Author: Ron Lawson
Date: 3rd April 2008
Title: A Historical Sociology of Adventism
Subtitle: The evolution of Adventism in the 20th Century through sociological eyes with, perhaps, a peak into the future.
In 1984 I set out to research the evolution of international Adventism by studying its contemporary situation and tensions and thereby predicting its trajectory as a sociological phenomenon. My research has taken me to 59 countries, where I have had in-depth interviews with some 3,500 individuals i.e. church administrators, academics, pastors, hospital workers, laypersons and malcontents plus focus groups of students at Adventist and non-Adventist tertiary institutions. This work has been distilled into 24 published papers and presented to professional meetings as well as to groups in forum at Adventist universities. I have found this research has enlightened me about who I am and where I came from.
Adventism in Australia in the 1950 and 60’s, as elsewhere, was conservative and practised largely by people who were uneducated at a tertiary level. In that era tensions occurred mainly between the orthodox and a few independently-minded conservatives who were studying at Avondale.
The Australian Commonwealth Scholarship program meant that many more students with an Adventist heritage could be exposed to secular tertiary study. It was the 1960s and we were the questioning generation. This was potentially intimidating to less educated church lay leaders and pastors and their first response was to close down on any dissent or separatism. An alternative strategy to support and encourage emerging groups such as QUSDAS was then begun in order to embrace individuals and their talents. These societies fulfilled a social and mental as well as a spiritual need. They were intended to be a nursery for fostering long term relationships (including marriage) that would further the work of the church. To some extent these things were occurring also in the US but it was occurring first in Australia.
The second generation of QUSDAS members seemed to be as different from the first generation as were 1970’s students in the US different from those of the decade before. These QUSDAS members were concerned more with affirmation of Adventism and Christianity and discussions of outreach on campus. I am interested to know where these people are in their life’s path today.
On September 1, 1971 I arrived in New York City to do post-doctoral study at Columbia University. I sought the social support of the church and was soon directed to an Adventist group of students meeting within the University. This has been my congregation ever since. I was elected its president in 1974, and have been re-elected every year since then.
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Author: Nonie Hodgson
Date: 27th July 2008
Title: Just What You Wanted
Subtitle: An Outlook to Aid Consistent Thinking from the Abstract to the Concrete
From 1993 to 2001 I wrote a thesis that produced a meta framework which any academic discipline could use to describe its core operations or practice. The prevailing approach in industry, government and some quarters of university education at the time, and this has continued solidly over the last decade and half, is that professionals should be assessed and be accountable on the basis of how they perform not just what they know.
Philosophically, the central focus on the performance of practice and its output as compared with input has been influenced by the assumption proposed by Gilbert Ryle that all knowledge is capable of disclosure in behaviour. Assessment of performance or competence by professional and/or registering bodies is now offered as an alternative form of assessment for professionals moving between countries, by such professions as Accounting, Engineering, Architecture, Nursing, Veterinary Science. Various writers in social work have, in the manner of Ryle, identified the connection between the abstract thinking and operational stages of practice when addressing the development of descriptions of performance.
Expanding on this, if a profession is describing itself the description will be influenced by its view of the world as a whole and its role and place in the world. Becoming aware of our self interest as professionals, and individually, collectively and politically understanding sociology and the paradigms under which we function, is vital. An honest professional will analyse how their personal ideology (related to their personal position in society) might have influenced their thinking about their place in the world as a professional.
Such ideology most probably will, need to be reviewed in the light of evidence, self reflection and development of maturity of thinking about the world. I propose such a framework to you my colleagues of many years ago who grappled, rightly so, with theology, philosophy and how or how not to apply our personal values within our professions and career choices. I offer this as a way forward that can provide the professions real potency and power for good.
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Author: Brian Timms
Date: 19th March 2008
Title :Away with the Fairies
Twenty years ago I turned my research focus to aquatic life in the dry Outback. It changed my life to one of hairy adventures, new friends with iconic characters, and discovery of many new fairy, clam and shield shrimps. Additionally I continued my earlier focus on saline lakes, but all over Australia, including the Lake Buchanan basin in northeast Queensland, the Paroo in northwest New South Wales, Eyre Peninsula and Gawler Ranges in South Australia and the remote inland of Western Australia. I will present a window on a beautiful world as seen by a field biologist and report on the thrill of discoveries.
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Author: David Mee Lee
Date: 15th July 2008
Title: A Personal Integration of God in Psychiatric Treatment
Subtitle: Anonymous as a Paradigm
In mental health and addiction treatment there is intense focus on the brain, neural pathways and neurotransmitters and the role they play in how we think, feel and behave. At the same time, there is also an increasing interest in the role of religion and spirituality in behavioral health and medical care. e are exploring the integration of these two trends in a new discipline, neurotheology, that argues that the structure and function of the human brain predispose us to believe in God.
It behooves clinicians to have some conceptual framework about where God fits into psychiatric and addiction treatment. To leave God out of our theory and practice may well be akin to leaving patients’ parents out of our theory and practice. The introduction of God into psychiatric and addiction treatment however, involves the same sensitivity, evaluative and timing skills that accompany the subject of parents in therapy. Just as therapists respect the complexity of feelings, attitudes and individual meaning of parental representations, the same sensitivity is needed concerning God.
In this presentation we provide a perspective on how God might be integrated into psychiatric care based on our clinical experience working in addiction treatment programs.
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Author: Weston Allen
Date: 15th June 2008
Title: Evolution of a skeptic
Childhood gullibility is essential for survival. Overcoming it is essential for progress. After lessons in personal fallibility, children discover sooner or later that their mentors too are fallible. I had my first lessons in that at eleven when the twin evils of envy and gossip blew apart our very religious extended farming family.
Six years later, it took only a few lessons on fulfilled prophecy to convince me that both the bible and ‘Spirit of Prophecy’ were truly inspired. I was later amazed to discover that our Adventist understanding of the gospel was identical to that of the alleged antichrist of Revelation, and that Ellen White herself had failed to grasp the core message of the Reformation. Mixing in the wider Christian community then forced me to question sabbatarianism, 1844 and other fundamentals of the faith. Walter Rea’s ‘White Lies’ finally challenged me to question all inspiration. After many years of critical study of the bible and numerous books on archeology, mythology, ancient and church history, the Dead Sea scrolls, non-canonical gospels and the historical Jesus, I now have a far more mature understanding of the bible and the convenient relationship between history and prophecy.
I also discovered some disturbing things about the media, forensic science and law during the 1980’s. Through a patient with NT police connections, I was one of the first to be privy to damning forensic evidence against Lindy Chamberlain, and I naively believed it. Challenged by my sister and others to look deeper, I took the trouble to contact important eyewitnesses after the trial, and what they told me shocked and disillusioned me. I then spent the next four years researching the case and fighting for justice. After the Morling Inquiry cleared Lindy, I turned my attention to other likely miscarriages of justice. Sandy McLeod-Lindsay was convicted on evidence from the same NSW forensic lab that found copper dust to be foetal blood, and had spent nine years in jail. I did some original blood spatter work and had his case reopened. A certain world authority was going to come and support me, but Legal Aid couldn’t afford his fee. What happened next destroyed any remaining faith I had in such ‘authorities’.
A month before starting university, I switched from electrical engineering to medicine after converting to Adventism through a family with a keen interest in herbs, homeopathy and ‘natural’ healing. So I included these complimentary modalities in my practice, and also developed a very successful Total Health program based on ‘natural laws’. I also read Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ and Ehrlich’s ‘Population Bomb’ and became a keen environmentalist. As I questioned my spiritual roots, however, I began to also question the ‘science’ behind my philosophical paradigms. And I progressively discarded beliefs and practices that failed to stand up to good evidence.
I am now a convert to evidence-based medicine and skepticism. I am even more skeptical than Dawkins. I am too skeptical to be an atheist! And I am very skeptical of the belief that man is the primary cause of climate change. The Green movement now sweeping the world has all the religious hallmarks of the crisis cults I have escaped from. Perhaps every generation needs to learn their lessons in skepticism the same hard way.
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Author: Sandra Bayley
Date: 29th July 2008
Title: Climate Code Red – A Book Review
I have just returned from a book launch at parliament house in Melbourne. The Victorian governor, a professor of medicine with obvious personal conviction, launched "Climate Code Red" by policy analysts David Spratt and Philip Sutton. It is a meticulous analysis of the science of climate change unfettered by political, social or economic constraints. They make the case that it is a state of global emergency. I believe it's a story we all need to know.
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Author: Ken Aitken
Date: 25th July 2008
:Title: Living Life in the Third Dimension
I attribute my ongoing recovery from a severe brain injury in December 1995 primarily to my Christian Spirituality which had its seedbed in my Wilsons Creek days. This was a farm where I grew up in a valley behind Mullumbimby in Northern New South Wales.
This has brought healing, restoration and transformation of life purpose. A Christian spirituality comes as a consequence of having a Christian Worldview. It isn’t another Spirituality in the Postmodern Culture of many spiritualities which are seen to be all equal.
It is a unique Spirituality which integrates the whole of life ... of the Inner, Middle and Outer Persons {Spirit, Soul (= mind, will and emotions), and Body}. It means being a disciple of the Person of Jesus Christ, not a follower of a Church as a corporation. A Christian spirituality could also be termed a `Spirituality from Jesus Christ’.
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