2018 Whitley Lecture
Helen Paynter delivered the 2018 Whitley lecture based on this abstract:
Dead and Buried?
Attending to the voices of the victim in the Old Testament and today.
Whether we are reading a modern news article about a violent atrocity, or one of the shocking Old Testament stories of violence, it is important that we ask certain questions of ourselves and of the written account. Whose interests are being served by the telling of this story? Whose voices are not being heard? Whose lives are considered worthy of grieving, and whose deaths are regarded as forgettable? What responsibility does reading this story place upon me? This lecture will aim to consider these questions and so provide some tools to assist us as we read Old Testament stories of violence.
The lecture can be purchased here.
Click below to watch a video of the lecture delivered in Paisley.
Helen wrote this blog as she developed her response.
Helen was a hospital doctor until 2008, when she was called to Baptist ministry.
She is now part time Associate Minister of Victoria Park Baptist Church, Bristol, and Research Fellow at Bristol Baptist College. She teaches Old Testament and biblical languages at a number of theological colleges and universities. Her PhD thesis was on aspects of humour in Kings, but her current research area is in how to read Old Testament narratives of violence, and how they relate to modern problems of violence and migration. She lives in Bristol with her husband and three teenage daughters.
| ‘There’s a child being beaten in the room next door.’ | In September 2014 I accepted the invitation to deliver the travelling Whitley lecture in 2018. Sadly, I had to disabuse my daughters of the idea I would be on a sell-out tour with a bus, a bunch of burly roadies, and adoring fans at each new venue.
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Click here for more about the Whitley lecture
The 2017 Whitley Lecture was entitled the The Pioneering Evangelicalism of Dan Taylor (1738-1816) by Richard Pollard, Minister and Team Leader, Fishponds Baptist Church, Bristol.
The 2016 Whitley Lecture was Church Without Walls: Post-Soviet Baptists in the Ukrainian Revolution 2013-14 by Joshua Searle, Tutor in Theology and Public Thought and Assistant Director of Postgraduate Research at Spurgeon's College.
Click here to download previous Whitley Lectures.