Rev David Clark

Presenter/Workshop Leader

Rev David Clark is a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand. He grew up in Wellington where he attended Victoria University and gained a BA in History and Asian Studies before studying in the Theological Hall, Knox College, Dunedin 1970-72.

Presentation

Divine necessity or human inevitability? Progressive theology beyond atonement

For almost two thousand years Christianity has been dominated by the notion that Jesus needed to die on the cross for humanity to be reconciled to God. Studies around the historical Jesus, particularly those surrounding Mark's gospel, recognise that Jesus was crucified because the authorities perceived him as a political and religious agitator and wanted him out of the way. Many people have come to progressive Christianity discarding centuries-old theories of atonement - but what takes its place? Does anything need to take its place? If the death of Jesus on the cross is not the way to resolve the human experience of estrangement or alienation from God, then what is?

About David Clark

Rev David Clark is a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand. He grew up in Wellington where he attended Victoria University and gained a BA in History and Asian Studies before studying in the Theological Hall, Knox College, Dunedin 1970-72. Ordained in 1973, David served in two North Island rural parishes and a Christchurch suburban parish before becoming minister of St Lukes Presbyterian Church in Remuera, Auckland in 1988, where he continues to serve as the senior minister.

Outed as a gay man by the media in 1991, David received solid support from St Lukes. To put some distance between it and the national church during the long years of turgid debate over ministry and sexuality in the PCANZ, St Lukes rebranded itself as The Community of Saint Luke and declared itself to be inclusive and progressive. David, who gained a Master of Theology degree from Oxford University in 1996, has had his Christian journey rejuvenated by the scholarship of the Jesus Seminar and some of its more prolific writers, and is thoroughly enjoying ministry in an avowedly progressive congregation.