A New Global Research Center
Founded at CTI in Princeton
(See this article in its context in CTI Centerings, Spring 2007 issue)
In May, a new international research network was launched at CTI. The Global Network for Public Theology brings together twenty five higher education institutions around the world that have designated research centers or research programs in theology and public issues. The network will facilitate research collaboration and the exchange of research staff, students and expertise among its member institutions. They share a common commitment to conducting action research and developing theological perspectives on local-global public issues, while learning from one another’s distinctive contexts and approaches in Asia, Oceania, Africa, the Americas and Europe.
The Global Network’s founding consultation in Princeton was sponsored by CTI. This continues the Center’s longstanding commitment to helping to develop research cultures in theology in parts of the world experiencing
profound social change or political upheaval. Earlier CTI consultations have supported theologians working in post-apartheid South Africa, post-Communist Eastern Europe and in post-colonial mission studies in India. This new network will strengthen the research capacity of smaller theological institutions in countries like Tonga, Indonesia, Nigeria, Argentina and Brazil by bringing them into partnership with established theological research centers in major universities and seminaries in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa, the UK, the Netherlands and the USA. It has already received the promise of long-term financial and administrative support from Charles Sturt University in Australia and Manchester University in the UK. These major international universities made a commitment in Princeton to host the research network from 2008 until 2014, after CTI hands over that responsibility to them next year.
During three intensive days of deliberation in Princeton Theological Seminary’s superb Erdman Hall conference facilities and over meals together in CTI’s Luce Hall, the forty participants in this founding consultation shared their different approaches to doing public theology. They learned from the work of established research centers in Stellenbosch, Canberra and Manchester. They held daily business meetings to discuss how they would work together as a collaborative research network in the future. The expertise and insights of all the participants were shared in an array of specialized workshops. This enabled a growing mutual understanding and consensus among the participants over the three days. By the final meeting, representatives of the twenty five member institutions were able to sign an agreed protocol on the aims and operation of the new research partnership. Appropriately, they all signed the founding document over a beautiful batik cloth from Indonesia, a gift from Jakarta Theological Seminary and a fitting symbol for this truly global network.
The Princeton consultation also saw the launch of the first issue of a new academic journal sponsored by the network, the International Journal of Public Theology, published by Brill. While the term ‘public theology’ is a contested one, with varied meanings and usages in the church and academy, this new global network and its international journal have created a welcome and timely ecumenical theological space for advanced research and informed debate on how the gospel may relate to public issues in the era of globalization.
William Storrar, Director
