SSPEL Newsletter: Research and Scholarly Activities

Ideas for research and scholarly activity can often be found in surprising places, and, over the years, the Theology and Philosophy Subject Group has certainly provided a number of them. Colleagues there have been firm believers in the old maxim that effective teaching consists of proper arguments applied to real life circumstances, and rendered in a memorable and vivid way. Where else in Marjons could you find: a senior academic who began his lecture by telling students that God was dead, and that was a good thing too because he was a fascist; another who insisted that the students sing a sea shanty; or a visiting theologian from a respectable Baptist College in the USA arguing that the way forward lay in reviving goddess worship from a pre-Christian tradition?

This short conference fully lived up to expectations, with contributions from Professors Isherwood and Thatcher analyzing and criticising the Church of England's Windsor Report (on the 'crisis' arising from the Church in the USA ordaining an openly gay bishop, and from the Church in Canada blessing same-sex relationships). This material might look unpromising for non-religious people, but the discussions soon indicated a wider contemporary relevance. What sort of community was implied by different notions of Anglican Communion, and how did this relate to the need to tolerate different (sexual) identities? What model of contemporary social life was offered by biblical accounts of Jesus’ own ministry and the notions of embodiment which they discuss? Taking a theological stance on these common social problems brings to bear a good deal of theoretical and philosophical work of considerable relevance to matters such as how and whether sport and leisure can lead to social integration, or what implicit notions of embodiment are implied by work on sport or leisure.

As might be expected, considerable learning was worn very lightly in the informative and humorous presentations. Passion was combined with genuine modesty and openness. Again, this seems to be more than scholarly or academic convention for theologians but is rooted in a genuine attention to the needs and interests of the audience, including, maybe even especially including, sceptics and secularists such as myself.

Dave Harris

# posted by A Sociologist : 7:34 AM