“The grotesque incident yesterday, when a senior member of staff was interrupted in the course of a lecture and forcibly escorted from the premises, is for me a decisive sign that things have gone badly amiss with the Christian and Catholic ethos of St Mary’s.”
- Professor Eamon Duffy, quoted in Madeleine Teahan, “Top historian criticises St Mary’s for ‘grotesque’ treatment of professor”, CatholicHerald.co.uk, 25 September 2012

“The Governors have total confidence in the Senior Management Team who have worked diligently and in accordance with our constitution, due process and our Catholic ethos in what has been a difficult time as we continue to strive to gain our university title. This is a time of great opportunity for St Mary’s and I am confident that the University College will continue to develop and move forward as a centre of excellence.”
- Bishop Richard Moth, Chair of Governors, St. Mary’s University College,”Statement by Bishop Richard Moth, St Mary’s Chair of Governors”, smuc.ac.uk

“Kraft International, especially in developing markets, should continue to realize solid growth as it leverages the Cadbury acquisition and benefits from continued Cadbury cost synergies. The company is likely to realize $300 million of revenue synergies in 2012 by distributing Kraft’s biscuit products in Cadbury outlets in Mexico (approximately 380,000 outlets), distributing Oreo and Tang products in Cadbury outlets (approximately 380,000 outlets) in India and doubling its distribution in Brazil with this acquisition (from 300,000 to 600,000 outlets).”
- Ashish Sharma, “Kraft Foods: Safe Stock with Upside Potential”, The Motley Fool Blog Network, 13 August 2012

…. but wait, there is something even weirder going on here than the story of the Catholic theology lecturer having his lecture on the resurrection brought to a violent and premature end   … you can take a course in “Christology” at a London university? Really? Do they offer Muggle Studies as well?

John Banks – New Zealand Associate Minister of Education and believer in Adam and Eve rather than in Evolution

While the interviewer wanted John Banks to tell him whether he supported the teaching of Creationism in schools, Banks attempted to steer the question to his own personal belief. On the question of his personal belief, Banks agreed that he believed in the story of Adam and Eve and did not accept the scientific fact of evolution.

His answer on teaching Creationism in schools was more cagey. He refused to make a clear statement that he supported the teaching of Creationism, referring obliquely to the liberal humanist enemy – possibly the “basket-weaving, hairy-legged feminists” whom he has often referred to – who would pounce on his words (“we have to be very, very careful about parading all this…”). But his comments on presenting ‘both sides’ of the issue removes all doubt that he wants Creationism to be taught in schools as a ‘scientific’ option.

Interviewer: As the Associate Minister of Education, how do you feel about schools teaching Creationism?

Banks: What do you mean? Can you just explain it to me so I clearly understand.

Interviewer: I guess your question back to me is fair, because there would be many different kinds of Creationism. There would be Intelligent Design, there would be long earthers, there would be short earthers. But I guess to nutshell it, to stereotypically nutshell it: that God created the world, that Darwin’s theory of evolution is not accurate, that God created Adam and Eve and that everything else has come from it. What do you think about schools teaching that…?

Banks: That’s what I believe! That’s what I believe. That’s what I believe. But I’m not going to impose my beliefs on other people, especially in this post-Christian society that we live in, especially in these lamentable times. I’m not going to be judgmental; I’m too old and have moved past that now. But I know what is important to me, I know what’s important to you, I know what’s important to our families, and I know what will make this country great again. But we have to be very, very careful about parading all this, because there are reactionaries out there, humanists in particular, that overrun the bureaucracy in Wellington and State education that you and I would be an anathema.

Interviewer: So let me get this clear, John Banks, Associate Minister of Education, you disagree with Darwin’s theory of evolution, you believe the Genesis account of how life began?

Banks: Yes.

Interviewer: Well how do you feel, therefore, about the other question: about evolution being taught in our schools?

Banks: Well I don’t have a problem. There are a lot of things taught in our schools that I don’t particularly like being taught in our schools. That’s where we’re at now….

Banks: … I don’t see anything wrong with a Christian school teaching Christianity and Adam and Eve and everything that follows.

Interviewer: And do you think there is a place to teach these opposing views equally? Darwin’s theory of evolution would not sit on an agreeable level with those who teach the six-day creation story, and vice-versa. Can two opposing views like that be taught on an equal level in our schools?

Banks: I don’t have any problem with schools teaching opposing views, because I think it is important that children have a rounded education. So I don’t have any problem with them teaching those opposing views. But what we must clearly understand is this country has moved on from a Christian country to a nation of humanism and a post-Christian society and all the attendant ills have followed. I don’t have a problem with people teaching what your faith is. My faith and your faith we share, but it is not the faith that other people might want to share….

The media report that circulated today summarised that John Banks “believes the Genesis account of the start of life on Earth” and that “he has no doubts the first chapters of Genesis are true”. This summary is easily misleading in respect of such a contested passage, as Banks is consistently vague about his precise understanding of Genesis, preferring to broadly agree with the interviewer. But Banks did make an affirmative response to the interviewer’s question of whether he “believed the Genesis account of how life began”. It is not clear that Banks believes in a literal six-day creation as Gavin Rumney suggests after reading the media report, or as Hemant Mehta does, or that he is a young earth creationist (believing that God made everything about 6000 years ago). GayNZ is cynical, entitling their blog post, “John Banks Believes in Talking Devil Tree-Snake !“

Bible & Critical Theory Seminar, Auckland

Queens Ferry Hotel, Vulcan Lane

1 & 2 September 2012

Saturday

10:00 – 10:10              Opening session

10:10 – 10:45              Elaine Wainwright, Of Borders, Bread, Dogs and Demons: Reading Matt 15:21-28 Ecologically

10:45 – 11:20              Rebecca Lindsay, Overthrowing Nineveh with Postcolonial Imagination

11:20 – 11:30              Break

11:30 – 12:05              Kirsten Dawson, Gender and Violence in the Book of Job

12:05 – 12:40              Robert Myles, Homelessness, Neoliberal Ideology, and Jesus’ “Decision” to go Rogue

12:40 – 13:50              Lunch at QFH

13:50 – 14:25              Roland Boer, A Dead Spouse, A Vegetable Garden and a Cousin’s Field: On Private Property

14:25 – 15:00              Christina Petterson, Writing Death, Writing Life

15:00 – 15:35              Deane Galbraith, Interpellation Not Interpolation in Num. 13-14: The Non-Instrumental Ideology of Louis Althusser and Half-a-dozen Ways to Avoid a Death Sentence from Yahweh

15:35 – 15:45              Break

15:45 – 16:20              Holly Randall-Moon, The Secular Contract: The British Monarchy and White Diasporic Sovereignty

16:20 – 16:55              Yael Klangwisan, Gift and The Song of Songs

16:55 – Late                Drinks & dinner at QFH

Sunday

10:00 – 10:10              Opening session

10:10 – 10:45              Don Moffat, Ezra 9-10: A Split Text?

10:45 – 11:20              Caroline Blyth, ‘Whatever you needed…she had it’: Deconstructing the femme fatale in Judges 16 and Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely

11:20 – 11:30              Break

11:30 – 12:05              Julie Kelso, Irigaray’s Virginity

12:05 – 12:40              Niall McKay, A Political Reading of Luke 1:51-52 And 3:8-9 in the Light Of Ezekiel 17 – Inspired by John Howard Yoder and a Poststructural Intertextuality

12:40 – 13:50              Lunch at QFH

13:50 – 14:25              Debra MacDonald, John Gray’s Straw Dogs and Luke’s Satan: An Exploration into Human Nature

14:25 – 15:00              Mark Manolopoulos, Jesus on Wall Street: Overturning Temples, Tables, Empires

15:00 – 15:15              Break

15:15 – 15:50              Sarah Curtis, Considering the presentation of Magdalene by Luke and John: Neither fetish nor phallic but feminine

15:50 – 16:25              Tim Stanley, What Is This Strange Technological Thing Called the Bible?

16:25 – 16:35              Closing session

(The post was since grudgingly removed by Jared Wilson, after a load of complaints.)

And then, following numerous expressions of outrage, Jared Wilson posted a defence of his quote from Douglas Wilson (also since removed):

Jared Wilson is a “Complementarian”, a euphemistic term for a group of Christians who support a hierarchy between men and women which, unsurprisingly, is in favour of men. Among Christian evangelicals, there is a rigorous ongoing debate between “Complementarians” and “Egalitarians”, the latter group opposing gender hierarchy, to some extent. While the Complementarian-Egalitarian division is the basic line of opposition, there are also – as Michael Bird and others maintain – various degrees of Complementarians, ranging from “Hard Complementarians” to “Soft Complementarians”. So Bird (Soft Complementarian) opposes Wilson (Hard Complementarian) … to some extent.

I tried to make clear that I don’t think the Wilsons are malicious or deliberately trying to liken martial [sic] sex to rape. But I think these comments are incendiary, needless, hurtful, unbiblical, insensitive, and do not help the complementarian cause.
- Michael Bird, Sensitive Soft Complementarian, “Sex is What I do WITH my Wife, Not TO my Wife: A Response to the Wilsons at TGC”, Euangelion, 18 July 2012

Let’s see, a man “penetrates”, “conquers”, and “colonises” a woman. I would make a guess that Douglas Wilson most probably sanctifies what many of us would refer to quite simply as “rape” as The Biblical View of Marriage. I truly believe that he is sincere in his belief; it’s just that Douglas does not begin to appreciate that his expression of divinely sanctioned sexual intercourse in fact condones and even advocates aggressive and violent sexual attacks on women. He just doesn’t see it. He undoubtedly also sincerely believes that what he describes would be what is best for women. But why stop with Douglas Wilson’s intent? Given Douglas Wilson’s use of a group of violent terms for sex (and despite his odd protests that the terms “penetrate”, “conquer”, and “colonise” can be used in really quite nice ways), it is obvious that we should read him with more than a little suspicion. For even though Douglas Wilson is speaking from ignorance, his words quite obviously do in fact liken marital sex to rape.

Or, to employ Bird’s malapropism from the quote above, what Douglas Wilson in fact advocates is “Martial Sex”. (Now there is the quintessential example of a Freudian slip!)

But Bird is not the only Complementarian stating that he disagrees with the Wilsons, while at the same time saying that we should really respect their honest intent. Here’s Denny Burk:

Egalitarians [e.g., McKnight, Held Evans, and Kirk] are out in full-force claiming that Doug Wilson, Jared Wilson, and TGC are openly supporting rape and abuse of women. If authorial intent means anything, then that is a slander. That is not what Doug Wilson meant, nor is it what Jared Wilson intended by quoting him. We can quibble over the language, but the false accusations need to stop.
- Denny Burk, Harder Complementarian, comment to “Sex is What I do WITH my Wife, Not TO my Wife: A Response to the Wilsons at TGC”, Euangelion, 18 July 2012

Denny Burk, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also wants to let matters rest with Douglas Wilson’s intent – which is, as noted, fairly much completely ignorant that what he is advocating amounts to rape. But whatever happened to critical reading? Surely an Associate Professor of Biblical Studies is capable of reading between the lines and … oh hang on, I see: “Southern Baptist Theological Seminary”. OK, well, then, I guess because Wilson said it, Burk believes it, and that settles it.

It is worth noting that Denny Burk makes the same Freudian slip as Bird, referring not to “marital sex” to describe Douglas Wilson’s views, but to “martial sex”. Ironically, this whole scandal first erupted when Jared Wilson got hot under the collar about the portrayal of B&D in the novel 50 Shades of Grey. But why is it that the (soft and hard) complementarians are the ones banging on about “martial sex”?

Yet I guess psychoanalytic criticism isn’t at the top of the teaching menu down at the local Baptist Seminary.

Further reading:

Complementarians
Bekah Wilson, “Them’s Fightin’ Words”
Nancy Ann Wilson, “10 Reasons to be Glad When Your Husband is Slandered”
Heather Linn, “A Note for Rachel Held Evans”
Douglas Wilson, “The Politics of Outrage”
Douglas Wilson, “Probably Not! She Thundered”
Douglas Wilson, “Cloacina, Goddess of Sewers”
Michael Bird, “Jared Wilson takes down TGC Post”

Others
Ryan K. Knight, “Doug Wilson on The Gospel Coalition: How Christian Patriarchy Turns Sex into Rape and Pregnancy into Slavery”
Grace, “Conquer, colonize, enslave: On redefining words and rewriting history”
Paul Burkhart, “The Gospel Coalition & Sex as Conquest: Jared Wilson, you’re better than this {1}”
Paul Burkhart, “The Gospel Coalition & Sex as Conquest: it’s still misogyny, however unintended {2}”
Rachel Held Evans, “Thank you, Gospel Coalition and Jared Wilson”
Rachel Held Evans, “Some final thoughts on The Gospel Coalition, sex, and submission”
Rachel Held Evans, “The Gospel Coalition, sex, and subordination”
Eric Reitan, “‘Benign’ Christian Patriarchy and 50 Shades of Grey: A Response to Jared Wilson“
Eric Reitan, “The Piety That Lies Between: A Progressive Christian Perspective”
Libby Ann, “Marital Rape? Doug Wilson on Dominance and Submission in the Marriage Bed“
Dianna Anderson, “The Writer’s Burden“
Scot McKnight, “Thank you”
Scot McKnight, “Take it down”
Eric Rodes, “50 Shades Of Circling The Wagons”
Sarah Over the Moon, “Rape: A Punishment for Egalitarians?”
Chaplain Mike, “Sex, Authority/Submission, and Remarkable Insensitivity”

The Complaints Board of the ASA ruled that ”the statement was provocative enough to be likely to cause serious offence to those people who were dealing with, or knew people who were dealing with, cancer.” The Board added that “the public nature of the billboard was likely to cause widespread offence in the light of generally prevailing community standards.” Furthermore, the Board ruled that the church billboard was in breach of the provision in the Code of Ethics which required “Truthful presentation”, and that “the advertisement was likely to deceive or mislead people.” Although the Board accepted that the church believed that Jesus could heal people from cancer, it ruled that the church’s claim to cure cancer was not substantiated. Contrary to some media headlines, the Board did not go so far as to rule explicitly that Jesus could not cure cancer, but in ruling that the billboard was “likely to deceive or mislead people” implied that the claim was untrue.

What is the ASA? The ASA is merely a private society, its membership comprised of various media and advertising entities. Now, given the propensity of commercial advertisers to tell lies, exaggerate, and annoy the public, just to make a buck, generally speaking it is a good thing that advertisers have got together to self-regulate.

But it’s another thing altogether to issue pronouncements on a local church’s misguided but honestly intended billboard. Who the hell do the ASA board members think they are? Do they think they are New Zealand’s Morality Police, pronouncing on any words they discover littering the landscape? On this occasion, the ASA has stepped way over the line. An organisation that is intended to self-regulate the advertising industry should simply be ignored when it makes pompous pronouncements on a local church’s billboard. If the Equippers’ Church weren’t such pious charismatic evangelicals, they should probably just tell the ASA where to go.

But is it offensive to cancer sufferers in the neighbourhood? Of course. However, silencing an honest (albeit deluded) church’s proclamation sets a dangerous precedent. Who will be the next minority group to be silenced because their views or behaviour don’t agree with New Zealand’s pragmatic yet passionless middle-class values? While I personally consider that there is as much chance of Jesus healing somebody from cancer as there is for the Earth to start spinning in the other direction, if we don’t defend the right of the ignorant, the atavistic, and even the despicable to peddle their absurd views, we support a system which denies freedom of speech to those minorities who most need it. 

As Noam Chomsky said, in defending a famous French holocaust denier’s right to express his denial of the Jewish holocaust (despite Chomsky’s opinion that holocaust denial was quite incorrect, and the holocaust marked a terrible period in human history): “It is elementary that freedom of expression (including academic freedom) is not to be restricted to views of which one approves, and that it is precisely in the case of views that are almost universally despised and condemned that this right must be most vigorously defended.”

Fortunately, the ASA has no authority to enforce the rulings which they freely promulgate. So, the Equippers’ Church can decide for themselves whether they will use the same billboard again, or whether a different message might be a more persuasive evangelistic tool.

For context, see Ben Witherington the Third, Michael Bird, James Crossley, Michael Bird, Michael Bird (with some Robert Gagnon and Robert Gagbag).

The Divine Revelation, entitled Paradise Landing, includes important insights for neuroscience, including this one:

From Jeffery Jonathan ("Joshua") Davis - Paradise Landing (a Divine Revelation)

And this one:

Also from Jeffery Jonathan ("Joshua") Davis - Paradise Landing (a Divine Revelation)

And this one, too:

More Revelation from Jeffery Jonathan ("Joshua") Davis - Paradise Landing (a Divine Revelation)

Read the entire Divine Revelation on the University of Otago’s academic research website, OUR Archive.

Joshua Davis is a recent Otago University Masters graduate in Bioethics. He will be presenting seminars  supported by Professor Grant Gillett in Dunedin this week, at The Otago  Room,  Downstairs,  OUSA  Clubs and  Societies  Centre,  Albany  St Dunedin  (opposite the University Library): 

• Thursday 16th  February  2012  4pm-5pm
• Friday  17th  February  2012   4pm-5pm

Meet a University of Otago Master of Science (with credit) graduate and the author of The Brain of Melchizedek! See you there!!

But a few of its key scientific findings are worth highlighting here.

Davis explains that his broad goal is:

to understand and communicate the neuro-genetic implications of Spiritual and Behavioural Values to the attainment of Social Harmony and Peace. This is why the thesis bears the name “The Brain of Melchizedek”, in honour to the King of Righteousness, The King of Peace (as portrayed in the Torah) the bearer of a brain encoded with a map to living in harmony and peace. (p. ii)

Davis distinguishes Religious Beliefs from Spiritual Values in a manner that may be familiar from mainstream popular culture:

Religious Beliefs are associated with Behavioural Values while Holiness, Wholeness and the State of Being Peace is associated with Spiritual Values available to any human being regardless of his or her behavioural map of reality. (p. v; cf. p. 3)

Davis claims not to follow any Religious Beliefs, but to uphold what he sees as the spiritual “essence” of figures such as Jesus (“Yeshua ben Yosef”) or Melchizedek:

What is important here regardless of the reader’s belief about the existence of people like Melchizedek and Yeshua Ben Yosef is the kind of wisdom and understanding about consciousness that their words and actions carry both in joyful or adversary situations. These characters and personalities identify themselves with The Creator’s essence and attributes and are inviting their fellow human beings to embrace the possibility to tap into the spiritual nature of human existence to find peace and harmony and to develop a brain capable of a higher cognitive map attuned to God’s Consciousness and the universe at large, its environment. (p. 5)

Despite his purported rejection of specific religious traditions, Davis sees fit to warn “theists, agnostics or Buddhists who are unacquainted with a personal relationship with The Creator” of the “extremely high cost” of rejecting the existence of a Creator, even if the probability of such is shown – by material, non-spiritual, empirical methods – to be very low (pp. 5-6). This allusion to Pascal’s Wager, together with his adherence to Jesus perhaps indicate the particular colour of his allegedly ”universal” Spiritual Values. Davis also issues

an invitation for the reader to find the ‘Voice of God’ within their own garden of consciousness where the seeds of the Tree of Life have been planted to allow those ones who will embrace this exploration in the manner of a Tzadik/Scientist or Prophet/Scientist to taste of the fruits of this tree. Spiritual Values like Love, Grace, Truth, Certainty to name a few might eventually lead to one of those ‘aha’ moments in which a person can discern for him or herself what kind of behaviours and lifestyles are more akin to the expression of those universal and transcendental experiences suited to his or her own Personality, Character, Identity, and cultural and social context, the expression of his or her I AM Identity in the world. (p. 9)

Although his thesis is partly grounded in a scattering of quotes from scholars, ranging from neuroscientists to quantum physicists, Davis bases his thesis centrally on “spiritual wisdom … derived from my personal relationship with the Creator (revelation and insights)” (p. v):

As you read this work you will realize that most of the words of Torah and the stories of Israel are treated as my own instead of being quoted the way any other references are quoted. This is because I am one with the body, a fundamental part in the unity of this unbroken chain of divine revelation, both physically and spiritually (p. 4).

In this regard, Davis notes that he wrote an earlier work, Paradise Landing, after receiving it as a “Divine Revelation … in the desert of Australia” (p. 1). The University of Otago has kindly also made this ”Divine Revelation” available on its academic website. As Davis explains in the Introduction to his Masters thesis,

Paradise Landing contains twenty one prayers of twenty one different Spiritual Values whose source is the Source of All Life. The prayers are grouped by seven colours and the three values associated to the fifth level or colour are Energy, Mastery and Triunity, mathematically referred as 555 in the context of the revelation and also associated to colour blue as in the light spectrum of blue. (p. 1)

Davis claims to be attempting no less than a synthesis of Science and Spirituality, subjectivity and objectivity, the material and immaterial realms. Accordingly, the proper point of departure for such an endeavour, he claims, is not in any traditional academic procedure or methodology, but in a prayer to “the Triunity” of “Father-Mother-Love” – and this he sets out in full in his Introduction (p. 2). Davis ambitiously seeks to prove that “the spiritual field, the quantum field and the matter field are intrinsically and dynamically interwoven together, as are mind, body and soul, part of an underlying unity which is only dichotomized through the accidents of limited perception and linguistic limitations” (pp. 4-5).

Davis notes that the Spirit has led him, in “childlike playfulness”, to address the reader as “Dear Reader” thoughout the thesis. The same Spirit licensed him to refer to ”some authors by their first name to relate to them in an intimate, personal, intersubjective way” (6). Indeed, the thesis is punctuated with almost as many “Dear Reader”s as irregular capitalisations – the latter feature which he explains in this way:

Words like Personality, Character and Identity which I am attributing to a personal gift of The Creator in a personal spiritual relationship have also been capitalized, along with all the names of the Source of all Spiritual Values like for example The Creator, the Most High God, I Am the Love, or Unity to name a few, because of the sacredness and special meaning that they uphold for my person, my immediate blood line, the family of Israel at large, both the known and the lost tribes of Israel and the majority of the people who still stand in awe and reverence to those names, essences and inner spaces in all cultures, traditions and beliefs for all times.

In four chapters, Davis pieces together a tissue of quotations from various scientists, philosophers, and theologians who defend a spiritual dimension to humankind, who “allow themselves to move beyond the materialistic view of human function” (p. 17). This has the further consquence of providing

an open door to find meaning and inspiration to explore a universe which is populated with caring, loving and constructive human beings, a paradigm which sees Goodness, Beauty, Truth and Harmony available to all creatures (and particularly scientists, philosophers and theologians) to overcome selfishness, fear, greed, and ignorance based on transitional and temporal structures for physical survival, destructive behaviour and war.

Have a read of Jeffery Jonathan (“Joshua”) Davis’s complete thesis on the University of Otago academic research website, OUR Archive.

The University of Otago received first place among all New Zealand universities in the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) review in 2010. Academic performance is matched by its financial success: total revenue for the University of Otago in 2010 from student fees and other sources was $586,400,000, and the net surplus  (before unusual and non-recurring items) was $34,500,000. This is  up from $304,200,000 total revenue and $7,000,000 net surplus in 2000.