Canon
Dr Christina Baxter, Principal of St John’s College,
Nottingham, is a leading member of the Evangelical wing of the
Church of England who has pursued a distinguished career as
an educationalist and theologian. Before her appointment as
Principal, Dr Baxter had given long service to St John’s,
first as a lecturer and then as Dean. Throughout her varied
career, Dr Baxter has maintained a strong interest in Systematic
Theology, in particular the theology of ordination and the theology
of Karl Barth, and in Anglicanism and the Church of England.
She has been a Reader (a lay minister) in the Church of England
since 1971, and until 2010 was a member of the General Synod
and of The Archbishops’ Council.
Dr Baxter will address the challenges
and opportunities for Christian ministry in today’s and
tomorrow’s world. It is a truism to say the last few decades
have seen huge changes in both society and the Christian churches,
in the West and worldwide. In Europe we are facing secularism
and a much more assertive expression of atheism; on the whole
our media take up an aggressive stance in relation to religious
communities, and ‘opinion formers’ distance themselves
from the religious faith of their childhood. At the same time
the secular world is full of uncertainties, foreboding about
the future, an demonstrates itself incapable of articulating
credible answers to the challenges the world faces.
Dr Baxter will share with us her understanding
of the priorities to be addressed in the preparation of students
for ordination and lay ministry, drawing on her experience of
the Church of England as a whole, and of the Evangelical movement
in particular. She will set out her vision of what will be most
important in the lives of ministers, e.g dangers to be faced
and opportunities grasped, where they should put their energies
and gifts and where find support, where ecumenism and inter-religious
dialogue should be heading, and how best to engage with the
world beyond the Church.
Bishop Tamás Fabiny is
Bishop of the Northern Diocese of the Lutheran Church in Hungary,
a minority church of a little over 300,000 members in a predominantly
Roman Catholic country. After ordination he served as an assistant
pastor in Siofok and was a parish pastor in Budapest-Kobanya.
Dr Fabiny taught at the Evangelical Lutheran Theological University
in Budapest, specialising in New Testament theology, until his
election as Bishop. Since 1997 he has been chair of the Media
committee of the Lutheran Church, and has produced many religious
programmes for the Hungarian TVnetwork, Duna Televizio. He is
a vice president of the Lutheran World Federation.
The context of Bishop Fabiny’s
address: Hungary has lived through massive political and economic
change and upheaval, not least in this last half century, and
the churches there have maintained a life and witness throughout.
From living in complete or partial opposition to an overtly
atheistic state, dominated by the Soviet Union, they have had
to find ways of navigating a new environment shaped not only
by longed for democracy, but by western capitalism and resurgent
nationalism. Finding Christian ways to overcome the past remains
a constant challenge. From a world in which free speech was
suppressed and books circulated secretly, they have moved into
one in which the Christian voice now has to compete to be heard
as one amongst many others.
Bishop Fabiny will speak to us out of
his knowledge of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary
gained as pastor, theologian and bishop, as a person deeply
involved in discussing crucial questions for today’s society,
and as a TV journalist. Drawing on his experience of direct
responsibility in caring for ministers and their families, and
communicating the Gospel in today’s culture, he will seek
to articulate what the story of Christians in Hungary during
recent decades has to offer the wider Church as it contemplates
the forces of change which are bringing Tomorrow’s World
into being.
The Most Rev Michael Jackson,
grew up in Northern Ireland and was educated at Trinity College
Dublin and St John’s College Cambridge. He served as a
curate in Zion Parish, Dublin, lectured in the Church of Ireland’s
Theological College, was Chaplain at Christ Church, Oxford,
and then became incumbent of St Fin Barre’s and Dean of
Cork. He was elected Bishop of Clogher in 2001 and served that
diocese until elected to the Archbishopric of Dublin. Dr Jackson
has a wide range of interests, particularly in the areas of
inter-church ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue. He is Chairman
of the Anglo-Nordic-Baltic Theological Conference, which will
also be meeting in Mirfield simultaneously and in parallel with
the Anglican-Lutheran Society conference, to explore Christian
Anthropology (Christian views on what it is to be human).
Archbishop Jackson will address us on
the last full day of the conference, in a combined session which
will bring the two conferences together, so that explorations
of what it is to be human in today’s and tomorrow’s
world can inform our understanding of the Christian ministry
to which we are called in that world.
Bishop Martin Lind retired in
2011 after 16 years as Bishop of the diocese of Linkoping in
the Church of Sweden. Before that he had taught Systematic Theology
at the University of Lund, been a professor at the faculty of
Tamilnadu Theological Seminary, Madurai, India, and served as
a parish priest, Principal of the Pastoral Institute in Lund,
and Dean of the Cathedral in Uppsala. He is an authority on
the life and thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bishop Lind has
also been very much involved in the rediscovery of the pilgrimage
tradition for modern Christians, and has participated in yearly
pilgrimages, especially with young people.
Bishop Lind’s address will focus
on the witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Amongst the many martyrs
of the 20th century Church, Bonhoeffer still speaks to us today,
- providing us with the first words of the title of this Conference:
‘Life Together’. A young Lutheran pastor and theologian,
he had visited the Anglican Community of the Resurrection at
Mirfield, where we will meet, before he was called to build
a Christian community for those preparing for ministry in the
Confessing Church in Finkenwalde; it was in that context that
his work entitled ‘Life Together’ was born. His
writing, from the book of that name through to his Letters and
Papers from Prison, together with his theological explorations
in Doctrine, Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion, his poetry,
his pastoral care, and above all his humanity and the deeply
Christian spirit in which he carried through his calling as
a minister of the Gospel to the day, and manner of his death
ensure his continuing inspirational significance for us 75 years
on.
Bishop Lind writes: Bonhoeffer forces
us to reflect on our self-understanding as human beings and
as Christians. His view on man is challenging in its naked radicality.
Bonhoeffer could guide us both as regards the creation of ‘life
together’ and as regards the commitment to live in the
world, given by God, loved by God and reconciled by God.
Ms Monica Schofield, is a Chartered
Engineer. Following an industrial career working as an engineer
and research and development manager in the field of robotics
in Sweden, Germany and the UK, she joined a subsidiary of Hamburg
University of Technology. Her role today involves advising researchers,
industry and policy makers, including the European commission,
in issues to do with sustainability, wealth creation and public
interest from the point of view of research and innovation policy.
She has a personal interest in the broader societal and ethical
implications of technology and recently has given some thought
to the role faith leaders might play in helping to reform the
economic system.
Ms Schofield will speak on ‘Vision,
Values and Changing Mind Sets: working together to transform
the world!’ It is difficult to look to the future without
some trepidation: aside from immediate financial concerns, population
growth and climate change pose challenges on a scale not previously
encountered in human history. If we continue our industrial
and economic activity in its current form, it is certain life
on this planet as we know it will be in a very precarious state
within a generation.
Thinkers in the business community have
put together a vision of a pathway to sustainability –Vision
2050- showing what steps could be taken to achieve a world in
which ‘9 billion people live well within the limits of
the planet’. This pathway is feasible, it is being taken
seriously by business leaders, but it relies on their being
fundamental changes in governance structures, economic frameworks
and human behaviour, not least by people in the developed world.
The challenge is how to bring about this change of attitude
towards sharing resources.
Reflecting on her own change of mind
set, the speaker will explore the role of Christian ministry
from a secular perspective to achieve the goal of Vision 2050.
Dr Margaret Barker is a Methodist
preacher and a distinguished lay theologian who was awarded
a Doctorate of Divinity by the Archbishop of Canterbury in July
2008 in recognition of her work on the Jerusalem Temple and
the origins of Christian liturgy. She has been President of
the Society of Old Testament Study and, since1997, part of the
symposium on Religion, Science and the Environment, an organisation
convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch. She has developed the
practical implications of temple theology as a basis for a Christian
environmental theology.
Dr Barker will be leading three Bible
studies, exploring the ancient texts afresh to find inspiration
for tomorrow’s world. The modern world, in which Christian
ministry and preaching must take place, is a world dominated
by a secular, often materialist world-view, with value-systems
springing largely from what are felt to be unavoidable economic
and financial priorities that determine how we act and what
alone is important. Truth or Wisdom coming from elsewhere, let
alone from the past, is given short-shrift. But the Bible, with
its ancient texts reaching back 3000 years, remains for Christians
our major inspiration and authority.
Dr Barker will lead our exploration of
some of these texts, mainly in the Old Testament, under the
over-all title: ‘Creation and Righteousness: Adam in Worship
and the World’. She will set out the holistic vision they
contain of the created order, humanity’s place and calling
within it, and the central role of worship to which the Hebrew
Scriptures bear witness. She will show how relevant this vision
is to the environmental, economic and often violent challenges
the world faces – and therefore how crucial Christian
ministry and preaching can be.
Members of the Anglican-Lutheran Society
Executive Committee and will also be in attendance, and the
Anglo-Nordic-Baltic Theological Conference will take place simultaneously,
with a parallel overlapping programme entitled ‘Life Together:
Being Human in Tomorrow’s World.
