The Bible in a Post Christian World

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Subject: Saturday Seminar on "The Bible in a Post Christian world" with Greg Jenks
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:33:59 +1300
From: Admin
Reply-To: admin@satrs.standrews.org.nz
To: editor@scoop.co.nz

The Bible in a Post Christian World

Public Saturday Seminar – Saturday 1 October, 9:30am – 3pm

St Andrew’s Conference Room, 30 The Terrace, Wellington

$25 per person (includes morning tea and lunch)

RSVP to admin@satrs.standrews.org.nz by 29 September (registration form attached)

Programme:
9.30am Unholy use of the Holy Bible
10.30am Morning tea/coffee
11.00am Reclaiming the Bible for Today
1.00pm Lunch
1.45pm Reading the Bible with Critical Imagination

Unholy Use. Rev Dr Greg Jenks of the Holy Bible will explore some of the ways that the Bible is abused by those who claim to care about it deeply. The loss of interest in the Bible flows as much from its abuse by people of faith as from wider changes in western societies over the past couple of centuries.

Reclaiming the Bible for Today will explore ways that religious progressives can reclaim and redeem the Bible so it functions as a source of spiritual wisdom for shaping holy lives in the twentyfirst century.

Reading the Bible with Critical Imagination: Freed from the western obsession with the question of what really happened, how can we work with an imaginary conversation between Job on his ash-heap and Jesus on his cross? Can we move into the open space of post-critical naiveté to exercise our imaginations in our reading of the Bible?

Rev Dr Greg Jenks is Academic Dean at St Francis Theological College, Brisbane and Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Theology, Charles Sturt University, Australia.

SPIRITED CONVERSATION with Greg Jenks
LIVING AT GROUND ZERO: Armageddon, Then and Now
"Armageddon" has entered the public imagination as the archetypal battle at the end of time. The term derives from the ancient Hebrew name, Har-Megiddo (Mt Megiddo) of a strategic location controlling a key pass used by traders - and armies - moving between Egypt in the south and Mesopotamia in the north-west. This was the original ground zero, and the site of numerous major battles in ancient times. The modern state of Israel finds itself living at a new and larger ground zero, surrounded by neighbours who reject its right to be there, and supported by fanatical Christian Zionists in the USA who see a Jewish presence in the ancient biblical lands as a necessary condition for the end of the world. With friends like that, who needs enemies on all the borders?

Dr Greg Jenks is an Anglican priest and religion scholar who visits Israel/Palestine regularly, and has close friends among both the Jewish and Palestinian communities. He is a specialist in early Christianity, and was awarded his doctorate for research into the origins and early development of the Antichrist myth. He is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University, and a co-diretcor of the Bethsaida Archaeological Excavations in Israel. In this Spirited Conversation, Greg will reflect on the interplay of history, religion and politics in the Holy Land.
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Monday 3 October, 7pm (free)
Thistle Inn (upstairs), 3 Mulgrave Street

ends

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