Webinars

The South African Church in the Anti-Apartheid Liberation Struggle

Under the 1985 state of emergency in South Africa – a time of deep crisis – the Kairos document challenged the church’s collaboration with and complicity in the apartheid system. Forty years later, in this contemporary moment of global crisis, the Church once again needs to be challenged for its collaboration with and complicity in present day systems of oppression and domination. In this webinar, Dr Gamedze explores some of the prophetic stories through Freedom Theologies: South Africa – an interactive game to engage histories of South African Church resistance to apartheid.

About the speaker:
Thandi Gamedze is a South African poet, theologian, cultural worker, and educator based at the University of the Western Cape’s Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice as a Senior Researcher.

‘New Wine and Old Wine Skins’: Re-forming Anglican Ecclesiology in Jamaica

Drawing on the colonial legacy of the Anglican Church in Jamaica (1825–1843), The Revd Garfield Campbell explores how Christopher Lipscomb, Jamaica’s first bishop, navigated slavery, governance, and reform – crafting what he calls an “ecclesiology of compromise.” This webinar invites reflection on how these historical entanglements continue to shape Anglican identity and theology across the Anglophone Caribbean today.

About the speaker:
The Revd Garfield Campbell is a second-year PhD researcher at the University of Leeds. His research explores Anglican missiology in 19th-century Jamaica through the lens of conversion, power, and agency. An ordained Anglican priest in the Province of the West Indies, he brings both pastoral insight and an interdisciplinary academic approach shaped by theology, history, and postcolonial studies.

Ecumenism of Blood in a Multicultural Context

Drawing on ideas of human dignity and love, The Revd Dr Ishaya explores the impact of religious persecution in Nigeria’s multi-cultural society and what it looks like to be true neighbours to one another in a diverse society.

 

About the speaker:

The Revd Dr Isahaya Anthony is the inaugural Commonwealth Theologian in Residence at Westminster Abbey. Dr Anthony is also Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Kwoi, Nigeria and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Johannesburg.

Agency of the Child and Child-focussed Theologies

About the speaker:

The Revd Dr Rohan Gideon is Professor of Christian Theology at the United Theological College, Bengaluru (India) and a priest of the Church of South India (CSI). He earned a doctorate from the University of Manchester, UK, with a focus on Children, Rights, and Theological Methods. His involvement in the area of children, rights, and Christian theology includes: publishing books, leading conferences and advising the Church of South India on its Child Protection Policy.

*We apologise that the first part of this recording is missing*

To Conquer and Subdue: An Ecological Reading of Wilderness in Jeremiah 17:5-8 and its Colonial Reverberations

About the speaker:

Dr Emily Colgan is a Pakeha researcher in Biblical Studies and the Manukura/Principal at St John’s Theological College/Hoani Tapu te Kaikauwhau i te Rongopai in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research focuses on the relationship between the Bible and contemporary social imaginaries, asking about the degree to which the ideologies contained within biblical texts continue to inform communities in the present. Emily is particularly interested in ecological representations in the Bible, as well as depictions of gender and violence.

Mission, Power and Dialogue: Theology of Mission in the Age of Rising Nationalism

In this webinar, The Revd Dr Joshua Samuel explores Hindu nationalism and the experiences of Dalits and Christian Dalits in India. Connecting these issues to North American religious politics, he proposes a theology of mission rooted in marginalised voices. The talk invites a reimagining of mission as power-aware, dialogical, and shaped by grassroots communities.

About the speaker:

The Revd Dr Joshua Samuel is an ordained minister of the Church of South India currently serving in the Episcopal Church (USA). Alongside his parish ministry, he teaches Theology and Mission in New York and has briefly taught in Bangalore, India.

Read more:

Academia.edu profile – https://utsnyc.academia.edu/KadiveduJoshuaSamuel

Samuel, Joshua. Untouchable Bodies, Resistance, and Liberation. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 25 Feb. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004420052

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Transforming Theology Together

The inaugural in-person conference of USPG’s Fellowship of Anglican Scholars of Theology (FeAST), themed ‘Transformative Theologies: Rethinking Pedagogy, Praxis and Perspectives,’ has officially begun in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It brings together around 30 scholars from nearly 20 countries across the Anglican Communion including Argentina, Zimbabwe, India and the Solomon Islands.