Anglican Studies - Doing Theology & Being Church
Last semester we offered papers on the Old Testament, Intergenerational Community and Sharing Sacraments. Now we are looking forward to Semester Two with Doing Theology and Being Church. Enrolments are still open and we'd love to sign up as many people as possible!
Next up is Doing Theology, taught via block weekend at St Michael’s Church & Marae from the 21-23 of July, followed by online learning. Our lecturer will be the highly qualified Tom Noakes-Duncan who will come down from Auckland especially, but we will also have input from local people.
Doing Theology is designed to introduce students to basic topics and methods in theology. Questions we’ll be asking is: what is ‘doctrine’ and why study it? How do we talk about God? What is Scripture? Who is Jesus? How do we read the Creeds of the early Church? How do we understand sin, salvation, and sanctification? What is the Church?
A big part of our learning will be understanding how our context influences how we do theology. How does our Anglican identity shape how we do theology? What difference does it make to do theology from a feminist perspective, or a Māori perspective, or a Pākehā perspective?
We are excited to be returning to St Michael’s Church & Marae for our block weekend. St Michael’s is part of the Tīkanga Māori strand of the Anglican Church. Staying on a Hāhi Mihinare marae and joining the local parish for worship is part of our ongoing commitment to biculturalism and being at home in this land.
The vision of the Anglican Studies programme is “theological education as discipleship” and we are keen to build up a learning community of students who integrate what they learn into all areas of their life as disciples and ministers of the Gospel. Students can expect to have their theological assumptions challenged – but always with the aim of encouraging them to grow in faith. To that end, discipleship groups (a.k.a. Huddles) are a core part of our programme.
If you are interested, please enrol now. Our programme is very flexible, so you can choose which enrolment option works for you. You can enrol in the Diploma as a whole, or in this paper as a one-off. You can enrol for credit (meaning you will have to write two assignments) or you can enrol for “audit-only” (meaning you attend the block weekend but don’t write the assignment). To enrol, fill out the simple online form here: stjohnscollege.ac.nz/regional-programmes If you have any questions, please contact Heidi Nayak at anglicanstudies@anglicanmovement.nz
