Journal Articles by Andrew Clark-Howard
Religions, 2024
This paper explores recent discussions on the nature and character of Christian doctrine and doct... more This paper explores recent discussions on the nature and character of Christian doctrine and doctrinal arrangement within leading accounts of systematic theology, that is, the attempt to offer an integrated and cohesive account of the central commitments of the Christian faith. Through such discussion, I argue that the perennial epistemological problem systematic theology faces in its attempts to speak about a (divine) object who definitionally exceeds such speech is related to the specific ethical problem of systematic theology’s performances as a hegemonic discipline, one which often functions to exclude non-white, non-male perspectives. In light of these challenges, I contend that “positive” reasons for continuing systematic theology remain remote; systematic theology cannot be saved. Yet neither can it be avoided, lest such problems are willfully repeated and because of the ways systematic theology continues to be a leading site of doctrinal reflection within Christian education and intellectual reflection. I therefore conclude this paper by exploring two apocalyptic responses to the crises facing systematic theology which advocate for its continuation precisely by calling for its “end”.
Scottish Journal of Theology, 2023
John Webster and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are two theologians invested in prioritising certain concept... more John Webster and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are two theologians invested in prioritising certain conceptions of divine transcendence within their respective theological projects. Specifically, both appeal to conceptions of divine transcendence and agency amidst what they understand to be the problematic naturalisation of theological discourse in modern Protestant theology, particularly within its liberal German traditions. The way they understand transcendence, however, and the doctrinal loci they choose to affect it, leads to different conceptualisations of the possibilities, scope and organisation of systematic theology. Where Webster (especially in his later work) seeks to prioritise God's immanent perfection and aseity through theology proper, Bonhoeffer instead emphasises God's freedom pro me within the person of Jesus Christ. These differences in first theological foundations have important consequences for the shape of theological method and doctrinal architecture within the practice of contemporary systematic theology.
Practical Theology, 2022
The British colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand and the development of nineteenth century settle... more The British colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand and the development of nineteenth century settler society occurred within the confines of the settler imaginary. This article argues that a further specification of the Christian settler imaginary captures Christianity’s influence upon the entrenchment of whiteness in Aotearoa. Within the spheres of education, land, and war, British settlers employed distorted theo-logics to provide divine justification for their colonising strategies and legitimise their destructive forces. By examining the historic fusion of Christianity and colonisation in these arenas we seek to lay bare the truth of the Christian settler imagination as a repentant remembrance in service of a different future.
Pacific Journal of Theological Research, 2021
John Kendrick Archer (1865-1949) was a New Zealand Baptist minister and politician who served an ... more John Kendrick Archer (1865-1949) was a New Zealand Baptist minister and politician who served an active ministerial and political career within the Baptist Union of New Zealand and New Zealand Labour Party. Despite his enigmatic and unique blend of political and pastoral offices—serving in various English and New Zealand Baptist pastorates, as president of both the Baptist Union of New Zealand and the New Zealand Labour Party, three-term Mayor of Christchurch, and appointed member of the Legislative Council—Archer remains an underexamined figure within both the religious and political history of New Zealand and in wider Baptist studies. This article examines the first decade of Archer’s time in New Zealand where he emigrated from England, draws together an analysis of the social and political currents which shaped his context, examines his own turbulent career within the years of World War I, and offers a reading of a selection of Archer’s preaching and other addresses. I argue that the period between two sermons delivered to the Assembly of Baptist Union of New Zealand—“Jesus Only” in 1910 and “Covetousness” in 1918—represents a maturing and crystallising of Archer’s public theological vision which he pursued with force into his later years. Finally, I conclude by setting this analysis of Archer within a paradigm of public theology in order to offer insights for the field of Baptist studies and theology.
Thesis by Andrew Clark-Howard
Carey Graduate School, Dissertation, 2020
This dissertation investigates the dilemmas of race, identity, and reconciliation amidst whitenes... more This dissertation investigates the dilemmas of race, identity, and reconciliation amidst whiteness and ongoing colonial racism within Christianity, particularly in the context of Pākehā identity and settler-indigenous relationships in Aotearoa New Zealand. Offering an account of two leading theologians working at the intersection of race, reconciliation, and identity, this essay integrates these findings with contemporary research on colonial history and whiteness in Aotearoa New Zealand to offer a theologically informed account of post-settler Pākehā identity. I maintain that, rather than being a problem to be solved, the condition of whiteness is a resistant force to the gospel which, when considered theologically, requires ongoing purgative and repentant interrogation from within whiteness itself. Racial conditions under colonial whiteness often serve to blind the powerful to their own power and further colonial impulses. Therefore, learning to think theologically about race, Pākehā identity, and reconciliation requires a posture of relational apophaticism and unsettlement amidst settler-indigenous relationships in order to discern the surprise of God’s speaking through the unknowable other, insofar as this pertains to Māori-Pākehā encounters in Aotearoa New Zealand. Such theological race discourse requires further exploration from within the context of settler societies such as Aotearoa where settler-indigenous relationships are the primary racial arrangement.
Book Chapters by Andrew Clark-Howard
Awake, Emerging and Connected: Meditations on Justice from the Missing Generation, 2024
Bonhoeffer was a theologian of privilege who at various points within his own life and work grapp... more Bonhoeffer was a theologian of privilege who at various points within his own life and work grappled with his privileged position in the world. He is therefore a useful example of a theologian who spoke to power from within power, seeking to account for the manifest injustices of his own historical moment. In this chapter, I seek to understand Bonhoeffer as a paradigmatic witness for white settler Christians such as myself seeking justice amidst the arrangements of settler colonialism and its entanglements with Christianity in Oceania today. Drawing from an analysis of Gustavo Gutiérrez, Bonhoeffer’s “view from below” is thus best understood as a useful diagnosis into the ways in which structural power blinds theologians to the presence of Christ in history. Such attention to the “view from below” as a person who recognises their social location “from above,” so to speak, teaches Christians entangled with power and structural privilege important lessons about the limits one’s history places on the ability to identify Christ’s hiddenness among the dispossessed.
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Journal Articles by Andrew Clark-Howard
Thesis by Andrew Clark-Howard
Book Chapters by Andrew Clark-Howard