When?
Tuesday, 4 February 2025, 9:00am-2:45pm (GMT +11 Australian Eastern Daylight Time).
Where?
Moore Theological College, 1 King St, Newtown, Sydney, NSW, Australia, and via live stream.
Cost:
In-person attendance – $45.00 – $60.00
Online attendance – $30.00
The Priscilla & Aquila Centre’s research conference is for women. Its purpose is to grow an academic learning community of evangelical Reformed complementarian women.
This conference would benefit women in vocational ministry. It also seeks to encourage Christian women interested in writing projects and theological study, whether at an undergraduate or postgraduate level.
It is being held on the day following the annual Priscilla & Aquila Centre conference to maximise travel time for those coming from greater distances.
Main Speaker: Nicole Starling
Nicole Starling
Women, memory and the task of the evangelical historian.
Talk 1: Unremembered women – stories of nineteenth century women left out of the history books.
Talk 2: Misremembered women – reframing of the stories of a couple who made it in.
In these two talks I will speak about the challenges of researching the lives of Christian women from the nineteenth century. There are so many Christian women who made significant contributions to their churches and communities in their lifetime and yet have not been remembered. On the other hand there are many women made it into the history books but in a selective or distorted version of their story. Their Christian faith has either been conveniently left out of their story – or has been misremembered in some way.
Like all historians, I see my work as having both constructive and critical elements to it. And as an evangelical Christian woman, working in the field of nineteenth century religious history, that constructive element of my work includes the task of digging up the stories of some of the forgotten and neglected characters and groups and movements that played an important role in their time and contributed in ways we might not realise to who we are today. And the critical element of my work includes the opportunity I have to grapple with the discussions that arise within the scholarly literature, and redress, where I can, some of the imbalances and distortions that can be imposed on the past—especially where they arise from the philosophical and political and religious understandings and misunderstandings of those who write the histories.
In my two talks I will tell the stories of women like Mary Courtenay Smith and Mary Ann Thomas who have been almost entirely forgotten by the writers of the histories. And I’ll retell the stories of women like Elizabeth Nicholls and Marianne Thornton, in a way that attempts to redress how the have been misremembered or selectively remembered in the history books.
Nicole Starling lectures in Christianity in History at Morling College, where she also serves as Academic Dean. Nicole completed her doctorate and post-doctoral fellowship through Macquarie University, focusing on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian religious history. Her first book, Evangelical Belief and Enlightenment Morality in the Australian Temperance Movement: 1832-1930, is to be published as part of the Routledge “Studies in Evangelicalism” series and is due out in early 2024. She is married to David, they have four children and are members of Petersham Baptist Church.
Other Speakers
Jocelyn Loane
Short talk: My writing process. Jocelyn will speak about her writing process as she wrote her popular-level book on motherhood.
Jocelyn Loane works part-time as a chaplain at Moore. She is married to Ed, and they have served together in full-time ministry since 2008. Currently, they are involved in a residential university ministry. They have five children and meet with the church family at Cammeray Anglican.
Claire Smith
Short talk: My writing process. Claire will share her process for writing at an academic level.
Claire Smith lives in Sydney with her husband, Rob. They attend Naremburn Cammeray Anglican Church. Her doctoral thesis examining the place and practice of education in early Christian communities is published as Pauline Communities as ‘Scholastic Communities’: A Study of the Vocabulary of ‘Teaching’ in 1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (WUNT 2/335, Tübingen: Siebeck, 2012). She has contributed chapters to many books, most recently, “Ethics of Teaching and Learning in Christianity Today. Insights from the Book of Titus” in Ready for Every Good Work (Titus 3:1): Implicit Ethics in the Letter to Titus (WUNT 1/484, Contexts and Norms of New Testament Ethics 13. Tübingen: Siebeck, 2022). She is also the author of God’s Good Design: What the Bible Really Says about Men and Women (2012, 2019), and The Appearing of God our Savior: a Theology of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (2025). She is currently writing a commentary on Titus.
Kate Snell
Short talk: My research & writing process. In 2024, Kate completed her MA (Theol), writing a paper on Theological and Pastoral Perspectives on menopause. Kate will share her research and writing process.
Kate is the Dean of Students at Mary Andrews College in Sydney. She has previously served in parish ministry and as a school chaplain. Kate recently completed her MA (Theol) at Moore. She is a member of St Philip’s South Turramurra, where her husband, Brian, is an Associate Minister. Brian and Kate have young children.
