Unit offered alternatively as:
Undergraduate: CT3710W or Postgraduate: CT9710W
Postgraduate: 24 points DM
-
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of this unit, it is expected that students will be able to:
Undergraduate
- Articulate the ways in which theology relates to context, with particular reference to Australian rural contexts.
- Identify and interpret the social, environmental and spiritual needs of a rural community.
- Describe and engage both challenges and opportunities of missional work in a rural context.
- Create a personal and community-based plan of missional engagement within a particular rural context.
- Identify and apply biblical passages which shape faith in a rural context.
Postgraduate
- Articulate the ways in which theology relates to context, with particular reference to Australian rural contexts.
- Identify and interpret the social, environmental and spiritual needs of a rural community.
- Describe and engage both challenges and opportunities of missional work in a rural context.
- Create a personal and community-based plan of missional engagement within a particular rural context.
- Identify and apply biblical passages which shape faith in a rural context.
- Develop a theology of land and ministry.
-
Assessment
Undergraduate
- Book review (1,000 words) (20%)
- Essay (2,000 words) (40%)
- Weekly forum posts (2,000 words) (40%)
Postgraduate
- One book review (1,500 words) (25%)
- One essay (3,000 words) (40%)
- Weekly forum posts (2,500 words) (35%)
-
Recommended reading
Set texts recommended for purchase are highlighted in blue
- Berry, Wendell and Norman Wirzba. The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays. Berkeley, CA:
Counterpoint, 2002 - Brodie, Marc and Graeme Davison. Struggle Country: The Rural Ideal in Twentieth Century Australia. Melbourne: Monash University ePress, 2005
- Brueggemann, Walter. The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith. Minneapolis, MN:Fortress Press, 2002
- Davis, Ellen F. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009
- Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2011
- Habel, Norman C. The Birth, the Curse and the Greening of Earth: An Ecological Reading of Genesis 1–11. The Earth Bible vol. 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011
- Hawkes, Nicholas. The Country Is Different: Ministry and Hope in Rural Australia. Collingwood, Victoria: JBCE, 1995
- Inge, John. A Christian Theology of Place. Aldershot, Hampshire, England; Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, 2003
- Theodore Hiebert, “The Human Vocation: Origins and Transformations in Chri stian Traditions,” in Hessel, Dieter T. and Rosemary Radford Reuther (eds). Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-being of Earth and Humans. Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, 2000
- Main, George. Heartland: The Regeneration of Rural Place. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005.
- Muenstermann, Ingrid “Too Bad to Stay or Too Good to Leave? Two Generations of Women with a
Farming Background: What Is Their Attitude Regarding the Sustainability of the Family Farm?,” in Luck, Gary W. Demographic Change in Australia’s Rural Landscapes Implications for Society and the Environment. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. - Rickard, Lauren. “Critical Breaking Point?” The Effects of Drought and Other Pressures on Farming
Families.” Department of Agriculture. January 1, 2008. Accessed February 12, 2014.
http://www.daff.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/842246/Birchip_Cropping_Group.pdf - Stehlik, Daniela “Australian Drought as Lived Experience: Social and Community Impacts,” in Beyond Drought People, Policy and Perspectives, edited by . Collingwood, Vic.: CSIRO, 2003
- Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004
- Berry, Wendell and Norman Wirzba. The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays. Berkeley, CA: