ELM
Education for Life and Ministry
MAY MACLEOD LECTURE
2003
REV. DR ANDREW DUTNEY
Praying for
Peace
Learning
to pray
The Scottish preacher A.C.Craig delivered his 1953 Warrick
Lectures on the theme 'Preaching in a Scientific Age'. In
the first lecture he described an incident that took place
late in the 19th century, when the famous American
evangelist Dwight L. Moody was addressing a huge gathering
of children in the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh:1
In the course of his address he happened to ask the rhetorical question, 'What is prayer?' and was somewhat taken aback when hundreds of hands shot up. 'Very well,' he said, 'answer the question.' Whereupon a chorus of young voices recited the noble words of the Shorter Catechism: 'Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies.
I can just believe the story. I personally remember, from 1968, the last attempt to have Presbyterian children in the Taringa Primary School memorize the Catechism (or parts of it). The local minister who came to deliver Religious Instruction never got past the first question:
Q. 1 What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
But there we stalled. Sometimes I think it was because of the sublime beauty of that insight. He just wanted us to take that one lesson to heart and so he devoted several weeks to it. But I think it was actually because he became ill and was unable to continue coming to the school. In any case, we never made it to question 98. I never learned, in that crisp abstract way, what prayer is. And so when a theological student recently came to me and said that he didn't know what prayer is or how you do it, I had no short, sharp, shiny answer for him. We had to muddle through it together…as you and I shall again tonight.
But even without the benefit of the Westminster Shorter Catechism I learned some important things about prayer in my childhood. From the age of 8 I was nurtured to faith in a liberal Presbyterian congregation in suburban Brisbane. It was in this congregation that I learned to pray. Week by week, we prayed together for impossible things; impossible things like a legal acknowledgement of Aboriginal ownership of the land prior to white settlement, an end to apartheid in South Africa, an end to the Cold War, and even an end to the Bjelke-Peterson government in Queensland. These were all things that I recognized, even as a child, as impossible things. We might as well have been praying for rain. But that was the thing: I learned to pray by praying for impossible things.
And the particular impossible things that preoccupied that Congregation were all aspects of the one great impossible thing: peace. In Biblical terms, peace or shalom is not merely the absence of war. It is rightness or wholeness in every part of life; wholeness within the individual person, wholeness in relationships between people, and especially wholeness, rightness, justice in the web of relationships that make up communities, societies, nations and the whole of creation. As John Howard Yoder says, shalom or peace 'denotes things as they should be and shall be in the divine purpose.'2 I learnted to pray by praying for impossible things that were all aspects of the one big impossible thing: peace.
And when these impossible things began to happen, from the late 1980s, I was faced with a profoundly disturbing question: Did our prayers have anything to do with the events that unfolded? The Marbo decision of the High Court, the release of Nelson Mandela and the holding of free elections in South Africa, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and, most incredibly, the defeat of Joh Bjelke-Peterson: impossible, unforeseeable, but were they, in any sense, an answer to prayer?
That's the question I want to explore this evening. What is the relation between prayer and events in the world around us? It's a question that has a heightened urgency as we now find ourselves involved in a terrible cycle of international violence and warfare and, quite properly, have been devoting ourselves to the Christian duty of praying for peace.
But why don't we start somewhere easier; somewhere less conflicted? Let's start with the question of praying for rain.
Praying for rain
Earlier this year I received a letter from Uniting Church layman - an independent, progressive thinker who I've long respected for the sincerity and depth of his reflection on the faith. His letter to me was very brief, really just a cover note to a copy of a letter that he'd sent to the South Australian Moderator a couple of months before - a letter questioning the wisdom of her appeal to congregations of the synod to pray for rain. To give you the flavor of his concern I'll quote at some length from his letter to the Moderator.
I am a person who was nurtured in the best liberal traditions of South Australian Methodism. Because of this I acquired a life-long regard for the values of honesty, of righteous independence and Dissent, of respect and consideration for self and others, and many more admirable qualities that go towards making people moral and decent. …I was especially pleased to notice at the time of union, in the "Basis of Union" document, there was reference - in article 11 - to the Uniting Church's acknowledgement of faithful and scholarly interpreters of Scripture. The same article concerns itself with gratitude for having entered into its "inheritance of literary, historical and scientific enquiry which has characterized recent centuries." There is indeed much of which the Uniting Church can be proud. It has been prominent in the arena of emancipated Christian thought.
It was therefore with some concern that I heard a recent report which suggested that the Uniting Church might not be maintaining its liberal legacy with quite the uncompromising thoroughness which was once the hallmark of Methodism. I am quite aware of the enormous distress which has been caused across Australia by the recent drought, and one's heart goes out to those who are worst affected by it, but there are fundamental questions which must be asked about what constitutes an appropriate response to it.
There is increasing community awareness that drought is a phenomenon fundamental to our Australian environment and that faithful stewardship of this land therefore requires conscious revision of past policies and practices to achieve the best outcomes for both land and people. It must therefore be seen as counterproductive - at the very least - for people to encourage the attitude that some kind of advantageous manipulation of the climate can be achieved by means of requests for divine intervention.
My correspondent also enclosed the Moderator's reply.
As a farmer, I am most keenly aware of the environmental impacts that we as a nation have made on our beautiful country. I am also keenly aware of the impacts that the current drought pattern is having on the community, especially the rural community. …my experience of living in rural South Australia affirms for me that time of communal prayer can be a helpful time of people being connected in Christ. People are hurting during drought; people feel desperate. When prayer is offered, in whatever form the words take, there is a sense of being at one with each other, through our faith in, and love of, Jesus Christ.
I am not a theologian and would not even begin to debate the theological issue with you. Simply put, the rural person in me believes that the sense of caring and wishing to stand alongside another, is the essence of what some call 'praying for rain'.
So there it is. The layman's complaint was that the Moderator had called us to pray for rain; something that is in conflict with the best scientific understanding of what is good for this continent. Periodic drought, we now know, is characteristic of and suited to Australian ecology. But, as he saw it, the Moderator had called on congregations to ask God to intervene in this pattern and to make it rain - benefiting farmers and the nation's economy at the expense of the continent's ecology. The Moderator's reply - that 'praying for rain' was not actually a way to affect meteorological patterns but to bring people together in a time of distress - did not satisfy my correspondent.
I'm already in deep water…
My correspondent's concern was a significant one: God's not going to answer a prayer like that because, as we all know, its purpose (to make it rain) is essentially misguided. And we should not pray for things we know God should not give us. At the same time the Moderator's reply did not satisfy my correspondent: When we ask God to make it rain we don't expect God to make it rain but, rather, to give us a sense of solidarity in suffering drought.
And this is important: at one point at least it was clear that the two people were in agreement. Neither actually expected it to rain as a consequence of prayer. The dispute was really about whether it was worth reinforcing our alienation from the land and its distinctive ecology for the sake of bringing people together in a time of distress. It was about whether we should pray for rain, not about whether praying for rain might have meteorological consequences. No one seriously thought that.
Is anyone listening?
I'm not sure of the theological dimensions of the Moderator's position here - her take on the doctrine of God and of divine providence. But I do know where my correspondent stood. That's because, having received his challenging request for a clarification of the Uniting Church's prayer policy I did what any sensible theologian would do. I referred him to Robert Bos (the National Director of the Assembly's activities in Theology and Discipleship) and subsequently received copies of some short essays on the subject that they exchanged.
In my correspondent's case, it became clear that his presenting concern about the wisdom and ethics of praying for rain was related to a deeper concern about who or what we think we are directing our prayers to. He wrote that the persistent use of anthropomorphisms in theology and Christian religious life
…can foster theistic convictions about an intervening supreme being. The idea of having an almighty paternal being on side is superficially appealing, but ultimately to the detriment of believers. It encourages them in say, drought situations, to pray for rain…
Since there is no such 'intervening supreme being' prayer can only be, at best, 'some kind of heightened personal engagement which has positive results, either in extended awareness or emotional enhancement.'
A similar perspective on prayer has been popularized in recent years by John Shelby Spong. It begins with his critique of 'theism'. He defines 'theism' as belief in God as 'a being, supernatural in power, dwelling outside this world and invading the world periodically to accomplish the divine will.'3 He argues further that4
Prayer perpetuates the primary illusion of theism - namely, that we are not alone, that there is a personal power somewhere, which is greater than the limited power of humanity; and that this personal power can effectively deal with all these issues that lie beyond human competence to solve. Prayer began as, and continues to be, a primary attempt to exercise control in those areas of life where we sense ourselves to be out of control, ineffective, weak, victimized.'
Spong is careful to explain that he does believe in God, but not that kind of God. And he does pray daily, but not that kind of prayer.5 Rather, for him, prayer is the practice of traditional spiritual disciplines such as meditation and contemplation and more modern spiritual exercises in breathing and centering. Even after giving up on his so-called 'theistic God' Spong continued to devote two hours each day to such disciplines but, he reports, it was increasingly in daily life rather than his devotional life that he 'met and communed with God'.6
God was no longer found for me in the quiet places of retreat; now God was in the hurly-burly of a busy and sometimes troubling life. …Prayer became for me the way I lived… Preparation for prayer was the time spent in my office each morning recalling who I am, remembering where God is and how God can be met. So my definitions of what prayer is and what life is shifted totally, while the way I organized my life remained the same.
Now this isn't nearly as radical as it's made to sound. For a start, Spong's definition of 'theism' is extraordinarily narrow and corresponds to no mature Christian doctrine that I know of - not even the conservative Evangelical kind. It might reflect some kinds of fundamentalism but is hardly a revolution as far as mainstream Christianity is concerned. In fact his concept of God is almost identical to that of Paul Tillich who, in this field, brought traditional Lutheran doctrine into living contact with the central concerns of mid-20th century Western people. For Spong, as for Tillich, God is not a being but Being itself; the Ground or Source of All Being that transcends every attempt we make to capture its reality in human words, let alone human forms (anthropomorphisms). 7
But one thing Spong has made very clear here: The way we think about prayer is closely related to way we think about God. And the way we understand the relation between prayer and events in the world around us has a lot to do with the way we understand the relation between God and events in the world around us. So let's think some more about that. How is God related to events in the world around us?
'A religion must affirm something'
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz once wrote:8
What any particular religion affirms about the fundamental nature of reality may be obscure, shallow, or, all too often, perverse, but it must, if it is not to consist of the mere collection of received practices and conventional sentiments we usually refer to as moralism, affirm something.
If it's not to be reduced to mere moralism a religion (or a church) must affirm something about the fundamental nature of reality. And the Uniting Church does. It's something that was inherited in slightly different ways from the three churches that came into union.
In a nutshell, it's something like this. We affirm that God's purpose for all people and for the whole creation was revealed in Jesus Christ, was won and secured in his death and resurrection, and will be fulfilled in the end. We really believe that - even when all the evidence seems to contradict us. And believing that makes the whole world look different.
The Congregational/Presbyterian and Methodist traditions had different ways of affirming this Gospel (and it really is good news), but it was essentially the same Gospel…and it called for a church that was oriented towards the same purpose. It became a central theme in the theological affirmations of the Basis of Union.
The end of the world in the Basis of Union 9
Paragraph 3 integrates a description of the function and character of the church into its splendid summary of the missio Dei - our understanding of the eternal purposes of God revealed in the action of God in history. This view of the function and character of the church is largely organised around an affirmation of "the end in view for the whole creation".
The end of the world? This isn't a theme that we automatically associate with the Basis of Union, or with the Uniting Church. It's technically called 'eschatology', from the Greek word for 'final' or 'end' (eschaton). So it's the doctrine of the 'last things' - normally death, judgment, heaven and hell. When I was a teenager, around the time of church union, I thought the Uniting Church was pretty weak on all this scary stuff. But even though I regarded my own denomination as weak on eschatology, the truth is there is no making sense of the Basis of Union or the Uniting Church without taking the end of the world with the utmost seriousness.
That there is this "end" is a recurring theme in the Basis. It's referred to directly in paragraphs 1, 3, 8, 17 and 18 and, in a variety of ways, is implicit in virtually every other paragraph. Moreover, the Basis is clear not only that there is such an "end in view", but also about what we expect the end to be like.
In paragraph 1 the end of the world is identified as that day "on which it will be clear that the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of the Christ, who shall reign for ever and ever". In paragraph 17 it is described as "the final reconciliation of humanity under God's sovereign grace". Then in paragraph 3 it is envisioned as "reconciliation and renewal…for the whole creation"; the Basis of Union's rendering of the vision of shalom or peace.
This isn't the scorched-earth version of the end of the world that I'd come to expect. It's the end of the world which we come to anticipate by looking at the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus - the Healer, the Mediator, the Reconciler, the Life Giver, the one in whose name we expect the coming of "reconciliation and renewal…for the whole creation" and nothing less.
This is what God wants for the world. This is what God intends for the world. This is what God is doing in the world. In spite of all appearances to the contrary this is what is going on all around us now. This "reconciliation and renewal…for the whole creation" is the end of the world. It is the missio Dei. So this end of the world, this "reconciliation and renewal…for the whole creation" is described as God's "pledge" in paragraph 3. And it is affirmed as "promised" in paragraph 3 and again in paragraph 18 - promised. Shalom, peace is promised.
In paragraph 3 the reason for the church's existence is explained by referring to "that end" to which God is moving all things:
"The Church's call is to serve that end: to be a fellowship of reconciliation, a body within which the diverse gifts of its members are used for the building up of the whole, an instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself."
So the church exists as a sign and instrument of the end of the world.
The church is a sign because God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit keeps calling us together - all kinds of people with different needs, different abilities, different experiences and insights and outlooks, different traditions and assumptions and expectations. Strangely, our continuing diversity in this fellowship is a sign of the end of the world. Our diversity points to our identity. Our differences are not homogenized, assimilated and extinguished, but reconciled. They are brought into a wholesome, creative relationship, a unity in diversity which identifies us as an eschatological community, a community of "that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation."
This is another way of stating what we affirm as the fundamental nature of reality - that everything is being led by God in this direction. Everything is being led by God towards shalom, peace.
Christian faith and the promise of peace
A religion "must affirm something". If it's not to be reduced to mere moralism a religion must affirm something about the fundamental nature of reality. There are a couple of attempts to say that kind of 'something' that I've found helpful in recent years.
Sallie McFague, for example, offers a deceptively succinct definition of Christian faith:10
Christian faith is, it seems to me, most basically a claim that the universe is neither indifferent nor malevolent but that there is a power (and a personal power at that) which is on the side of life and its fulfillment. Moreover the Christian believes that we have some clues for fleshing out this claim in the life, death and appearances of Jesus of Nazareth.
There is a lot which is very conventional about the idea of God in this definition. Just as you'd expect it concerns nature and human fortune and misfortune - McFague's "universe" and "life". And it is focussed on power in relation to this world. But there are some unconventional elements to her idea of God too. The use of the indefinite article, "a power", implies that there are other powers too that may not be "on the side of life and its fulfillment". That is, this power of which McFague speaks - "a personal power" whom we call God - is not understood to be controlling everything. But this God may still be recognized by those who make the Christian "claim" within the ambiguities of nature and (mis)fortune. What takes McFague's idea of God beyond the given-ness of existence is her emphasis on God's continuing (but non-controlling) involvement in physical life and fortune - an involvement that makes everything tend towards "life and its fulfillment" despite all the powers that persistently push things in the other direction. It is an emphasis that suggests a different kind of divine providence.
In his book Healing and Christianity Morton Kelsey has offered a definition of "faith" that picks up the emphasis of McFague in a way that is helpfully blunt:11
Faith [is] the basic conviction that the world around us, both physical and spiritual, is essentially kindly intentioned towards us, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. Faith says that the power of good and love are infinitely more powerful than the power of destruction and alienation.
I think he's right - right about faith and right about the world. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, there is a power in the universe, God's power, "which is on the side of life and its fulfillment". And in spite of all appearances to the contrary this power is with us and available to us.
But how can we conceptualise the availability of God's power.
The power of God in the world around 12
I am interested in the idea of God that has been taking shape in the conversation between Christian theology and science. What kind of God is being described? Arthur Peacocke, a biochemist and theologian, and a leading contributor to this conversation, has offered some images of God that are characteristic of those emerging from the dialogue between theology and science.
He has likened God to an explorer on a journey of discovery within a physical creation that continually generates new possibilities through the interplay of chance and law. He says that God has created the world and its processes in such a way that even God does not know exactly how they will fare and what they will become since that simply cannot be known. It has not been pre-determined. It is open. And yet, like a gambler who cannot predict exactly the fall of cards, God is not precluded from knowing the probabilities of natural events - and even influencing outcomes by strategic responses to events as they unfold. But all this takes place within the interplay of chance and law that constitutes the physical world and its history. God is not, he says, "some kind of additional factor added to the processes of the world." Rather, borrowing language normally used in sacramental theology to explain the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, he says that God is present "in, with and under" the physical world and its processes.
He also likens God to a composer who creates a most beautiful and complex fugue from a simple theme. The cosmic and evolutionary process by which life, complexity and consciousness emerge is God creating - like a composer drawing out the harmonic potential unrealized within a simple musical phrase. He takes the analogy further, almost correcting himself, by thinking of God as a musician who is not composing in slow, quiet, undisturbed deliberation but, rather, publicly improvising a fugue on a given theme - as JS Bach was said to have done, such was his astonishing virtuosity. No one knows exactly what the improvised fugue will sound like - where it will soar, where it will totter under the weight of its own extravagance, where the tension will build, where it will be resolved, where the musician's technical skill will be challenged and extended by the demand of this spontaneous music to be played. No one knows exactly what it will sound like until it has been played. Not even the improviser knows - until the potential of the simple theme has been realized through the interaction of the melody and the genius of the musician, in accordance with the rules of music, in that moment of improvisation.
God is like an explorer. God is like a gambler. God is like a composer - no, an improviser. The idea of God that is emerging in the conversation between theology and science is that of a God who takes risks in creation. Not careless, irresponsible risks. God is not playing about. God is taking just those risks that are necessary to achieve the outcome that is hoped for and longed for - fullness of life. Creating and journeying with this physical universe that lives by the interplay of chance and law is the risky course that God has to take if the creation is to be what it is. The creation is not an extension or projection of who God already is, and not a puppet to be controlled and contorted according to God's script. Rather, the creation is itself - a true other whom God can befriend and with whom God travels on for the sake of life and its fulfillment.
I like to think of the doctrine of providence in the way that Charles Wood has suggested, as a theological answer to the question, What is going on? Or, to make the theological dimensions more plain, it addresses the question, What does God have to do with what is going on? Most of the Christian world answers that question in this way: Whatever is going on God is in control of it and is ordering it for the good. But modern Christians can no longer be comforted by that affirmation of God's providence. It flies in the face of what we, as modern people in our modern way, "know" about the character of the physical world and its processes.
Yet, through the conversation between theology and science another way of answering has emerged. It is consistent with a scientific understanding of the world. It does not comfort in the traditional way, but it still is a source of hope and encouragement for those modern people who make the Christian claim: God is not in control of everything. God does not know what is going to happen before it happens. But God is involved in everything. God influences the possibilities as they unfold. And God does this consistently, persistently "on the side of life and its fulfillment." Of this we are convinced, and from this hope we pray … for peace.
Prayer as a cooperative art 13
In one of her essays Daphne Hampson has suggested that we might think of prayer as 'allowing to fall into place what should truly be'. But in case that seems a rather fatalistic attitude she adds that in such an understanding of prayer God would be conceived as 'that which enables us to heal'.14 I have been helped to think through this notion of prayer by relating it to the traditional distinction between the cooperative arts and the productive arts. While there are many useful arts, only three of them are traditionally thought of as "cooperative arts". All the others are "productive arts". The cooperative arts are farming, healing and teaching.
A cooperative art is one through which the artisan works within a natural process with the aim of encouraging, hastening or influencing the fulfilment of its dynamic inner potential. So, for example, while wheat grows by itself the quality and quantity of the crop depends on the farmer's skilled cooperation with that natural process. The art of healing is a therapeutic cooperation with the processes by which sick people naturally recover or cope with a failure to recover. And recognising that learning is something that happens naturally and uninterruptedly throughout a person's life, with or without teachers, the art of teaching is to cooperate with that process in such a way as to assist students to a fuller realisation of their own potential.
A productive art, on the other hand, is one from which useful products result only as the artisan intervenes to change or manipulate raw materials into the desired objects. Unlike wheat, health or knowledge, things like shoes, bridges or furniture will never produce themselves. Even raw materials of the highest quality will not turn into such useful artifacts without human intervention.
However, while the cooperative arts are generally limited to three, I like to add a fourth. Prayer too is best understood as a cooperative art. Prayer is an active cooperation with the power of God at work in history and the universe towards 'life and its fulfillment', towards shalom or peace. Prayer is misunderstood when it is confused with the productive arts; a way of intervening in unpromising circumstances. Make it rain! Remove this cancer! End this war! This perspective on prayer mistakenly supposes that God has power over us and our circumstances. At the same time it mistakenly ignores the reality that God is already at work within us and our circumstances encouraging and drawing all things towards 'life and its fulfillment', towards peace. It continues to be proper to pray for such things as rain, healing and peace; but to do so in cooperation with the Spirit of God already dynamically present as the power within the earth for fruitfulness, within the body for wholeness, and within human communities for peace.
But Does it Work?
But does it work? That's the question that matters most in our modern, technological civilization in which making things work matters most. Reflecting this preoccupation, since the mid-1980s there have been hundreds of empirical studies of the efficacy of intercessory prayer in the area of health care. The findings of these studies have been ambiguous (some showing that prayer is efficacious and others showing that prayer is not) but the quest goes on.15 For establishing that prayer works is crucial to the modern mindset. In practice prayer, or elements of it, have become an ordinary part of the care of seriously sick people. For example, Ian Gawler's appropriation of meditative or contemplative prayer in the care of cancer patients has become very important.16 More informally, a popular magazine like Men's Health regularly recommends prayer and other spiritual practices as 'good for' men. You'll live longer and healthier if you are religious.
In this context Karl Barth's comment is chastening. He said of the growing interest among Protestants in spiritual exercises in the mid-twentieth century that it they 'can perform a useful function as a means of psychical hygene' but that they had 'nothing whatever to do with the prayer required of us. Prayer begins where this kind of exercise leaves off.'17 For Barth, prayer isn't an exercise in self-improvement but a turning to God for whatever we need. Indeed, he insisted that true prayer is essentially petition; asking God for things; everything from the coming of the kingdom to daily bread.18
…empty hands are necessary when human hands are to be spread out before God and filled by Him. It is these empty hands that God in His goodness wills of us when he bids us pray to Him.
Prayer - asking God for things - expresses the true relation between human beings and God. It is the action of faith.
Believing in God and praying for peace
Daphne Hampson wrote that she believes in God because she believes in the power of prayer. For me it's the other way around. I believe in prayer because I believe in the power of God: a personal power 'which is on the side of life and its fulfillment' and which has been made known to us in 'the life, death and appearances of Jesus of Nazareth.' When we pray for peace we are confessing our faith in God who is at work in our world for peace. We are consenting to all those changes that may be required of us and of our communities for the sake of wholeness and justice. We are committing ourselves anew to cooperating with God in that one great impossible mission, the success of which is promised.
The peace of the Lord be always with you.
1. A.C.Craig Preaching in a Scientific Age (London: SCM Press, 1954) pp.16-17
2. John H Yoder, 'Peace', in Nicholas Lossky et al (eds) Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva & Grand Rapids: WCC Publications & William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991) pp.786-789, at p.786
3. J.S.Spong A New Christianity for a New World (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001) p.21
4. Ibid. p.191
5. Ibid. p.192-193
6. Ibid. p.197
7. Ibid. pp.59-60 and 71-73
8. Clifford Geertz 'Religion as a Cultural System', in Michael Banton (ed.) Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966) p.13
9. Andrew Dutney Where Did the Joy Come From? Revisiting the Basis of Union (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 2001) pp.14-16
10. Sallie McFague Models of God (Phladelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) p.x
11. Morton Kelsey Healing & Christianity (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1995) p.301
12. Andrew Dutney Playing God: Ethics and Faith (Melbourne: HarperCollinsReligious, 2001) pp.86-88)
13. Andrew Dutney Food, Sex and Death: A Personal Account of Christianity (Melbourne: Uniting Church Press, 1993) pp.158-159
14. Daphne Hampson 'The Theological Implications of a Feminist Ethic', The Modern Churchman, vol.31, no.1, 1989, pp.36-39, at p.38
15. See John A Astin, Elaine Harkness, and Edzard Ernst, 'The Efficacy of "Distant Healing": A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials", Annals of Internal Medicine, Vol. 132, No.11, pp.903-910; and L Roberts, I Ahmed, and S Hall, 'Intercessory Prayer for the Alleviation of Ill Health (Cochrane Review), The Cochrane Library, Issue 3, 2002.
16. See Ian Gawler You Can Conquer Cancer, New Edition (Melbourne: Hill of Content, 2001) pp.5, 31, and 161
17. Karl Barth Church Dogmatics III.4 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961) pp.97-98
18. Ibid, p.97
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