The Public Square

"Understanding the religious dimensions of the news requires competency, expertise and training. Our journalists simply do not have this," Professor Paul Morris, of Victoria University's Religious Studies Programme, told the Religious Diversity Forum in Christchurch on 23 August 2010.

Following are some extracts from Professor Morris's talk:

The Media and Religion

The rubric ‘media and religion' covers a lot of ground. Media includes TV, print, digital, religious media, commercial media, the new social media, and within these: news, entertainment, educational, drama and so on. Religion too is diverse and increasingly so. The plan for my allotted 15-20 minutes is to introduce and delimit our focus to a number of pertinent issues, say a little about the new inter-disciplinary research area of ‘media and religion', particularly as it might relate to New Zealand, and then to conclude with a few thoughts on where we might go from here. New Religious Diversity Our population is becoming increasingly diverse raising a series of new challenges for media representations of this new religious demography. While Christians are still - just - a majority according to the last census, there are now sizeable Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim communities and these ‘non-Christians' who declare a religion are more than 6% of the population. In addition, the Christian community has been transformed by migrant Christians from the Pacific, the Philippines, the Middle...

NZ Christian Network National Director Glyn Carpenter is encouraging Christians interested or involved in public issues to attend the conference Public Christianity: is there any other kind?, to be held at LifePoint Church, Wellington, 27-28 August.
The conference aims to encourage grassroots, congregation-centred, engagement with the whole Gospel. Local activists will provide reflections, workshops, and discussion input on a range of local and global considerations, possibilities, opportunities, and challenges. Its chief sponsors are the Wellington Theological Consortium, University of Otago's Centre for Theology and Public Issues, and Urban Vision. ‘Jesus is Lord, and Caesar isn't! Since Jesus is Lord of all, the Gospel requires that together we take action to resist "the ways of the world" by promoting ways of living that show evidence of Jesus' lordship,' says organiser Gavin Drew. ‘This is not something we can do alone; nor are we expected to. Christ-like living and work in the world cannot be undertaken apart from the body of Christ. Local congregations are the hands and feet of Jesus in the world.'
Speakers include Andrew Bradstock (Howard Paterson Professor of Theology and Public Issues and Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago); Jonathan Boston (Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington); Chris Marshall (Associate Professor of Religious...

NZ Christian Network National Director Glyn Carpenter is two weeks into a trial of the World Evangelical Alliance Leadership Institute's new 10-week online part-time course on public engagement.

As Chairman of the South Pacific Evangelical Alliance, Glyn is one of seven regents of the WEALI and said he was keen to trial the programme, much of which is based around the writings of Ron Sider, who is the World Evangelical Alliance's ambassador on public engagement. The course includes students from such diverse countries as Kenya, Argentina, Bulgaria, Ivory Coast, Belgium and Spain. The students do online assignments in their own time and meet for a Skype call at 5 am on Saturdays (NZT). "The key issues are different in each country, but the principles of authentic biblical engagement are the same," says Glyn. "The material is looking very good so far, and will be even better when it is fine-tuned after the course." This week's module looked at how the State and Church intersect – or even oppose each other – in the public square on issues of justice and human rights. The course will be available for public enrolments early in 2011. NZ Christian Network also commends a recent article by Malcolm Irwin, of the Salvation Army's Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit titled Angelic Exchanges: Speaking of God in the public sphere. Malcolm Irwin explores how The Salvation Army can dialogue with and speak into the public domain, asking...