move between languages or the break we get because we do not have to translate ideas in our heads or words on the written page from a first to a second language.
One final area tests our ‘respect for diversity’. Academic achievement and institutional growth have followed the money, as I acknowledge in the introduction to
Most conferences have included some attention to context with excursions into neighbourhoods to give people a sense of religious and cultural issues that arise in that location. But the primary focus remains, perhaps appropriately, conventional scholarly exchange around papers and plenaries. However, some places demand attention to local context more acutely than others. Prior to the South Africa meeting in 2001, for example, Emmanuel Lartey sent me an email describing concerns he had expressed to the president that would keep him from attending. Ghanaian by birth, educated in Britain, and now a US colleague at Emory University; he draws on his own international identity as a key resource for reflection. He has given me permission to quote his thoughts at length because I believe that they capture well the complicated dynamics behind IAPT’s mission to advance the discipline of ‘critical reflection’ while also ‘respecting diversity’:
I have been disturbed by the way IAPT functions for a while … The only real protest I can make is by NOT attending. I have written a fuller explanation to the current President … spelling out my objections. They boil down to the fact that what is proposed is a ‘theoretical’ conference on poverty and suffering, based at the citadel of Afrikaner strength (the home of apartheid) [Stellenbosch] with a visit to Robben island [sic]! Nothing is proposed which will really bring participants into touch with the real suffering and the on-going struggle especially of the Black majority. Participants will enjoy the ‘beauty’ of South Africa whilst engaging in theoretical considerations about ‘action’ on poverty. (personal email correspondence, January 16, 2001)
Lartey’s longer memorandum to the president ( the concern of IAPT to promote practical theology as an ‘academic’ discipline (understood in certain western historical terms) has overridden the concern to maintain the integrity of the discipline itself and to creatively challenge an excessively narrow definition of ‘academic discipline’. (p. 2)
Lartey represents well the tale of two cities at odds with each other:
‘Generalization’ as opposed to ‘contextualization’ is chosen as the ‘respected’ form of discourse. The preference of this model, then, is for highly rarified considerations of general cases rather than for the difficult and painful examination of particular cases in detail. The model enables scholars to ‘distance’ themselves in true modernist western (academic) fashion from any kind of immersion in the context and thus achieve recognition as true scholars. (p. 2)
He concludes, ‘what is most crucially lost is our ability to see God’s presence in the poor of the world who struggle to survive in the midst of multiple forms of oppression’. We do not examine our very own practice ‘from a praxeological or ethical standpoint’ (p. 2), asking about its consequences for the communities for whom we serve as advocates.
This problem is not unique to South Africa nor even to IAPT conferences but captures the paradox of practical theology itself – how to attend intellectually and academically to that which can never be contained or adequately addressed through academic means alone (see Bass et al.
‘Every true beginning has its own myth’, Schweitzer writes at the beginning of his account of IAPT’s origin. He notices how our efforts to tell the history begin ‘to sink into the realm of myth and mystery’ (
Back to international friendships: Without IAPT, I doubt I would know Yolanda or Valburga. Friendship plays an invaluable role in ensuring creative conversation and intellectual advancement. Both Yolanda and Valburga, it is worth noting, speak with me fluently in English, my first language but not so for them, and Valburga is often translating between German, Portuguese and English until wearied by the effort. I remain grateful, indebted actually, for their efforts. None of us, however, are ultimately ‘native’ to the contexts we call home, as I noted earlier. Each of us has descended from European ancestors who immigrated sometime in the last few centuries. In other words, we are all products of colonisation in ambiguous positions of power and disempowerment. IAPT’s tale of two cities runs through our academic lives and is inherently linked with theological and political controversies that taint Western colonial and postcolonial history, whether or not we recognise our shared culpability and, for many, shared suffering.
Traveling from the United States to South Africa and Brazil as part of the academy’s work has revealed troubling and important parallels between our three colonial and postcolonial countries and histories. Brazil imported more Africans as slaves than any other county and was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. It now has the ‘largest black population of any country outside of Africa’, according to a Brazil AAA guidebook (Egginton
In all three cases, Christianity played an ambiguous role, justifying race hierarchies and degradation of indigenous knowledge while also, at the very same time, serving as inspiration and means for affirmation of human worth and liberation. Recognising common legacies between nations, made more visible through international friendships, suggests a critical ethical conclusion: practical theology as a discipline has an obligation to recognise and amend its place in this history. Practical theologians and our various constituencies need to secure the good of those most oppressed by colonising Christianity, for we all rise or fall together.
A highlight of my trip to São Leopoldo in fall 2016 was a final meeting among local practical theologians where people talked openly about challenges and hopes for a 2019 IAPT conference. Some people spoke English only; others only Portuguese or Spanish. So, we conducted the meeting in all three languages, with a few wonderfully bilingual people providing translation. I saw people come alive when they were able to speak unfettered in their own language. Here I learned first-hand through honest talk the prejudice and unbecoming dominance English wields. I realised that a 2019 meeting will be most successful
For the first time in the academy’s history, we also need to take up the cost of spontaneous translation for one or more plenaries so that people from Brazil and South America can speak and listen in their native language. Perhaps most important for those who travel from the north: we will need to cultivate and sustain a spirit of respect, generosity and adventure while navigating challenges of travel, new context and language. Only in this way can the IAPT genuinely lend support to scholars, scholarship and teaching in practical theology in Brazil and South America and, in turn, learn from a context where there is much to receive.
During the congress roundtable on the IAPT, Júlio Adam called for a practical theology with the ‘face of Brazil’ rather than one still dominated by Europe and the northern hemisphere (
Júlio answered yes, and, as a new friend, I hope I can be of help. The time has come for IAPT to step up and become a constructive part of the answer to this question and many more such queries that will come our way as scholars discern IAPT’s future.
The author declares that he or she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him or her in writing this article.
I found two texts with brief treatments of the IAPT: Mikoski and Osmer (
For example, people have differed over the role of the arts as an important approach and epistemology in the discipline in contrast to abstract theoretical reasoning or over the place of Christian proclamation, a matter of importance for evangelical practical theologians but objectionable for those committed to neutral empirical study of religion, concerned about Christian-centrism or interested in interreligious theology.
See
See
Browning (
Minutes of the Business Meeting, Universite Laval, Quebec City, May 20, 1999.