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Conference Information 2009

Who Needs Jesus?
Life in the 21st Century

September 25 to 27, 2009


Papers and CDs

Venue: Waikato Diocesan School for Girls, Hamilton

When valiant efforts by the Tauranga Branch to set up the 2009 conference in that city turned out to be fruitless, other venues were explored and the choice fell on the Waikato Diocesan School for Girls in Hamilton.

The School is sited in beautiful grounds close to the River. Its conference facilities are brand new – they were opened at Easter, the accommodation offered is comfortable and private, ranging from single and double rooms to completely enclosed cubicles in small dormitories of 8 units and the food is renowned. So we have been lucky. “Dio” is in River Road, 10 minutes from the centre of the city by direct bus, and if you are motel-inclined there is a choice of about 50 within five minutes by car.

Hamilton has much to offer within its boundaries if you have the time to enjoy it: a museum and art gallery (currently featuring a display of Leonardo da Vinci designs and a retrospective of Waikato artists); the gardens, planned around national themes, are famous and particularly interesting is the newly opened Maori garden cultivated in the traditional ways; there is a wealth of history to be explored in the city and environs and a night life which I mention for completeness though it will doubtless be of little interest to you.

Within a radius of 200km you have the Coromandel beaches, the thermal playgrounds, fishing, forests, mountains, the wild west coast and of course Auckland.

For the past twenty years we have expended our energies in breaking clear of the traditions which formed, shackled and frustrated us. The Conference topic for 2009, "Who needs Jesus?" gives us the opportunity to reappraise that tradition and draw from it positive elements apt for the shaping of a new humanity. I am looking forward to it.

Welcome to the Waikato
Fred Marshall, Local Co-ordinator
Steering Committee Member

Programme

FRIDAY 25TH SEPTEMBER

1:30 - 2:30    Afternoon Tea & Registration.
2:30 - 2:50    Conference Opening: Norm Ely.
3:00 – 4:30    Keynote Speaker: Lloyd Geering 
4:30 - 5:15    Breakout (Core) discussion groups
5:15 - 6:00    Free time 
6:00 – 7:30    Happy Hour and Dinner. 
7:30 – 8:30    Plenary Speaker: Doug Sellman

SATURDAY 26TH SEPTEMBER

8:00  – 9:00   Breakfast
9:30  – 11:00  Keynote Speaker: David Boulton 
11:00 – 11:30  Morning Tea.
11:30 – 12:15  Breakout (Core) discussion groups 
12:15 – 1:30   Lunch.
1:30  – 2:30   Plenary Speaker: Margaret Mayman 
2:30  – 4:00   AGM and Election of the Steering Committee for 2010. 
               Chaired by Norm Ely.
               The New Committee will meet immediately after the AGM.  
               Afternoon tea available at AGM. 
4:00 -  6:00   Free Time
6:00 –  8:00   Dinner
8:00 -  9:00   Concert

SUNDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER

7:30  – 8:15   Breakfast
8:30  – 10:00  Keynote Speaker: Greg Jenks
10:00 – 10:45  Breakout (Core) discussion groups 
10:45 – 11:15  Morning Tea.
11:15 – 12:45  Panel discussion, all speakers, chaired by Noel Cheer.
12:45 – 1:00   Norm Ely: Conference 2009 Close and handover to convener of Conference 2010.
1:00           Lunch and depart for home or holiday

Keynote Speakers

Sir Lloyd Geering

Lloyd Geering was the Foundation Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington between 1971 and 1984. Since then he has been Emeritus Professor. In 1998 he was awarded C.B.E. In 2001 he was awarded PCNZM and in the New Years Honours of 2007 was awarded his country's highest honour, the Order of New Zealand.

Lloyd was instrumental in setting up the Sea of Faith Network in New Zealand and is a Life Member.

In his Keynote Address, Lloyd will ask "How long will Jesus be remembered, and if so, how?" In his outline he wrote:

We must face three facts:

  1. Historical research has forced us to distinguish between the historical figure and the biblical Christ into which Jesus quickly became transformed.
  2. We know remarkably little about the historical Jesus; what has survived has to do with his words rather than with his actions.
  3. The Christian Church that developed and spread as a result of the influence of Jesus is now rapidly declining in the Western world where it was dominant for many centuries.
In the light of the above, this lecture will discuss the prospects for the continuing influence of Jesus into the global future, along with the form that influence may take.

David Boulton

David has had a long association with the UK Sea of Faith Network and has been both editor and committee member. He is best known today for his books and articles exploring and promoting a brand of open-minded humanism that rejects supernaturalist religion but respects and celebrates the best of our religious heritage and tradition in so far as it offers an enabling dream of what he calls ‘the republic of heaven’. He is a member of the British Humanist Association and of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

David has written for many publications, including most recently The Guardian, The Observer, New Internationalist, New Humanist, Sofia and Quaker journals including The Friend, Friends Quarterly, Journal of the Friends Historical Society and Proceedings of the Quaker Theology Seminar.

He was a keynote speaker at the New Zealand Sea of Faith Network Conference in 2004 and spoke on ‘the republic of heaven’. He wrote, “I want to call it a republic because I want us to be citizens, not subjects. And I want us to acknowledge that building the republic of heaven is our responsibility, not one we can leave to a heavenly king.” This was in reference to his then new book The Trouble with God.

This year his keynote address will be informed by his latest book Who on EARTH was JESUS? The Modern Quest for the Jesus of History which takes up the chronicle of historical-Jesus research after is was so depressingly abandoned by Albert Schweitzer a century ago. Marcus Borg called it "the best and most thorough account of the breadth and variety of historical Jesus scholarship. Lively, informed, fair, and highly recommended."

David has a website here.

Greg Jenks

The Rev. Dr. Greg Jenks is an Anglican Priest who is currently serving as Academic Dean and Lecturer in Biblical Studies at St Francis Theological College in Brisbane.

His special interests are Christian origins and the quest for the historical Jesus, and his current teaching areas are NT Greek, Judaism and Early Christianity, and Synoptic Gospels.

Greg is a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar and a former Associate Director of the Westar Institute in California. As executive trustee for the FaithFutures Foundation, a long-time member of Sea of Faith in Australia and one of the planners for the inaugural Common Dreams gathering in 2007, Greg has been deeply engaged in progressive religion in our part of the world.

Plenary Speakers

Margaret Mayman

The Rev. Dr. Margaret Mayman has been senior minister at St. Andrew’s on The Terrace since February 2002. She was ordained in 1982 after studying at Victoria University and Otago University for a BA in political science and religious studies, and a BTheol in Biblical and Pastoral Studies. After a short-term interim ministry, she moved to New York where she gained STM and M.Phil degrees in Christian Ethics and began PhD studies at Union Theological Seminary. She also taught feminist theology and ethics at Maryknoll School of Theology, and undergraduate Religious Studies at the New School for Social Research.

In 1995, after 12 years in New York, Margaret retuned to New Zealand and was inducted as minister at St. Ninian’s in Christchurch. During that time, she completed her PhD, which was awarded in 2001. Her doctoral dissertation was titled “Raising Voices: Re-Visioning Moral Agency in Intimate Violence Discourses.”

During her ministry in Christchurch, Margaret came out as lesbian and has been involved in working to promotes the inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the Presbyterian Church.

From 2002 to 2005, Margaret participated in the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York, representing the Association of Presbyterian Women. She founded Christians for Civil Unions and advocated for the passage of the Civil Union Act.

Since 2006, Margaret has been working with the Kettering Foundation in the United States, a non-partisan foundation which fosters citizens participation in democracy. She has undertaken training in deliberative democracy and now applies this in interfaith dialogue and community justice work.

Margaret’s interests include politics and economics, queer spirituality, human rights advocacy, refugee issues, peace issues, sexual justice, reading fiction and theology, film, listening to eclectic music and podcast documentaries, camping, and café culture.

Doug Sellman

Doug Sellman, MBChB, PhD, FRANZCP, FAChAM, is a psychiatrist and addiction medicine specialist. He has been Director of the National Addiction Centre (NAC), University of Otago, Christchurch, since a successful tender process in 1996, a Centre which has developed into the lead research and training unit within the national addiction treatment field, dedicated to improving treatment for people with addiction-related problems in Aotearoa New Zealand.

He was promoted to a Personal Chair in Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine in 2005. Academic highlights are: a national postgraduate training programme for a multidisciplinary student group in addiction and co-existing disorders; a two-week Addiction Medicine block course for senior medical students; ten PhD students investigating a wide range of addiction-related topics; and internationally recognized research on the effectiveness of motivation interviewing and the optimum treatment for people with “alcoholic depression”.

His clinical work since 1994 has been primarily as consultant psychiatrist to the addiction treatment stream of the Youth Specialty Service in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Revised Conference Arrangements: Norm Ely

We are continuing to respond to members’ input on how they wish the Annual Conference to be set up to provide attendees with as much contribution to Conference as possible. Here is a summary of the three significant changes which we believe are improvements

Elective becomes Plenary: A couple of years ago we changed the ‘Elective’ Speaker format to a ‘Plenary’ Speaker format because:

These changes were supported by the survey taken at Conference 2007 and reported back to Conference 2008, as well as being debated at Conference 2008.

Restore Core Groups: A change sought for some time (and which was raised in the Survey) was to restore the Core Groups. So, for Conference 2009, we have reinstated the Core Groups, now called ‘Breakout Groups’.

No Workshops: The third improvement (which could prove controversial) is to drop the Workshops. Given all the other things which we want to achieve, there is insufficient time during Conference to hold Workshops. During discussion at Conference 2008, the attendees were largely of the opinion that they would prefer the dropping of the Workshops in order to reinstate Core Groups. The current Steering Committee have taken that discussion on board and by consensus have come to the same view as that of the attendees of Conference 2008. Future Steering Committees will review this decision.

The current Steering Committee believes that we have now accommodated all the changes discussed and sought over recent years in respect of the Annual Conference. This year’s Speakers are all of International calibre and the Theme is very pointed for faith in the 21st century. I anticipate a very strong attendance at Conference 2009.

Norm Ely
Chair, Steering Committee 2009