Anglo Nordic Baltic Theological Conference
A Theological House Party
Tuesday, 25 August 2015
Anglo Nordic Baltic Theological Conference: Review of the 2105 Conference
Anglo Nordic Baltic Theological Conference: Review of the 2105 Conference: The Anglo-Nordic-Baltic Theological Conference August 2015 held in Turku, Finland in Turun Kristillinen Opisto Conference Dinner...
Review of the 2015 Conference
The
Anglo-Nordic-Baltic Theological Conference
August
2015 held in Turku, Finland in Turun Kristillinen Opisto
Conference Dinner and Seminar at 'Skola', a microbrewery restaurant in Turku |
INTRODUCTION
The
Conference began life in the late 1920s, pre-dating the Porvoo Agreement. The
then Lutheran bishop of Aarhus, Denmark invited friends with theological
interest to join him for a house party during the summer. The spirit was one of
conversation and hospitality together with intellectual honesty and creative
thinking structured around issues of the day. This tradition has continued, in different
forms, to the present. This year, friends coming from what are now the Porvoo
Churches met for five days in Turku to converse and give papers on the theme: God in Public Places. It retains the
spirit of an informal gathering of friends. Participants in 2015 came from
Finland, Latvia, England, Scotland and Ireland.
BROAD
SWEEP OF THE CONFERENCE
The
Conference opened with a wide-ranging paper that brought Wisdom, a poetic
personification of God in the Old Testament and Wisdom Literature, into the
frame, concentrating in this context on the strategic position of Wisdom at the
gate of the city. This led into an exploration of what such an approach might
mean for Anglicans and Lutherans seeking to hear and to articulate the voice of
God in public places. This moved into questions about the appropriate and
imaginative use of churches as public buildings, under the custodianship of
particular traditions, but not viewed exclusively as their preserve or
property. One paper introduced us to the potential moral dilemmas for all
concerned in terms of donor-client dynamics when money is raised by churches; and
then it is given away to other church agencies rather than the church in
question engaging directly with people in neighbourhoods and communities. Both
together would set the needs and goals of co-operation consultatively, whether
these be material, financial, spiritual or societal. This led us into an
impassioned presentation of layers and nuances of identity in national churches
that have been affected time and again by the imposition of history and, most
poignantly, concern for migrants and refugees in the current phase of such
heart-rending human experiences and exploitations. This was appropriate,
particularly as Turun Kristillinen Opisto, our house of hospitality, offers all
year round in-depth residential opportunities for the acquisition of Finnish
language and culture on the part of those who are today’s refugees worldwide.
Evening prayer on board the ferry to Turku from the archipelago |
Throughout
our time, we worshipped publicly, not only in our new home and in Turku
Cathedral but outdoors and, a first for many of us, on the deck of a ferry boat
returning from an afternoon on an island of the archipelago in the Baltic Sea –
by kind agreement of the captain and other passengers. The Cathedral Eucharist
was celebrated with the Anglican and Lutheran international community of Turku.
The
impacts of social media on doing theology and writing theologically were hotly
discussed and many of us were introduced to the concept of a Twitter Fall,
perhaps at its most interesting and arresting when it happens in the background
while a preacher is preaching. We learned also of blogging towards writing and
in this way incorporating a range of voices in the ultimately written word,
whatever that term itself means any longer. Chaplaincy in its many
manifestations was considered as a Godly presence in a contested public space.
Chaplaincy to the media and its hard-boiled secular exponents was explored as
an engagement with people of human and spiritual needs that often must be
suppressed in the quest for rapidity of analysis and sensationalism of
presentation. A funeral is a sadness when all is said and done. Media
intimidation and abuse were also considered under this heading, even if they do
not always issue in phone hacking.
The
Conference was very strongly pulled together by a presentation on surveillance.
On one level, it would seem that surveillance is an offer that nobody could
refuse. It would claim, almost coquettishly, to promise security and to relieve
anxiety. But on closer inspection, there are many good reasons not to share
your data in an on-line shopping context or in order to gain small rewards and
‘pennies from heaven’ so as to be able, in the longer term, to prevent those
whom we will never know from creating their own profile of our ‘net worth’ and with
our implicit compliance. But, let us take another example. The innocence of
spotting a camera in a largely empty car park and deciding that this is a safe
space can be the beginning of the deadening of a moral instinct for
self-protection and therefore of responsible self-care. We heard a very
interesting paper on theology, science and intelligent design ably analysing
limitations and potentialities.
Education
as a public space also featured. This is hardly surprizing as education offered
through religious patronage is a deeply contested public space where a range of
secularists seek to debar religious bodies from inhabiting such space as a
space of personal, societal and educational flourishing. The other side of the
coin is that, left to its own devices, an exclusively religious or
denominational educational system would show equal and different inadequacies.
In an evening seminar, held in a restaurant that had been a school since the
early nineteenth century, the argument was explored from the perspective of the
experience of the Republic of Ireland to the effect that the conversation
between religious altruism and open pluralism needs urgently to be developed
and sustained in a secular democracy. This will be required if any state is to
facilitate a range of voices and the commitment to God and to other people that
goes with words like pluralism, tolerance, respect and opportunity today.
Death and
hymnody may not seem to sit together in obvious ways and yet they strive to be obvious
relatives in the public square. This was a challenge to the final two
presenters and they handled it in a very powerful way. Respect for the dead and
their memory in life as their relatives continue to live life without them in a
public context is a perennial question that relates with the public square as a
place where those most deeply affected by the loss live a specific witness to
life itself in ways that have to be both private and public. Hymnody takes us
to the point where the private and the public, the emotional and the objective,
are given voice whether we can in fact sing or not. Hymnody is itself the voice
of the people of the church making noise together for God and for the world.
The
Conference was not all about presenting papers or responding to papers. It was,
at its heart, about conversation and interchange of ideas often as stimulated
by the papers but frequently coming directly from the interactions of the
participants themselves and their developing expression of their own idea
around both the theme and its tangents. Sincere thanks go to all who by their
contributions and their involvement made the Conference possible.
Anglo Nordic
Baltic Theology Conference 2015 Papers
Michael Jackson: God in Public Places -
Towards an Anglican Expression
Guntis Kalme, ‘Globalization, National Identity and the responsibility
of a theologian’
Jack Dyce: “Grundtvigian” reflections on the foundations for dialogue in the
public square
Alison Joyce: ‘The spiritual home of the media?’
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes: theology in the public (cyber) sphere – social
media
Arto Kallioniemi: Finnish pupil’s views of religion in schools
Patricia Hanna: Religion in Public Space: University Chaplaincy
Stephen Taylor: Church Buildings in many small public squares
Eimhin Walsh – Dublin Cathedral: a theological platform for community
engagement
Michael Jackson and Anne Lodge: Articulating
an Anglican Voice in a Secular Space
Rupert Moreton: Public Theology or Pragmatic Process?
Jyri Komulainen: What could the Lutheran Tradition Contribute to the
Theology of Religions?
Juuso Loikkanen: Theology, Science and Intelligent Design
Eric Stoddart: The Common Gaze
Catherine Shelley: Death, Graves and Ashes
Kathryn Rose: Hymns as Public Theology
Tuesday, 14 April 2015
Theology in the Public Sphere: Programme taking shape!
The deadline for booking (15th May) is drawing close, and the conference programme is beginning to take shape.
Speakers and papers confirmed so far include:
Speakers and papers confirmed so far include:
Prof.Arto Kallioniemi & others (University of Helsinki, Finland) – Finnish Pupil’s views on the
place of religion in school
Revd. Dr. Catherine Shelley (University of Birmingham, England) – Death, graves and ashes: the
public theology of death.
Revd. Dr. Alison Joyce (Rector of St Bride's, 'The Journalists' Church', London) - The Church and the Media
Revd. Dr. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes (Durham, England) - Theology in the Cyber-Sphere: Doing and Communicating Theology on Social Media
Revd. Rupert Moreton (Ireland/Finland) – Public theology or pragmatic process? A case study: same-sex relations.
Other speakers have been confirmed but paper titles are yet to be announced.
There is still time to register for this conference and/or to submit a short (20 minute) discussion paper!
Anglo-Nordic-Baltic Theological Conference 2015
13th-17th August 2015
‘A Theological House Party’
Theology in the Public Square
The Anglo-Nordic-Baltic Theological Conference is a biennial
gathering of lay and ordained, theologians and practitioners, primarily from
the Anglican and Lutheran churches of Northern Europe. It takes the form of a
theological house party, with short contributions around a common theme which
aim to stimulate discussion, the building of relationships and sharing of
experience.
You can find out more about the history of the conference –
which has been meeting since the late 1920s and was instrumental in the
development of the Porvoo network – at the history page of our blog, http://anglonordicbaltic.blogspot.co.uk.
The conference will be held in the Christian Institute,
Turku, Finland: http://linnasmaki.fi/english/
We will
begin in the late afternoon of Thursday 13th August and conclude
with breakfast on Monday 17th, to facilitate travel arrangements.
The nearest airport is in Turku itself; it is also possible to fly into
Helsinki and take a bus, or take a ferry from Stockholm.
The cost of
attending will be 250 euros per person INCLUDING CONFERENCE FEE, MEALS AND
ACCOMMODATION: some limited bursaries will be available to participants who
would otherwise find the cost of attending prohibitive. Applications for bursaries can be sent to miranda@threlfall-holmes.net and will receive an answer as soon as possible.
Call For Papers
The theme of the 2015 Conference will be Theology in the Public Square.
Proposals are now invited for short papers on any aspect of
this subject. Papers are usually around 20 minutes long, allowing plenty of
time for discussion and learning from all our many different contexts. Papers
are delivered in English, the language of the conference, and are circulated in
advance in order to facilitate participation by those for whom English is a
second or third language.
We welcome and are hoping for a mix of papers by a mix of
contributors: from academics, clergy, those working in public policy, artists
and other creatives; on the idea of theology in public generally, or on
specific aspects, questions or controversies; and from across all of the
territories that we cover.
Paper titles and a short abstract should be sent to Rev. Dr.
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, miranda@threlfall-holmes.net
Conference registration should be sent to the Turku
Christian Institute kurssipalvelut@tk-opisto.fi by 15 May 2015.
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