University of Divinity
All are invited to attend the Opening Lecture for Australian Lutheran College.
Time and Location
9.30am Monday 27 February
ALC Refectory
104 Jeffcott Street, North Adelaide
(please park off campus and enter the grounds via the Ward Street entrance)
This lecture will be live streamed via the ALC website
Enquiries and RSVPs
(08) 7120 8200
This year’s lecture will be presented by Dr Wendy Mayer (ALC’s new Associate Dean of Research) and is entitled, ‘Preaching Schism: Why what good people say can have unintended consequences for the Church.’
As Christians we pray for unity, confess our belief in the “holy catholic Church”, and embrace the language of communion. Our best intentions however, often have the opposite effect. From the beginning, Christians splintered into groups and throughout history the resulting factions have often been adversarial and hostile.
What will be argued in this lecture is that this phenomenon has little to do with theology or belief. What matters is the language that we use to express those beliefs, with significant implications for how we phrase the doctrines of the Church and for our teaching and preaching. In making this case, Dr Mayer will introduce current research from the cognitive and neuro- sciences.
What she will argue is that the domain of moral psychology in particular offers explanatory models that are both cautionary and instructive.
About Dr Mayer
ALC Associate Dean of Research, Dr Wendy Mayer is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and known internationally for her research on early Christian preaching and the life and works of John Chrysostom.
Her research currently embraces two additional strands: the reception of Greek medicine in Christian thought in Late Antiquity
(for example, why Lenten fasting is literally good for both the body and soul, or what it means when the bishop is said to be the brain of the church); and the root causes of religious con-flict and radicalisation in both past and present.
Click here for examples of Dr Mayer’s publications
School of Indigenous Studies