Kōrero Mai: Earth, Our Parish
Our theological praxis and inquiries are informed by Moana and Māori epistemologies and lived experiences that contest and unsettle dominant theological doctrines and ways of doing theology. Our decolonial alternative theological reimaginations are reflected in our academic programmes and courses.
Our first book, Theology as Threshold: Invitations from Aotearoa New Zealand was released at the 2022 Conference of Te Hāhi Weteriana o Aotearoa Methodist Church of New Zealand. As faculty, each of us works within our own research fields and where possible we collaborate with other theologians and biblical scholars to both inform and guide our work with the college and the church.
As well as publishing our work internationally, we also gather people by hosting annual conferences including Talanoa and OBSA. This year we are organising two conferences. The first one will be our Wesley Symposium from 24 - 25 May, focusing on the future of Methodist theological education in Aotearoa and Oceania. The second conference will be held 27 - 28 September and explores the implications of Artificial Intelligence on theological education. The College will aim to develop the papers from both conferences for publication.
As the tertiary theological education provider of Te Hāhi, we have decided to publish a series of congregational resources to support the work of the church. Kōrero Mai is the name that we have given to this series. The first book in this series is entitled Earth, Our Parish. As we observe the climate justice decade, this is our contribution to the church to facilitate deeper reflections and engagements.
It took us more than two years to complete this project. There are eleven short chapters written by the teaching staff of the College on various topics related to climate justice from Moana and Māori perspectives. Tara Tautari, our General Secretary, wrote the foreword, and Dr Michael Mawson from the University of Auckland wrote the afterword. We express our sincere gratitude to Gillian Laird for the beautiful and meaningful artwork on the cover page of this publication and our first publication, Theology as Threshold. We are currently working on the second book in the Kōrero Mai series. This book will focus on Te Hāhi and Te Tiriti. We are developing our approach with some potential chapters on reStorying or reSigning Te Tiriti, Climate – Whenua and Wai, Migration and Migrant Communities, Liturgy and Worship, Education and Culture. We hope to launch this second book in the series during the National Conference in Wellington later this year.