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Volume 18, Number 2, June 2005

Theology in the Context of Aotearoa New Zealand

Guest editors: MARTIN SUTHERLAND AND ELAINE WAINWRIGHT

Contents, Abstracts, Notes on Contributors

MARTIN SUTHERLAND AND ELAINE WAINWRIGHT
Editorial

Articles 
ELAINE WAINWRIGHT
Looking Both Ways or in Multiple Directions:
Doing/Teaching Theology in Context into the Twenty-first Century 123

Abstract: Aotearoa New Zealand is uniquely connected, by both history and ocean, to Oceania and its many island nations, peoples and cultures. Doing theology at the beginning of the twenty-first century in such a location provides, therefore, a particular challenge. This article explores the multi-dimensional nature of this challenge and its foundation in the very process that shaped and shapes the biblical tradition and its ongoing interpretation.

Abstract: Both a Maori spiritual and cultural renaissance, and a growth of neopaganism increasingly influence the New Zealand spiritual landscape. Both are relatively unconcerned with "salvation" and with promises of heaven, but are nevertheless committed to a world in which the natural and supernatural are interpenetrating. Thus Christian theology frequently does not speak to the vital concerns of the pagan world. This article examines whether there are contemporary understandings of the work and person of Christ that do make sense within these allied contexts, and which encounter the deep longings of that world. Two approaches to Christ and the gospels now emerging may be effective in this context, and may help to critique the contemporary meshing of Christianity and violence. First is the Christ of Colossians - the one in whom all things hang together - and second is to be found in intrinsic atonement theories.

Abstract: This article begins by noting parallels between ancient Israel and New Zealand Maori in the role that narrative plays in defining a sense of place, especially in relation to the land. A convergence of concern across a range of disciplines about the diminished sense of place that exists in modern urban settings is also noted, and various attempts at what might loosely be called narrative-recovery in relation to the built environment are identified. At the same time, the tendency for narratives to be distorted and controlled by those who have vested interests in portraying things in a certain way is exposed, thereby highlighting the complex and problematic nature of stories. Theological questions are raised and possibilities touched on, including a role for the Church in helping society think about what it is that constitutes sacred space. While the issues raised in this paper are relevant to urban environments everywhere, the paper retains a strong New Zealand focus. It includes coverage of the debate surrounding the architectural merits of Te Papa, and asks what it is that constitutes a synthesis of Maori and Pakeha architectural forms and values as we look for signs of a built environment that is increasingly able to reflect our New Zealand identity.

Abstract: This essay critically evaluates responses to Colin McCahon's religious paintings over the past fifty years, from A. R. D. Fairburn's dismissal to Laurence Simmons' deconstruction, and beyond to the reception of "A Question of Faith". McCahon's religious paintings have evoked an ever-changing response that, it is argued, reflects the debate on the role and position of religion and Christianity in both New Zealand society and the wider modern-postmodern world. McCahon's religious paintings of the 1940s were attempts to locate in New Zealand the post-war Christian reconstruction of society, and yet they were rejected by a society not ready for the articulation of a modernist contextual theology. In the 1970s McCahon's return to contextual theology again provoked polarised responses, in part because of his appropriation of Maori spirituality. Likewise, his use of text, as the location of revelation in public space, proved discomforting to a culture more comfortable with a view of itself as secular and of religion as marginalised, privatised and sectarian. More recently the embracing of McCahon by overseas critics and galleries as a major modernist religious artist has forced a reappraisal whereby he has been relocated as a Pakeha prophet. While the paintings themselves have often been critiqued, little if any work has been done that reads the critics as articulating wider cultural and societal responses to God, religion and Christianity. This essay discusses the various "McCahon's" that have been articulated by critics and argues that in both McCahon's art and the various critical responses, there is the groundwork for an emergent Antipodean contextual secular theology.

Abstract: Four broad but overlapping areas of spirituality can be identified in Catholic life in New Zealand in the period between the two world wars: affective devotion to Christ and the saints; active social engagement, whether in the form of charity or the promotion of Christian values; Eucharistic piety, including the extra-liturgical cult of the Eucharist alongside increased reception of the Blessed Sacrament and greater participation in the liturgy; and the intensification of lay spirituality by imitating the religious life through third orders and retreats. Catholic spirituality was dominated by the clergy and based on international models, thereby promoting a distinct religious identity. Protestant antagonism towards Catholic spirituality was limited, however, and the Church's leaders sought to avoid religious conflict, seeing secular indifference, rather than aggressive Protestantism, as the real threat to Catholic religious commitment and as the primary justification for introducing new forms of spirituality.

Abstract: Our understandings of God change and grow with us as we move through life. This study of a group of New Zealand Catholic women finds that childhood God images were shaped more by who our parents were to us than the catechism we memorised. By middle adulthood our images of God reflect not only some lasting childhood images but the experiences of friendship, role modelling, groups we belong to, study, parenting, solitude, nature and the pain of suffering. Our adulthood God images, especially in terms of gender and power, are also linked with suffering, and how we envision church.

Notes on Contributors

MARTIN SUTHERLAND is Director of the R. J. Thompson Centre for Theological Studies at Carey Baptist College and a Lecturer in Theology at the University of Auckland. He has published widely in Baptist history and theology and his other research interests include theological method and early modern Christian thought.

ELAINE WAINWRIGHT is Inaugural Head of the School of Theology, University of Auckland, having taken up this position in January 2003. She is a biblical scholar with interests in biblical and theological hermeneutics, the challenge of context, and feminist, postcolonial and ecological readings of the tradition.

NICOLA HOGGARD CREEGAN lectures in theology at the Bible College of New Zealand and Tyndale Graduate School. She is interested in ecotheology, and in issues at the interface of theology and science, and of evangelicalism and feminism.

GRAHAM REDDING is Minister at St John's in the City Presbyterian Church in central Wellington. He convenes the Presbyterian Church's doctrine reference group, and has written a book in the field of liturgical theology, co-edited a book in the field of theological ethics, and written numerous articles on issues of applied theology.

MIKE GRIMSHAW is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ. He teaches and publishes on the intersections of Christianity and the contemporary world, with a special interest in religious and cultural theory. Recent publications include two co-edited anthologies (with Paul Morris and Harry Ricketts) of New Zealand Spiritual Verse: Spirit in a Strange Land (Godwit, 2002); Spirit Abroad (Godwit 2004). He is currently completing a book for equinox (UK) Bibles & Baedekers: Tourism, Travel, Exile and God.

CHRISTOPHER VAN DER KROGT teaches religious studies and religious history at Massey University, Palmerston North, where he is responsible for a wide range of courses on western religions including Islam. His doctoral thesis, "More a Part than Apart: the Catholic Community in New Zealand Society, 1918-1940" (Massey University, 1994), has led to a number of publications in this area.

MARY BETZ is Coordinator of Continuing Faith Education at the Catholic Institute of Theology in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has previously been a tertiary chaplain and an environmental studies coordinator researching the impacts of large scale hydro-electric, thermal and transmission line development in British Columbia. Her doctoral thesis (University of Otago, 2004) was entitled "Who is God for Us? Images of God in a Group of Roman Catholic Lay Women in Aotearoa New Zealand".