sustain:if:able kiwi

Woven Together: Christianity and the Pacific

I’m in Wellington Thursday and Friday at Woven Together, a conference on Christianity and the Pacific, run by School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies at Victoria University. The range of papers and presenters looks absolutely fascinating, a rich mix of thinkers and activists. I also spy a few old friends also offering papers, whom I’ve not seen since I left New Zealand in 2009, so that will be an added, extra, relational bonus.

It is the sort of place Knox Centre should be. I’ve teamed with a Presbyterian colleague and we are presenting a paper titled The complexity of being woven together: A microhistory of Talua Ministry Training Centre. It has been for a great opportunity to get into the Presbyterian Research Centre Archives and learn more about the denomination I’m now part of. It has also been part of returning to my story, given my birth in the Pacific, in Papua New Guinea and my father pioneering an indigenous theological College. As I’ve researched, I’ve had a few flashbacks :). And it was very meaningful to do the bulk of the writing on Monday morning, when the saint of the day in the lectionary was a Melanesian brother, Ini Kopuria. It felt like he was watching 🙂

Here’s our conclusion to The complexity of being woven together: A microhistory of Talua Ministry Training Centre:

In conclusion, we have outlined how theological education in Vanuatu was driven, from the beginning, by a vision for local agency. The aims – for equality and contextualisation in 1895 – and self-help in 1977 were extraordinary. Theological education played a key role in developing leadership that contributed significantly to Vanuatu’s independence. However, since the 1960’s, theological education in the Pacific has been complexified, by changing modes of theological education, shifting dynamics with partner agencies and the fragility of Pacific economics. Talua is neither historic nor recent. Is the Ni-Van desire for local agency unrealistic in today’s globalised world? Or, might the birth of digital technologies provide ways for Colleges to remain local, affirm their distinctives, yet share resources with other indigenous theological providers? In other words, using the words with which we began: Can “Theological Education … [be] not foreign, [nor] imposed.”

For those interested, here is out handout: woven together paperhandout