The Zadok Papers Series

S186 The Priesthood of All Believers: An exploration of the ministry of children to the church and its implications for congregations
By Alison Sampson
Spring 2011
Picture this: a young baby sleeps peacefully in the arms of someone who, we know, feels no peace… In the situation described above, the sleeping baby is the medium of God's passionate and pastoral love. It communicates a powerful message of acceptance and worth to a fractured adult. In so doing, the baby is engaging in pastoral care.

Alison Sampson studied theology at Whitley College (Melbourne College of Divinity). Many of the ideas in this paper have been implemented in the worship life of her congregation, the South Yarra Community Baptist Church. Alison has three children and, when she's not doing dishes or hanging out washing, she's writing about the spirituality of everyday life at www.theideaofhome.blogspot.com.

S185 The Emerging Church: Pioneering Leadership and Innovation Reading Guide
By Darren Cronshaw
Winter 2011
This paper is a review of relevant literature on pioneering leadership in emerging missional churches. It will be useful for practitioners and reflectors in the emerging church movement or for those more generally interested in grappling with mission and innovation in the West in changing times. In terms of leadership and innovation in particular, the paper explores what is the shape of emerging church thinking, what is influencing emerging church thinkers, and what other books will be helpful for meeting the challenges of mission in the West in an era of rapid and discontinuous change. This paper builds on the earlier ‘The Emerging Church: Introductory Reading Guide’ Zadok Paper S143 (Summer 2005) and ‘The Emerging Church: Spirituality and Worship Reading Guide’ Zadok Paper (Autumn 2007). In an annotated bibliography format arranged alphabetically by author, it describes thirty-three more books that explore the pioneering leadership and innovation that is characteristic of emerging missional churches. The selected sample of books covers topics including creativity, change and innovation, business and the new science, innovative models of ministry and theological foundations for leadership and innovation.

Darren Cronshaw trains leaders and missionaries for the Baptist Union of Victoria and Forge Mission Training Network and serves as co-pastor with his wife Jenni at Auburn Baptist Church. This paper is based on background reading for Darren's research of emerging churches in Melbourne, recently completed with the help of an Australian Postgraduate Award for a Doctor of Theology at Whitley College (MCD). Darren loves good books, movies, Asian food and rock climbing. He is married to Jenni, with whom he shares the privilege of parenting three primary school aged children.

S184 The Shibboleth of Homosexuality: a question of Evangelical Identity
By Paul Tyson
Winter 2011
What, then, is a Christian approach for us Evangelicals to take regarding the Bible and homosexuality? For a large range of reasons – not the least because of our own identity insecurity as Evangelicals in a post-Christian era – this is no easy question to answer. Straightforwardly 'conservative' or 'progressive' approaches to sexuality are likely to be little more than a reflection of Evangelical identity insecurities embedded either in Victorian or contemporary cultural assumptions about sexual identity and biblical interpretation. To avoid this trap we need a deeper and more critically discerning engagement with the way in which both of those cultural landscapes shape our approach to interpreting the Scriptures.

Dr Paul Tyson lectures at the Brisbane School of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University.

S183 Jacques Ellul's theological vision of the socio-cultural drivers of ecological disaster
By Paul Tyson
Winter 2011
This paper seeks to unpack some of Jacques Ellul's insights into the manner in which our modern technological society is deeply ingrained in the subordination of both humanity and nature to efficient use. Ellul maintains that our way of life is characterised by structural instrumentalism which is underpinned by a twisted theological outlook, and these are the key drivers that propel us towards environmental desolation. The notion floated in the paper is that no adequate fine tuning of our present way of life will be equal to the task of addressing climate change, but rather what is needed is the comprehensive sociological and theological conversion of our society. The paper concludes by tentatively exploring the question of how the church might proclaim and embody a prophetic message of repentance and conversion in these matters.

Dr Paul Tyson lectures at the Brisbane School of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University.

S182 Touching God: Popular Music in Spiritual & Theological Development
By Ingrid Shelley
Autumn 2011
What I wanted to attempt to do was to try and name some of the ways people might use music in their faith journeys so as to make the implicit more explicit. This is a study in exploring experience, via interviews, in the hope that some of the themes and links that emerge might give an insight into the usefulness of engaging in a dialogue with popular music. But experience happens within a wider social context, so although I have decided to tackle this subject at quite a personal and subjective level, that isn't the whole story. So I have attempted to put these ideas into a context of popular culture, music and spirituality

Ingrid Shelley is a Baptist minister in Nottingham, England. She studied Contextual Theology through Northern Baptist College and the University of Manchester. Ingrid is married to Ian and has three children (aged 13, 11 and 5).

S181 Social Justice for Women and Girls in Africa: Issues, Challenges & Ministry Strategies
By Oluwafunmilayo Para-Mallam
Summer 2010
[G]ender justice is a credibility issue for the church in Africa, and indeed elsewhere. If the church in Africa wants to avoid the backlash of radical feminism experienced in the West, then it must be at the forefront of the campaign for gender justice rather than be dragged kicking and screaming by the inevitable pull of the global feminist development agenda. Only then will the Church have the moral right to shape the future of the gender landscape rather than be left to pick up the pieces from the ravages of feminist rebellion.

Dr Oluwafunmilayo Para-Mallam came to know the Lord in 1982 through the witness of members of the Christian student movement while a second year student at University of Ife, Ile-Ife from where she obtained a BA(Hons.) in French/Portuguese in 1984. In 1995 she graduated from the University of Jos with an M.A in International Law and Diplomacy. She has a keen interest in the role and status of women in Church and society and her article titled: ‘Why? Oh, Why am I a Woman?’ published in Priscilla Papers was awarded fifth place by the Evangelical Press Association in 2002. She is involved in ministry to young people and women. In 2001 she became a Ford International Doctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds, UK and obtained a PhD in Development Studies. Funmi now works as a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Nigeria. Her research interests include gender and development, culture/religion and development, democracy and governance, conflict management and peacebuilding. She is also a Senior Researcher on the DFID-sponsored Religion and Development Programme being conducted by the University of Birmingham in collaboration with NISER.

S180 Princesses or Pirates? Discipleship and Active/Passive Gender Distinctions in the Gospels
By Megan Curlis-Gibson
Summer 2010
I think it's fair to say that a danger of some active versus passive definitions of masculine and feminine is that they can bleed over into this area of discipleship to move women away from seeing themselves as accountable disciples of Jesus, encouraging them to see their husband or father as the one who will be held responsible for their spiritual health.

The Reverend Megan Curlis-Gibson is an Anglican minister currently on maternity leave to minister to baby Phoebe.

S179 The Atonement and Violence
By Graham A. Cole
Spring 2010
This paper is a chapter from Graham Cole's book, God the Peacemaker, reprinted by kind permission of IVP.

Graham Cole is Professor of Biblical & Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, U.S.A. He is the author of two books on the Holy Spirit: Engaging With the Holy Spirit: Real Questions, Practical Answers and He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine Of The Holy Spirit and one on the atonement God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom. He is married to Jules, a dress designer, author and a teacher of fashion at college level. He enjoys films, books, food, fishing and sport in general. He has three grown children, two daughters in-law and a grandson, all of whom are still in Australia.

S178 Hear My Voice: An Abuse Survivor's Bid to Speak within the Church
By Fiona Dawn Hill
Spring 2010
It amuses me that religious agencies, which presumably have vaults richly stashed with theological resources - such as love, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation - drop heavy curtains when asked how the church could be more loving toward people who have been abused within its own cloisters. Amazingly, few theological resources are devoted to the task of calling the church and its clergy to repentance. Typically, few theologians or biblical scholars are included in official forums attempting to address abuse within the Christian church; and even more noticeably, few abuse survivors are invited into such processes.

Fiona Hill has worked as a journalist in country Victoria and also as a current affairs producer for ABC Regional Radio. In 2009, she completed her PhD through the Melbourne College of Divinity with the thesis ‘Disarming the Bible-bashers: Claiming the Bible for Australian Abuse Survivors’. She has worked in various community ministry contexts and is hoping to be ordained by the Baptist Union of Victoria in October of this year.

S177 Preaching Christ Crucified: Sharing [in] The Nonviolent Future of God
By Jarrod Saul McKenna
Spring 2010
This paper seeks to engage scholars and writers in a scriptural and pastoral exploration of the necessity of the centrality of the Suffering Servant Messiah Jesus to the Church's understanding and articulation of atonement and eschatology; in particular its significance for the church today in embodying and preaching the Gospel.

Jarrod McKenna loves Jesus so much that it makes evangelicals blush. Donald Groom Peace Award recipient, [eco]evangelist, co-founder of the Peace Tree Intentional Community and National Spokesperson on Youth and Christian Advocacy for World Vision Australia.

S176 Communicating a Living Faith to Generation Y
By Peter Corney
Winter 2010
If you want to be a transformational school rather than a conformist one, if you want to influence your society through the students you produce then I believe you have only one option – to be a distinctively Christian school, but one that preserves that delicate balance of distinctiveness and openness, clarity of conviction and generosity.

Peter Corney is the past senior minister of St Hilary's Kew where he ministered for 24 years, a church with a regular attendance of over 800 and an extensive youth and young adult ministry. He continues there as a teacher and preacher. He is a senior advisor to the Australian Arrow Leadership Program and a leadership consultant to churches, Independent Schools and Christian organizations and is a regular conference speaker. He has a keen interest in leadership development and also the interaction between Christianity and popular culture. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 2007 for services to the Australian Church and community.

S175 Inside My Skull: Personal Responsibility and the Moral Lessons Learnt
By Craig Minogue (peer reviewed paper)
Winter 2010
The start of my personal redemption came, I hope, in the moment that I connected my response to the death of Edward Hulsman and the suffering of his family, to the deaths and the suffering I had caused. This personal truth and reconciliation process, even if it is not known until now, or accepted in the wider community, is a start for me. A more general truth and reconciliation process, or a restorative justice process, is much more difficult than a legal process.

Craig Minogue has survived in prison since 1986. His earliest release date is in 2016. Awarded a BA(Hons) in 2005, he is now completing his PhD in Applied Ethics. Craig assists fellow prisoners with equitable access to the courts, educational programs and health services. He is a regular contributor to peer reviewed journals.

S174 Theological Forum: What part does social justice play in the mission of the church?
By Steve Bradbury, Deborah Storie, Michael Raiter, Siu Fung Wu
Summer 2010
Four papers delivered at a conference sponsored by World Vision.

S173 Singles
By Sarah Carew
Summer 2010
The adult single demographic perfectly illustrates the interrelationship of mission and pastoral care. Despite being part of the body of Christ, this particular group of Christians might soon need to be listed as another ‘mission’ focus because of the lack of pastoral care. Churches that are concerned about declining numbers need to recognize the paramount importance of caring for the people that are in the churches now. In that way, their joy in being part of a community that cares for them – particularly in the absence of a partner or children – becomes one of the witnesses to God’s love and care for each person.

S172 Freedom of religion and belief in the 21st century
By Ian Packer
Summer 2009
{We} believe in a free society where, for example, the activist-atheist Richard Dawkins can continue to make the most-ill-informed misrepresentative and even offensive statements about Christianity without fear of the State (or Churches) silencing him in the name of some form of ‘political correctness’ or special privilege. After surviving and even flourishing under hundreds of years of physical, verbal and ideological attacks, the Christian faith does not need the protection of blasphemy or vilification laws.

S171 Learning to speak: the church’s voice in public affairs
By Keith Clements
Summer 2009
This article is the text of an address given at the 2009 Zadok AGM by visiting scholar, Keith Clements. “My moment of truth came in February 1991, when the phone rang at two a.m. It was a national newspaper telling me that the “Desert Storm’ – the coalition forces’ assault on Iraq and its occupation of Kuwait – had just begun: what was the churches’ response?

S170 Reason and revelation: do we truly believe they fit?
By Angus McLeay
Spring 2009
The evangelical mind seems beset with an awkward tension: an unresolved impasse between Reason and Revelation. In order to heal the breach, evangelicals must begin by acknowledging that a problem exists, that there is a deep fissure between Reason and Revelation embedded within the tradition. Following the Enlightenment, evangelicalism is still coming to terms with how to reconcile its belied that one God is responsible for mind (the rational), the world (the empirical) and revelation (spiritual reality). Only then can it overcome major constraints on evangelism and stem the large drift away from Christianity by the many who find the gap between the two (legitimate) ways of knowing too wide to straddle.

S169 The groaning of creation: a Pauline eco-missiology based on a narrative reading of Romans
By Mick Pope
Spring 2009
A close reading of Romans reveals that there is more to the gospel that meets the eye if we have the right glasses on. While the gospel is theocentric, i.e. concerned with God’s righteousness and is anthropocentric in that it is focused strongly on humans made in his image, in is not anthromonistic, i.e. not solely focused on humans. Humanity’s original mandate was to care for creation as co-rules and co-creators.

S168 Churches supporting Christians at work
By Alistair MacKenzie
Winter 2009
This paper provides an analysis of the theologies of mission, church and work, that undergird the practices of churches that are intentionally supporting Christians at work, and describes what is happening in these churches. Mackenzie intersperses the paper with examples of some of these practices. He identifies a widespread longing within churches for a bridging of the gulf between Sunday and the rest of the week; a strongly felt need to escape the dualism of sacred and secular, private and public, spiritual and physical.

S167 Missionary grow home!
By Marcus Curnow
Autumn 2009
Rejecting the tempting environmental discourses of abstraction, and drawing strongly from the practical ideology of bioregionalism, and its discourses of ‘home,’ an eco-missiology of replacement offers a particular framework for economic, social-political and spiritual renewal. Both conceptual and practical, personal and political, the work of re-placement is an empowering and creative process of literally ‘growing home.’ It is ‘place’ both old and new when we can fulfill the oldest (and yet newly urgent) biblical call to mission, the call to take care of the creation.

S166 A Christian response to environmental destruction poverty
By Ben Clarke
Autumn 2009
Humans balance. This is how we move and how we manage our interactions with each other, the world and with God. Yet we see around us that there are huge social and environmental imbalances practiced daily with seeming consummate ease. This essay examines the balancing act we play with wealth, and resources, and the tension that is caused by the imbalances of the reality we live every day.

S165 Black Moses and more: the preaching ministry of Martin Luther King, Jr
By Rod Benson
Summer 2008
King’s sense of social responsibility, and his program for social reform arose from an approach to faith that was Trinitarian and evangelical in character. King maintained his spiritual commitment despite the fact that many in the US civil rights movement disparaged his notion of nonviolence and the beloved community as naïve and retrograde, and despite the strong push to secular humanism in the postwar period.

S164 Martin Luther King disturber of the peace
By Gordon Preece
Summer 2008
King was a peacemaker not a mere peace-keeper, a Disturber of the Peace of prosperous Protestant America, and his dream of the beloved community continues to haunt the global imagination. This paper examines how King's ‘disturbing’ commitment to nonviolence was nurtured and anchored within the ‘beloved community’, a prophetic, agapeic people, not merely the prophetic charisma of an isolated hero.

S163 Not Just Housing: We all need a place and a people to belong to
By Sue Hogan
Spring 2008
Sue Hogan considers aspects of Australian society that affect housing and homes in Australia from a Christian perspective, with particular reference to the work and community of Urban Seed in Melbourne. Hogan reflects on the meaning of 'home' as not just housing, but a place where people can feel safe, be creative, and offer hospitality, amongst many other things. She considers the particular issues for indigenous peoples and includes a broad discussion of land use, including ecological consideration, the impact of urban sprawl, and the connections between land, community and economics. This paper places the question of homelessness into its broad context in society, and shows how the Christian community can respond, through a radically different set of values and goals.

S162 Inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the contemporary media
Women's Forum Australia
Winter 2008
WFA is an independent women's think tank that conduct research, education and public policy advocacy on issues which affect the wellbeing and freedom of women in Australia. In this submission, the sources of premature sexualisation of children are identified as: a sexualised culture, advertising; girl's magazines, music and video clips; and pornography. The paper discusses each of them, then addresses the short and long term effects of the sexualisation of children. The submission then details some constructive recommendations.

S161 Hot Gospel: good news for a planet in trouble
By Ian Barns
Winter 2008
The purpose of this paper is to outline a way of engaging theologically with the looming global sustainability crisis. Ian Barns reminds readers that serious concerns about sustainability were first raised in the 1960s. However, industrial development forged on, bringing new prosperity and opportunities to many, including millions in the developing world. He predicts we can expect a period of major technological, social, political and cultural transitions, and he outlines three broad kinds of possible transition scenarios, showing that 'business as usual' is not an option. He devotes the second half of his paper to a Christian response.

S160 Reading Australian Theology and Culture
By Darren Cronshaw
Autumn 2008
In this paper, Darren Cronshaw contends that contemporary literature which explores Australian culture and identity contributes to a conversation with Australian theology. Rather than merely borrowing illustrations or 'ocker' language, the quest is to learn from the Australian literature and its commentary on Australian myths. Darren advocates a contextual, anthropological and conversational approach to Australian theology and outlines some of the Australian theology and cultural analysis of the last half-century.

S159 The Emerging Church: Spirituality and Worship Reading Guide
By Darren Cronshaw
Autumn 2008
This paper is a review of relevant literature on spirituality and worship in emerging missional churches. It builds on the earlier "The Emerging Church Introductory Reading Guide" (Zadok Paper S143, Summer 2005). In an annotated bibliography format it describes forty books that explore the spirituality, discipleship and worship that shape and/or are characteristic of emerging missional churches. It will be useful for practitioners and reflectors in the emerging church movement and for those more generally interested in grappling with mission and spirituality in the West in changing times.

S158 Breaking the wrong spell: how Daniel Bennett has missed the problem with religion
By Charlie Huenemann
Summer 2007
The author is on 'friendly' terms with religion, but stops short of identifying as a believer. In this paper, he engages with Daniel Dennett's book "Breaking the Spell" which aims to provide an evolutionary account of religion. Huenemann sees Dennett as responding to some of the worrying implications of American religious fundamentalism. He identifies three groups of believers that Dennett is addressing firstly the real fundamentalists, who Huenemann says won't be interested; secondly, a shrinking group who believe in God but are also open to scientific explanations of the world; and thirdly the group who see no competition because they see science as explaining the natural world, while religion is about the spiritual significance of human experience. Huenemann argues for the last of these, but ends by asking whether we really need religion in order to maintain our values. He wants people to ask the hard questions, as 'the refusal to think is not doing anyone any good."

S157 Does the world have a future? Gordon Preece interviews Tom Wright and Paul Davies
By Darren Cronshaw
Summer 2007
Tom (N.T.) Wright, an eminent New Testament scholar, and Paul Davies, an internationally acclaimed physicist and cosmologist are asked "Does the world have a future? and each gives a five-minute speech in reply. Wright's starting point is the death and resurrection of Christ, which he calls a paradigmatic moment in history, while Davies begins with his curiosity in his teens about the big questions. This led him to become a theoretical physicist, now working in areas that overlap with religion and philosophy. Gordon Preece then interviews Davies and Wright covering topics such as the credibility of the Christian world view, the relationship between history and science, Donald Dennett's latest book on religion, whether religion has a future, the problem of evil, genetic engineering and the associated ethical dilemmas, environmental and other threats to life on earth, and scientific predictions about the far future.

S156 The Federal Election: how should we then vote?
By Dr Armen Gakavian
Spring 2007
A draft was inadvertently published of Dr Armen Gakavian's paper.
The final paper may be found HERE
The author begins this paper by commenting that the 2007 Federal Election is "the most interesting in a decade" But he suggests that Christians find it hard to make a biblical response to the task of voting. He then takes Romans 13 as the basis for a discussion on why and how to vote. He begins the discussion with an examination of politics and of Christian involvement, then shows how principles of order, justice and freedom can inform our voting. He also offers some guidelines for evaluating Christian candidates, and concludes by reminding us of the nature of our real Christian calling, and how political involvement relates to it. He calls the church to open, honest and prayerful discussion of political options.

S155 Christians and Australian Politics 2004-2007
By Brian Edgar
Spring 2007
Brian Edgar examines the changes in attitudes of Australian towards faith and politics since the last federal election in 2004. While accepting that the mainstream denominations are still the main religious players in the political realm, he shows how attitudes have changed within those denominations, as well as identifying some new players, such as Family First and the Australian Christian Lobby. He then goes on to look at the different ways that Christians engage in political activity and how these are related to different theologies of the Kingdom. He shows how the personal faith of politicians has become a more public concern and examines the implications. With new players and new attitudes, the dialogue between faith and politics is changing. Some of the limitations and hazards of political involvement for Christians are highlighted and Brian ends by presenting the real goal of that involvement.

S154 Longing for a better country: Christianity and the vocation of social change
By Jonathan Cornford
Winter 2007
Cornford describes this paper as "an attempt to grapple with some of the peculiar difficulties of living as a Christian in these times", and takes as his starting point the question "What is the responsibility of Christians in relation to the world of society and politics around us?" He sets out to say something not just to "those quarters of the church that have long privatised the faith" but more especially to Christians involved in social activism, in whom he often detects a loss of confidence, direction, and those in the face of enormous change in the world and in the church (which no longer has the influence over the state that it had). Cornford speaks of a serious loss of the understanding of the nature of Christian hope.

S153 Protestants, procreation and the Pill: an ethical examination
By Rev Megan Curlis-Gibson
Autumn 2007
The author traces the history of the protestant approach to contraception and to sex within marriage from the early church era through to Augustine, Aquinas, the Anglican Lambeth conferences early in the twentieth century and Karl Barth in 1945, finding that official church acceptance of contraception has been historically recent and arose more from sociological considerations than from theological convictions. She challenges the broad acceptance of the Pill on ethical grounds, arguing that it cannot be shown always to act prior to conception. She urges Christian couples to give serious consideration to the ethical implications of their choices regarding family planning.

S152 Living Christianly in a world of technology
Pt II Discerning the technologies of everyday life
By Ian Barns
Autumn 2007
In part I of this essay (S144) Ian proposed that we should consider the way technology influences our thinking and our relationships and argued that technological development tends towards the commodification of life and an instrumentalist approach to the world. Here in part II, he considers how we can live faithfully as Christians within a technological milieu. He examines four everyday activities: obtaining our food, caring for our bodies, being at work, and communicating with others. He then outlines a framework for communal Christian reflections on living with technology and explores how this could be applied to those four areas of life.

S151 Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a theological ethic of initiative
By Michael Duncan
Summer 2006
For Bonhoeffer, Christian discipleship was not a call to choice-less obedience but to responsible freedom to think, choose, decide and act. To be a disciple is to be free. To follow Jesus is an invitation to live. To serve God is to use one's will, imagination and initiative.

S150 Who is Bonhoeffer for us Today?
By John W de Gruchy
Summer 2006
Understanding and interpreting Bonhoeffer is an ongoing project both in terms of his own development and in relation to our different and ever changing local and global contexts. Through his witness to Christ, Bonhoeffer helps us to see things from the perspective of those who suffer enabling us to move from phraseology to reality in our discipleship. Faithfulness to his legacy is not parroting his words or trying to emulate his deeds, important as they may be, but following more faithfully the One to whom he pointed.

S149 The Church as God's Body Language
By William Cavanaugh
Spring 2006
William Cavanaugh argues that God intends the Body of Christ to be a visible, public presence in the world and that the church has a role to play in God;s salvation plan. We are called to be the embodiment of God's love in the world.

S148 Does Religion cause violence?
By William Cavanaugh
Spring 2006
William Cavanaugh challenges the view that religion promotes violence. He begins by showing that is is arbitrary and illogical to divide ideologies and institutions into categories 'religious' and 'secular'. He notes that the myth of religious violence creates a convenient blind spot to turn attention from national and state violence and silence representatives of certain kinds of faith.

S147 Ethics as Apologetics for Modernity and Postmodernity: CS Lewis' linking of Natural Law and Narrative
By Gordon Preece
Winter 2006
C S Lewis knows the power of a story, but he also knows the pull of natural law. This paper draws from a wide range of his fiction and non-fiction to discuss the way C S Lewis has provided, both in content and more accessible form, a bridge between natural law and narratival (virtue) ethics as a guide to our ethical voyage.

S146 No more turning away: discipleship and ecological responsibility
By Digby Hannah
Winter 2006
What is our view of the earth and what has this to do with our understanding of God? What is our experience of the earth, and what does that have to do with our experience of God? This paper is an attempt to reflect on these two sides of the coin of faith - knowledge and experience - and how these have shaped our approach to the earth. This paper was given at the Baptists Today Conference in August 2005.

S145 The Simple Life? Affluent-culture Christians and a biblical and systematic reflection on the theology of wealth
By Jonathan Wei-Han Kuan
Autumn 2006
What is the simple life? What level of material living is appropriate for affluent-culture Australian Christians today? What does the bible say about the presence and persistence of economic inequality and what is the proper godly response to either poverty or to riches? The author gives and overview of Craig Bloomberg's Neither Poverty nor Riches and John Schneider's The Good of Affluence. He calls for sustained reflection and action on how to be good stewards, how to generate and employ wealth in the service of the kingdom.

S144 Living Christianly in a world of technology (part 1)
By Ian Barns
Autumn 2006
The author outlines a way of thinking critically about our technologically shaped lives. He suggests that everyday practices of a technologically intensive world teach us to believe that real freedom and fulfilment is to be found through increasingly instrumental control over our environment. Our challenge is to live in a way that is truly oriented in praise and thanksgiving to God, our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the gospel.

S143 Emerging Missional Church: introductory reading guide
By Darren Cronshaw
Summer 2005
The paper reviews literature on emerging missional churches and their fresh expressions of church life. It will be useful for practitioners and reflectors in the emerging church movement or for those more generally interested in grappling with mission and culture in the West in the context of changing times. What is the shape of emerging church thinking, what is influencing emerging church thinkers, and what other books will be helpful for meeting the challenges of emerging churches?

S142 Scripture and the disciplines - the question of expectations
By Graham Cole
Summer 2005
This paper addresses the question of our expectations of scripture. Part one asks questions about the sort of book scripture is. Part two goes on to discuss the purpose of the scriptural testimony: the salvation provided by the Triune God. Part three looks at the scriptures in relation to worldview building and the disciplines. For the purpose of this discussion, the disciplines are understood to include Economics, English, History, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology.

S141 Christ and the camera lens: A theology of wildlife documentation
By Mick Pope
Spring 2005
In this essay "In on the kill" in A visit to Vanity Fair: Moral essays of the present age, Alan Jacobs puts forward the view that the violence of animal predation that features in many wildlife documentaries is wholly unsuitable for viewing. Mick Pope discusses how Christianity should feel about such things. Do we turn away in horror or look on in fascination? Are we disgusted or delighted, entertained or edified?

S140 Climate change
By Mick Pope
Spring 2005
Current scientific information about climate change and global warming are presented, together with some of the implications for the Earth and society. In the light of the data about climate change as well as the environmental impact of development, the author concludes by asking whether we will learn from history and take steps corporately and individually to manage the resources of the earth.

S139 The spiritual dimension of modern psychiatry
By William Wilkie
Winter 2005
Western psychiatry has tended to avoid the spiritual reality, and as a result, some important avenues of psychiatric treatment have been virtually ignored. However, those psychiatrists willing to acknowledge that there is a spiritual dimension, and who are willing to learn a few basic rules, can greatly expand their clinical effectiveness.

S138 Adolescent depression in Australia
By Barry Rodgers
Winter 2005
Some of the trigger events for depression in young people, and what are they saying about their experiences and its sources are reviewed. The paper outlines some research-based initiatives for addressing mental health issues, and promoting youth resilience / the bounce-back factor - for positive, hopeful living. Christian faith communities and networks as well as Christian educators and schools have a variety of important roles to play in this regard.

S137 Humanity Uprooted: Stem cells, refugees, and reconciliation
By Gordon Preece
Autumn 2005
This paper looks at the seemingly unrelated issues of Stem cells, Refugees and Aboriginals and argues that they are related in several ways:

1. Invisible and inaudible, private, not public
2. Reductionism of their human and cultural wholeness
3. De-humanised and de-personalised by language
4. Viewed in alienating, consequentialist terms
5. Consequentialist links to the alleged value free nature of science, technology and bureaucracy
6. Resurgence of survival of the fittest Social Darwinism
7. Rigidly reciprocal form of mutual obligation

S136 Fathering in Western Christianity and Islam
By Daniel Johnson
Autumn 2005
This paper develops an intercultural perspective on fathering ideals in Western Islam and Christianity. Religious traditions and contemporary advice-giving literature are compared for what they each teach abut ideal fathering. Christian fathers are inspired by God the Father, and Muslims by Muhammad the father to fulfil their own roles as fathers, recognising it as a God-given and eternally significant role.

S135 The Spirituality of Peter Weir's films
By Robert K Johnston
Summer 2004
Movies provide a perspective, portray a reality, and thus, they invite a response. The paper illustrated the potential for dialogue between a film's centre of power and meaning and the viewer's understanding of the same, by considering the movies of Peter Weir. This is the text of an address given in July 2004 to the Australian Film, Television and Radio school, Macquarie University, Sydney. It is adapted from Chapter 9 of the book Reel Spirituality, Theology and film in dialogue.

S134 Sex, Sin & Self-Deception
By Andrew Sloane
Summer 2004
What does it mean to deceive ourselves - indeed, how is that possible, given that deception as it is normally practised means knowing but not telling the truth? This paper begins by illustrating the reality and nature of self-deception, focusing on its epistemic character and its relationship to the more general phenomena of the noetic effects of sin. Finally, un-deception is considered with a view to suggesting ways we can ensure that we live the truth.

S133 Colonies of Heaven: Celtic Models for Today's Australian Church
By Darren Cronshaw
Spring 2004
One of the ways contemporary seekers are connecting with spirituality inside and outside the church is through Celtic spirituality. A number of Christian writers have started to explore the relevance of Celtic themes for the mission of the church in the West. This paper applies some of their initial explorations to what is appropriate to the church in Australian culture and society. Early Celtic missionaries like Saint Patrick embraced Celtic culture wherever they could, which is a challenge facing the church in Australia as we search for identity (as a church and as a nation). Celtic church life valued communal expression, teamwork, and hospitality; virtues respected in our egalitarian, party-going Aussie culture. The Celts are perceived as being at home with nature and everyday spirituality, which suits many Australians looking for a relevant and holistic, rather than other-worldly faith. The diversity of Celtic worship recognising God's awesomeness and intimacy, and using informal gatherings, formal liturgies and numerous means of expression, offers a refreshing challenge to much contemporary Australian worship. Celtic tradition invites risk-taking in a journey of exploring new ways of doing church for today in Australia.

S132 New Medicare: Building on Medicare
By E Durham Smith
Winter 2004
The universality of Medicare promised an equitable and fair provision of health services, but since its introduction serious flaws have gradually eroded the system and have substantially reduced the equity of Medicare's objectives. Although it would be quite unrealistic to think that we could now eliminate the established private insurance system, it is still possible to have one complete system of a central fund of insurance, one "premium" only, and one comprehensive table of benefits, incorporating the private system as agents. The scheme described is not a replacement of Medicare, it si an expansion of Medicate to produce one system that adequately covers medical services outside hospitals and both medical costs and accommodation for every citizen in both public and private hospitals.

S131 Christian Engagement in Public Issues: a Missionary Challenge
By Ian Barns
Autumn 2004
Christian engagement with public issues should be understood as a missionary task. Rather than engaging with public issues as an ethical task involving the application of general ethical principles, we need to articulate the gospel, not just as a message of personal salvation, or even as an abstract world view, but as an interpretive framework which can equip Christians to be more faithful witness of the Lordship of Christ in the public domain. This kind of engagement will reframe issues, to contest the taken for granted enlightenment notions of human autonomy, and re-vision them in terms of the alternative vision of God's Kingdom.

S130 Ecotourism as Tentmaking and Development: A case study in innovative mission
By Daniel Johnson
Autumn 2004
Tentmakers are described in this paper as Christians who use their work to support their Christian witness. The support may be with finances, access to another culture, and/or a context for service. Witness may be by evangelism, mercy, and/or justice. One option is for a a tentmaking entrepreneur to start a business, minister through its contacts, and operate it with ministry and service goals. Ecotourism is particularly appropriate for Christian entrepreneurs because they can help people enjoy God's creation of Indonesia's diverse environmental and cultural beauty. They could facilitate employment generation, training, advocacy, and a more just and sustainable industry. Furthermore, their business could bring people to Indonesia on cultural exchange tours for learning and community service.

S129 It's all f***ed without Yahweh: The message of Hosea 4:1-4
by David Collis
Summer 2003
Hosea's message is one of humanity and authenticity. It calls people to recognise the destructiveness of a false life and turn to a true life of understanding and faithful relationship. Hosea assumes that knowledge and identity are always formed and sustained in real relationships. Hosea 4:1-14, speaks this wisdom by looking at its opposite. To fail to know Yahweh, Hosea argues, is to fail to know - human understanding stays close to the surface, lacking organic depth and, taken to its logical extreme, leads to the absurdities of idol worship. Hosea's call to repentance is not at all a pietistic choice of religious observance, but a choice between coherence and fragmentation, relationship and manipulation, real understanding and broken minds and, ultimately, life and death.

S128 Media Myths & the Middle East: the Achilles heel of Christians
by Christopher Davey
Summer 2003
Under the Bush administration, Christians are having unprecedented influence on Middle Eastern politics. Where Palestinian-Israeli conflict is concerned, the US Christian approach is driven by theology and a number of myths reinforced in the media. The paper addresses a number of these myths revealing a gulf between reality and theological expectation. The reality is well understood by many inhabitants of the Middle East who now hold the moral high ground, and with some justification, view Christianity as morally deficient.
A draft was inadvertently published. The final paper may be found HERE

S127 Harry Potter and the Living Stone: A consideration of Gospel themes in J K Rowling's Books I to V
By Darren Cronshaw
Spring 2003
The young wizard, Harry Potter has become incredibly popular. His story is a fantasy series that takes its readers into an imaginative world of intrigue, drama and magic. Some Christians are concerned that he could lead children into an unhealthy interest in the occult. This paper reads the magic as a literary device and sees Harry Potter's popularity as an opportunity to discuss spiritual and ethical matters. Harry Potter's discovered what excites all of us - that there may be some special potential about us. When Harry's mother died to save him, those who follow Christ have protection they owe to their Saviour's loving sacrifice. Harry is aware of the reality of evil - it is dangerous, bad and to be conquered. He experiences humorous and exciting adventures that inspire positive choices for those trying to do right in our complex moral world. He is invited to walk by faith and enter into another realm; the gospel similarly calls people to rely on God's power, study ancient texts, and be formed into living stones. This is a message God wants people to know; imagination-gripping good news from which Children and people everywhere should not be kept.

S126 The Rich: Then and Now. Understanding New Testament perspectives on money and possessions
By Ross Saunders
Spring 2003
Until we understand what was going on inside the heads of Jesus' listeners, we will never understand the meaning of what he had to say about wealth, its acquisition and management. This paper outlines the way society in the New Testament era perceived the rich and money and points out that people no longer operate with the concept of limited good and limited supply. We need to understand the way our world works, and then apply the principles behind the texts of the New Testament, and not just the texts themselves. Only then will we begin to come to terms with wealth and poverty, prestige and nobodyness, power and powerlessness, and act as Jesus would have us act towards the world and each other.

S125 Sex and the City of God: A narrative theology of sexuality in the context of creation, fall and redemption
By Gordon Preece
Winter 2003
This paper uses as its jumping off point the long-running TV show "Sex and the City" as an illustration of a postmodern view of sexuality. It firstly presents something of the
disillusioned "morning after' modernity flavour of Sex in the City's portrayal of Postmodern Sex Etiquette or Bed Manners." It then contrasts this with "Sex and the City of God, a narrative Theology of creation, fall and redemption," that makes sense of the mystery of sexuality. The paper outlines our created sexual ecology, our fallen condition of sexual anarchy, anonymity, idolatry and idealogy and the redemptive possibilities of sexual therapy set within a Christian form of social construction aimed at the City of God, not a pseudo form of naturalistic sexual liberation based on nostalgia for the Garden of Eden.

S124 Bioethics and the Threat to the Human
By Graham Cole
Autumn 2003
This paper addresses key issues raised by a particular threat to human life that arises from our human inability to name who we are and why we matter in the scheme of things – reducing human life to having only instrumental value. This threat is compounded by the power of technological innovation and application, and its associated profits. Developments in biomedical science exemplify this power for example, the human genome project with all it portends for good (the treatment of disease) or ill (ideologically driven eugenics).

S123 Islam and Christianity in Indonesia
By Daniel Johnson
Autumn 2003
Muslim-Christian relations in Indonesia have been strained since the attempted communist coup of 1965. Muslim political interests have been pushing far and slowly gaining more power, They have managed to limit (but not totally restrict) Christian influence in the country. Christian missionaries have had their visas revoked and there have been reports of violence, church-burning, (and mosque burning) and persecution of Christians in Muslim majority areas. Most Indonesians hope for religious harmony, but Indonesia’s future stability is uncertain, especially after the Bali bombings. This history has changed Christian mission practice. Missionaries and some Indonesian churches are seeking to make their message and worship forms more relevant to their context, while carefully avoiding the syncretism so common in Indonesia.

S122A The Margins of Evil: Moral Strategies in Interpreting September 11
By Binay Kampmark
Summer 2002
September 11 is one of those iconic moments that represent the end of an era. This paper examines the comeback made by the rhetoric or discourse of evil as expressed by a wide range of authors in the wake of September 11: religious and secular languages of evil are examined in their various contexts.

S122B Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Biological and Chemical
By Philip Mackinnon
Summer 2002
The phrase 'weapons of mass destruction' has become a new cliché. This paper unpacks the cliché so that we can make more informed judgements about the use of the term, particularly in relation to Iraq's alleged possession of such weapons. The paper examines the history of such weapons, chemical and biological arms control and the Geneva Protocol and the biological and chemical weapons conventions. It then examines the example of Iraq before asking 'why ban weapons of mass destruction?' Iraq's possession of such weapons is put in the context of the Middle East and Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. It concludes by stating that arms control, though Important, is not the only aspect to maintaining peace and stability.

S121 Social Constructionism and Homosexuality
By Marion Williams
Spring 2002
A social constructionist perspective suggests that the connection between anatomical sex, gender identity and sexual desire are purely socio-cultural and not determined by biological, psychological or spiritual laws. This paper looks at the way certain understandings of sexuality arising from the arenas of biology, psychology and theology have be deconstructed. Williams concludes that as we assess our own biases in our approach to gender and sexuality, we need, as Phillip Kennerson suggests, a humble perspective that affirms the limitations of human knowledge and takes up the classic posture of “faith seeking understanding.”

S120A Crown of Thorns, Half Naked, Tits: Rachel Griffiths' Lady Godiva / Naked Girl Christ
By Bill Stewart
Winter 2002
S120B Black-Skinned Storm Troopers: Muhammad Ali and the Revolt of the Black Athlete
Spring 2002
Noting the prophetic spectacles (provocative symbolic actions) performed by prophetic figures in the ancient Near East including Jesus, the author argues that neglect of such action may be attributed to the ‘anti-body’ tradition in Western religious and philosophical traditions. He asks what such prophetic action might look like in the postmodern world The paper attempts to answer this question by narrating a series of analogous acts from the later 20th century which the author considers echo the style and content of the ancient prophetic actions. The author also argues for a reconsideration of the relevant of such action in an increasingly visual ‘society of the spectacle’ where saturation in new forms of media is considered by some to the separating the link between emotion and action.

S119 The Significance of Christianity in Reforming Prisoners
By Arthur Bolkas
Winter 2002
This paper details the impact of Christianity on prisoners, both during and after release. It includes original research conducted by the author in several Victorian prisons. Due to the positive impact of Christianity the author discovered, he calls for radical change to how the church, government and prison operation approach the issue of religion in prisons – and after the prisoner is released.

S118 Beyond Vocation: New Theologies of Work
By Christopher White
Autumn 2002
What has been termed, rightly or wrongly, the ‘Protestant work ethic,’ has given rise to the world of total work, which since the Industrial Revolution has come to pervade and rule much of modern Western life. Unsurprisingly, the increasingly dominant position of work in Western society has led to significant Christian (and other) interest in the subject. In the last decade, Miroslav Volf has put forward a pneumatologically oriented Trinitarian alternative to the (traditional Protestant) vocational approach.

S117 The Commodity of Care
By Hans S Reinders
Autumn 2002
The author looks at the introduction of economic rationality into healthcare delivery. He argues the introduction of economic rationality implies a different conception of the nature of healthcare professions. In analyzing its impact, he focuses on the notion of care, which he takes to be central to the professional ethic, not only of doctors and nurses, but also of professionals working in other areas such a special education, homes for the elderly, or day care centres.

S116 Power, Secrecy and the Church
By Cara Beed
Summer 2001
Cara Beed looks at criteria for detecting secrecy and abuse; cults and sectarianism in church and other organizations or groups in society. She points out that as individuals succumb to a leader’s domination or charisma, excessive commitment leads to a sacrifice of personal autonomy. Where authoritarian leadership governs the structure and processes of an organization, the right, ability and opportunity for an individual to investigate, adopt and practice their own principles becomes increasingly difficult.

S115 Counting the Bodies: Aboriginal Deaths in Colonial Australia
By John Harris
Spring 2001
A significant debate in Australia concerns Aboriginal history. Some allege that accounts of the massacre of Aboriginal people are mostly fabrications. “Counting the bodies” affirms that there was an immense and appalling reduction in the Aboriginal population during the first 130 years of European settlement. The three major causes of Aboriginal depopulation were massacre, sexual abuse and disease. Closer to the 19th century and early 20th century, writers knew what had been done to Aboriginal people and consciously revised history to exclude their story. Recent historians have been trying to write back into history the story of Aboriginal Australians that has been hidden for so long.

S114A The Crux of the Struggle: the Cross as Critique
By Dave Andrews
Winter 2001
This paper is the first of a three-part series exploring the place of the cross in the process of transformation. The author argues that the cross – and the unique critique, charisma and catalyst that it provides – is the crux of the struggle to any genuine personal, social, and political change.

S114B The Crux of the Struggle: the Cross as Charisma
By Dave Andrews
Spring 2001
This is the second in a three-part series exploring the place of the cross in the process of transformation. There are no perfect metaphors, no perfect interpretations, and no perfect explanations for what it was that Christ did for us on the cross. Each of the metaphors and each of the interpretations are finite attempts to plumb the depths of an indefinable event that defies full explanation. The author affirms that instead of rejecting the metaphors, we would be better off if we were to reframe our interpretation of ransom and sacrifice in the light of the revelation of God’s love for us.

S114C The Crux of the Struggle: the Cross as Catalyst
By Dave Andrews
Summer 2002
This is the third in a three-part series exploring the place of the cross in the process of transformation. The author affirms that we are called to be like Christ, and we cannot be like Christ without suffering like Christ. We must put love into action. We are called not only to receive the sacrifice of Christ, but also to re-enact the sacrifice of Christ, by ‘repeating his redemptive acts in our own life.’

S113 Ethical Dilemmas in Church Based Mental Health and Allied Services
By John Roodenburg
Winter 2001
This paper considers why churches often experience a number of ethical dilemmas as well as legal and personal problems when they establish church based mental health and allied services and utilize psychological services. The paper suggests that failure to discriminate between the two paradigms of professional service providers and servanthood ministry results in role confusion, conflicting expectations and related covert dual and multiple relationships.

S112 A Christian Response to Global Capitalism
By Richard Higginson
Autumn 2001
Christian criticism of global capitalism stems from the biblical concept of good stewardship and is not just about guarding or preserving something in its original state, but also about realizing potential by adding value to original resource. God’s special concern for the poor is seen in the message of the prophets and Jesus’ ministry and man’s responsibility to be faithful stewards of the earth. The author notes that wholesale rejection of the current system prevents churches and their members from voicing constructive protest. He suggests that it is more constructive for Christians to consider how to influence the system for good than simply to call for an end to global capitalism. Responsible involvement will effect change and is good stewardship.

S111 Christian Faith and Professional Ethics in a Technological World
By Ian Barns
Autumn 2001
Professionals are involved in the processes of technological innovation, design, diffusion, regulation, promotion, management, adoption and interpretation. The author suggests that church communities need to support professionals as they reflect on the political, cultural, and spiritual aspects of the technologies. The Christian community needs to make the connections between the gospel and the discourse of the professions, between the politics of worship and the politics of professional practice, and affirm the eschatological significance of what we do as professionals.

S110 Resisting the Privatisation of Faith in Theological Education
By Robert Banks
Summer 2000
Robert Banks has made it the focus of his life and teaching to counter the assumptions of the modern sacred-secular divide, with the aim of both practicing and providing the resources for the creation of an integrated Christian lifestyle. The focus of this paper is upon Bank’s biblical / theological resources for resisting the privatisation of faith in the area of theological education. It examines the history of the theory-practice split in Western academic theology, Segundo’s proposed alternative to the Western model, Banks’ interaction with and extension of this influential source, and concludes with some critical intersection with his proposals.

S109 The Ethics of Drug and Alcohol Care: Social Changes and Christian Responses
By Gordon Preece (ed.)
Spring 2000
This paper summarises presentations give at a conference on the ethical issues involved in addiction as it affects society. Speakers were selected to encourage a dialogue that is often lacking in the drug debate, between a range of disciplinary and denominational perspectives on drug issues at large, methods of treatment, and supervised injecting rooms.

S108 Leisure and the Christian Life: Relaxing into the Glory in the Ordinary
By Mark Hutchinson
Spring 2000
This paper considers the living link that must exist between faith, leisure and culture. In the Christian life there is often a religious busyness that leaves no space for creative leisure or for reflection, recuperation, and a ‘coming to one’s self.’ In most Christian traditions, leisure that is not productive is bad. He concludes that our real need is to enter more deeply into Christ’s Sabbath rest.

S107 How do you Post to Postmodernity? Christian Education and Communication in a Post or Hyper-Modern Age
By Gordon Preece
Winter 2000
This paper explores the social, moral and educational implications of the nature of post or hyper-modernity as the speeding up and fragmenting of modern industrial and technological processes and the turnover of capital in information, service and image-based societies. These lead to a breaking up of society into a bewildering variety of identity and interest groups, with their own lifestyles and values. A sense of total flux and relativism often results. Post-modernity’s rejection of all master narratives as dividing people into masters and slaves leaves us ‘free’ but with no sense of an over-arching story or meaning to direct our freedom. This paper argues that there is an appropriately modest yet confident Christian ‘master narrative without masters’ which enables us to still speak of moving towards truth, without using it as a truncheon to reinforce our own power over others.

S106 From Separation to Synergy: Receiving the Richness of Generation X
By Kath Donavan
Winter 2000
There is a significant cultural gap across generations which prevent each from really hearing what the other generation is saying. There is a widespread idea among older Christians that Generation X has rejected absolutes. Dr Donovan argues that what they are really rejecting is second hand truth. The insights of missiology are used to discover how to bridge the cultural gap between modernism and Generation X in order that the church will move from separation to synergy.

S105 Some reflections on Christianity and Law Reform
By Michael Adams
Autumn 2000
Why is it that, as a whole, Christians are not active in law reform and those in active political life as Christians usually represent the most conservative and often primitive view of the role of the law as an element of the social order? Any account of the relationship between the church and the wider community over the centuries will demonstrate similar features. The notion that witches were burnt by the authorities without the support or even initiative of the ordinary people is a myth, as is the same supposition about the Inquisition or its equivalents among the Reformed churches. The question which must be asked is how it came to be that this culture of stupidity, superstition, gross injustice and cruelty was so actively participated in by the Christian Church, both as one of the most significant elements of the social order and as the body of Christ? This paper is adapted from lecture presented under the auspices of the Zadok Institute in May 1999. Although the history is somewhat idiosyncratic and much has changed since the days of the abuses which the author briefly sketches, the general outline is painfully clear.

S104 Foot-Washing for Postmodern Christians
By Ross Saunders
Autumn 2000
Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper is a well-known scene. It is sometimes re-enacted. Ross Saunders draws out the underlying principles of the traditional foot-washing ritual and questions how any New Ager would find relevance in seeing this ritual performed. For Christian faith and practice to have meaning in society, he affirms that the gospel principle of leadership by example of obedience to God must be demonstrated by church leaders.

S103 Narratives of Chronic illness: Towards and Ethic of Listening
By Bryden Black
Summer 1999/2000
This paper seek to integrate the author's experience as a member of a hospice team in Harare, Zimbabwe, with his own more recent experience of a serious illness, via, a series of specific spiritual or religious reflections.

S102 Mutual Obligation as Covenantal Justice in a Global Era
By Max Stackhouse
Summer 1999/2000
The purpose of this paper is to review the biblical idea of covenantal justice, to identify its trans-contextual elements, and to offers it as the most compelling model available of a just polity, with an inner moral and spiritual architecture for our time. Those who are called to aid developing societies, seek change in established ones, intervene in unjust practices at home or abroad, and, even more, to shape the emerging, increasingly common, world civilisation that now transcends nations, for justice’s sake, can know when they are on firm ground and what their limits are and should be.

S101 The Abuse of Consumerism
By Dave Collis
Winter 1999
This paper was borne out of the question the author, Dave Collis, faced while working in an inner city soup van: "How can otherwise loving and compassionate people simply walk past cold and hungry people?" This question led Dave away from an analysis of poverty and into the heart of consumerism, a culture which systematically predisposed people toward a restricted horizon of compassion through a kind of psychic confusion or fatigue. Drawing from narrative theory, his paper seeks to link the fragmented machinations of consumerism to the fragmented poverty of identity which characterises the consumer.

Dave Collis is project worker for Jubilee 2000 Campaign in Australia, and is involved with street ministries with the Urban Mission Unit of Collins Street Baptist Church and the St Vincent de Paul Society.

S100 Less Observed Sources of Spirituality in Children
By Glenn Cupit
Winter 1999
In a recent article in Zadok Perspectives (Autumn 1997), Glenn Cupit argued that transmission of faith to children required that we expose them to God's Holy Spirit wherever he can be found. He called attention to the importance of the natural world, human artefacts, culture, social environments, personal relationships, words and ideas, and providential care. This paper, provides the arguments behind the assertion for four of those areas, which may be more contentious among evangelicals.

Glenn Cupit is Senior Lecturer in Child Development at the University of South Australia and is currently working towards his doctorate on the implications for a Christian understanding of spiritual development for secular education systems. He is part of the Unley Uniting Church community and is married to Cecily. They have two adult children.

S99 Autumn Refusing Treatment: A physician's ethical deliberation over treating Jehovah's Witnesses
By Sam Muramoto
Autumn 1999
Jehovah's Witnesses' refusal of blood transfusions has recently gained support in the medical community because of the growing popularity of 'no-blood' treatment. But it is little known that the JWs' 'blood doctrine' is being strongly criticised by reform-minded current and former JWs who expressed conscientious dissent to the organisation. Their arguments reveal religious practices that conflict with many physician's moral standards. They also suggest that a certain segment of 'regular' JWs may have different attitudes toward the blood doctrine. The author considers these viewpoints and argues that there is an ethical flaw in the blood doctrine, and the medical community should seriously reconsider their supportive position. The usual physician assumption that JWs are acting autonomously and uniformly in refusing blood is seriously questioned.

Osamu (Sam) Muramoto, M.D., Ph.D., is a member of the ethics committee at Kaiser Permanente Northwest Division, and a neurologist at Northwest Permanente P.C., in Portland, Oregon, USA.

S98 Christian Theology and Economics: a Reading Guide
By Paul Oslington
Autumn 1999
There is no lack of discussion of economic issues in newspapers and magazines. What is not so readily available is a competent and specifically Christian discussion. This reading guide has been prepared with two groups in mind: firstly, students of economics seeking to relate their Christian faith to their studies and, second, for the non-economist Christian concerned about economic issues such as poverty, youth unemployment in Australia or the impact of economic activity on the environment. The contemporary student of economics will rarely encounter any discussion of relationships between economic and theological issues in university courses, and when theological or ethical issues do arise, exploration of them is considered illegitimate.

Paul Oslington has been lecturer in economics at Deakin University Geelong since January 1998, after completing a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Sydney on the relationship between trade and unemployment, and a Bachelor of Divinity from Melbourne College of Divinity.

S97 Social Capital and Religious Faith
By Philip Hughes, John Bellamy and Alan Black
Spring/Summer 1998/1999
What are some of those "things" people refer to that "aren't like they used to be"? A perceived rise in the level of crime, 'young people' not being as 'committed' as they used to be and an apparent breakdown in the neighbourhood community form part of the proverbial notion of these "things". That these sentiments in some sense refer to that ubiquitous neologism social capital allows the perception of the decline in social trust to be analysed and, say the authors, also enables us to examine what correlation there is to that more measurable social decline-church attendance.

Philip Hughes has a doctorate in theology and post-graduate degrees in philosophy and education, and is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. He is currently employed as a Research Fellow by the Centre for Social Research, Edith Cowan University. He is also the senior research officer at the Christian Research Association.

John Bellamy is a senior researcher with NCLS Research and was involved in developing the 1991 and 1996 National Church Life Surveys. He is currently undertaking a Ph.D. at Edith Cowan University.

S96 The Nature of Humans-Mind and Brain; Body, Soul and Spirit
By Alan Gijspers
Spring/Summer 1998/1999
What are we really made of? Seventy per cent water, a few kilos of blood and bone-altogether not very much according to one children's illustration. But what determines our worth? The scriptures of the Old and New Testament give one perspective, and science gives another. These two sources of understanding are sometimes regarded as in conflict, at other times they seem to agree. This paper seeks to explore the interface between science and the Bible in relation to human beings.

Alan J. Gijsbers is Specialist Physician at Turning Point Drug and Alcohol Centre and at the Department of Drug and Alcohol Studies St Vincent's Hospital. He is a Visiting Physician at the Epworth Hospital, a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Medicine at the Department of Psychological Medicine Monash University and Senior Fellow at St Vincent's Hospital Clinical School, University of Melbourne. He is a fellow ISCAST and editor of their national bulletin.

S95 Frederick Nietzche: Insight and Insanity
By Greg Restall
Autumn 1998
Twentieth Century philosophy and culture is profoundly indebted to the writings of Friederich Nietzche. His influence on poets and novelists such as Rilke, Yeats, Shaw, Hesse, Gide and Malraux has been much commented upon, as has his effect on the philosophy of Camus, Sartre, Spengler and Tillich.

Recent critical theorists such as Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan are incalculably indebted to him. Greg Restall, however, focuses on Nietzsche's notorious criticisms of Christianity, found particularly in The Antichrist, and asks what a genuine Christian engagement with his thought might be, and whether we have the courage to apply Nietzsche's critique to ourselves.

Greg Restall lectures at the School of History, Philosophy and Politics,Macquarie University, Sydney.

S95 Ethics and the Adversary System
By Ken Crispin
Autumn 1998
Is the adversary of the judiciary comparable to Winston Churchill's appraisal of democracy: that it was "the worst form of Government except for all those other form that have been tried from time to time"? Or, as Ken Crispin QC argues, have the archaic ethical foundations of the adversary system compromised the pursuit of justice and truth. After all, he says, we are "the only profession in which its practitioners regularly regard it as their ethical duty to harm the interests of others".

Dr Ken Crispin QC was for 25 years a barrister, and is now currently a Judge of the ACT Supreme Court and is Chairman of the ACT Law Reform Commission.