I missed the news in the venerable ODT, but caught up today through the Otago Bulletin that the University of Otago has succeeded in raising the money they need to establish a Chair and Centre for Theology and Public Issues Centre. The Bulletin reports:<\/p>\n
New Zealand\u00e2\u20ac™s first research centre tackling social issues such as poverty, social welfare and the environment from a theological perspective is also soon to be established, thanks to the legacy of a millionaire entrepreneur.<\/p>\n
The University has announced that the Howard Paterson Chair in Theology and Public Issues and an associated research centre will be established as part of its Leading Thinkers initiative.<\/p>\n
The professorial appointee to the new Chair will direct a centre charged with undertaking and promoting informed theological and ethical analysis of the challenges facing contemporary New Zealand society.<\/p>\n
The Chair and Centre for Theology and Public Issues are being made possible through a major gift by the Paterson Charitable Trust and substantial support from the Presbyterian Synod of Otago and Southland, and Gore couple Ian and Annette Tulloch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Otago Centre will be based on the long-time Centre for Theology and Public Issues<\/a> at New College, Edinburgh. It will be interesting to observe how things upfold. Curious to me, from earlier reports, is the proposed inclusion of MSD<\/a> on the Board. I would have thought that theology’s engagement with the state is the subject<\/em> of the Centre, not part of its governance. Hopefully the Centre does not become captive to Constantinianism before it makes its first utterance.<\/p>\n
Raising the money for the Centre has been a great effort. For while the Centre has been in the making for years, it got the money faster than I thought they would. In their Annual Report to ANZATS for 2005 <\/a>the Dept said:<\/p>\n
The Department has begun the process of establishing a Centre for Theology and Public Issues. It is hoped to establish an endowment, sufficient to appoint a Professorial Director of the Centre in perpetuity. This project has been accepted as part of the University\u00e2\u20ac™s Advancement Campaign. In April, the Presbyterian Synod of Otago and Southland made a Grant of $150,000 towards the establishment of the Centre. Murray Rae represented the Department at a meeting at the University of Edinburgh in September, when it was decided to establish the Global Network for Public Theology, of which the Department will be a part.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It is also interesting in light my previous posts about the demise of CASI that this Centre will take over some of the functions of that body – with Presbyterian funding. The Church won’t fund CASI<\/a> properly but finds money for a university centre.<\/p>\n
Related Links:<\/p>\n
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- New research centre to take fresh look at public issues<\/a><\/li>\n
- Bequest sets up research centre<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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I missed the news in the venerable ODT, but caught up today through the Otago Bulletin that the University of Otago has succeeded in raising the money they need to establish a Chair and Centre for Theology and Public Issues Centre. The Bulletin reports: New Zealand\u00e2\u20ac™s first research centre tackling social issues such as poverty, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rad.net.nz\/radiescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}