The Voice of Faith in the Conversation of Citizens: Stanley Hauerwas

The Hon Kristina Keneally MP is the Member for Heffron in the New South Wales Parliament. Kristina served as the 42nd Premier of New South Wales and the first woman Premier in the state from 2009 to 2011. She holds a BA in Political Science (Hons) and a MA in Religious Studies from the University of Dayton.

Keneally is the chairman of the board of Basketball Australia, the governing and controlling body for the sport of basketball in Australia. She is also an ambassador for Opportunity International Australia, which provides microfinance services to the very poor in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

A mother of three children: Daniel (aged 14), Brendan (aged 11), and Caroline, who was stillborn, she serves as patron of The Stillbirth Foundation, promoting awareness, understanding, support and research into stillbirth.

She regularly writes for national publications on political and social issues, and appears as a frequent commentator on Sky News and the ABC.

Dr Philip Freier became Archbishop of Melbourne in December 2006, following seven and a half years as Bishop of the Northern Territory. Previously he was in ministry in Queensland, among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in north Queensland, and then in Brisbane.

Since coming to Melbourne, Dr Freier has been working towards engaging the church with the wider community, particularly through his Breakfast Conversations. The Archbishop is closely involved in community organisations and strongly committed to social justice issues, with a particular concern for indigenous peoples.

He has called for a national inquiry into childhood and has recently advocated for a new social contract for Australia, upholding a vision of the common good in which there is a sense of mutual obligation to one another and responsibility for one another.

Time magazine nominated Stanley Hauerwas as ‘America’s Best Theologian’. He has been described as ‘contemporary theology’s foremost intellectual provocateur. His depth charges are just as frequently aimed within that world as outside it.’

Whether he is writing about war and peace, medical ethics or the care of the mentally ill, Hauerwas combines unnerving intensity and plain speaking with intellectual subtlety and moral and religious depth.

Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at the Divinity School of Duke University. His work involves questions many associate with ethics, but his primary intent is to show in what way theological convictions make no sense unless they are actually embodied in our lives.

To that end, he was among the first to reclaim the importance of character and the virtues for the display of Christian living. He has also drawn attention to the importance of narrative for explicating the interrelation of practical reason and personal identity, and correlatively, the significance of the church as the necessary context for Christian formation and moral reflection. Accordingly, his work draws on a great range of literature – from classical, philosophical, and theological texts to contemporary political theory.

A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, was selected as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the 20th century. He has published over 30 books. His most recent publications include: The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God, Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations between a Radical Democrat and a Christian (with Romand Coles), Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir, Working with Words: On Learning to Speak Christian and War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity.

Morag Fraser is a writer, newspaper columnist, and one of Australia’s most experienced literary commentators. From 1991–2003 she was the editor of Eureka Street magazine, and from 2003-2009 adjunct professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University.

Fraser’s books and essays range across a wide range of subjects, from higher education to gardening, politics and theology.

She was a judge of the Miles Franklin Literary Award from 2005 to 2011, and is currently chair of Australian Book Review, of the John Button Prize judging panel, and of Victoria’s oldest artists' colony, Montsalvat. From 2009–2011, she was judge of the Mildura Festival’s Philip Hodgins Memorial Prize.

In 2004, she was made a Member of the Order of Australia, for services to journalism.