Rev Dr Margaret Mayman

Presenter/Workshop Leader

Rev Dr Margaret Mayman has been senior minister at St. Andrew's on The Terrace in Wellington, New Zealand, since 2002. Her presentations and workshops include 'Living Prophetic - Poetic Progressive Faith' and 'Queer Spirituality and Politics'.

Presentation

Living Prophetic - Poetic Progressive Faith

Liberals deconstructed and demythologized Christianity. It was an important project for the intellectual integrity of Christianity, but liberal churches are not thriving. Progressive churches re-enchant the world (in a this-worldly way) through gathering the people, telling the stories and breaking the bread. Progressive Christians are continuing the liberal commitment to social justice but re-integrating it into spiritual life in imaginative worship and the fostering of communities of resistance and solidarity that keep alive the dangerous memory/hope of a world transformed.

Workshop

Queer Spirituality and Politics

Welcome and inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people is one of the identifying marks of progressive religious communities. Queer people still struggle to find a place in wider religious structures (particularly around leadership and ordination). And queer people still face political challenges that limit full participation in wider society (particularly around legal recognition of relationships). The workshop honours queer contributions to progressive faith and examines how progressive religious communities might act in solidarity with their glbti members to transform continuing forms of oppression and exclusion.

About Rev Dr Margaret Mayman

Rev Dr Margaret Mayman has been senior minister at St. Andrew's on The Terrace in Wellington, New Zealand, since 2002. She was ordained in 1982 after studying at Victoria University and Otago University for a BA in political science and religious studies, and a BTheol in Biblical and Pastoral Studies. After a short-term interim ministry, she moved to New York where she gained STM and M.Phil degrees in Christian Ethics and began PhD studies at Union Theological Seminary. She also taught feminist theology and ethics at Maryknoll School of Theology, and undergraduate Religious Studies at the New School for Social Research.

In 1995, after 12 years in New York, Margaret retuned to New Zealand and was inducted as minister at St. Ninian's in Christchurch. During that time, she completed her PhD, which was awarded in 2001. Her doctoral dissertation was titled 'Raising Voices: Re-Visioning Moral Agency in Intimate Violence Discourses.'

During her ministry in Christchurch, Margaret came out as lesbian and has been involved in working to promote the inclusion of gay and lesbian people in the Presbyterian Church.  From 2002 to 2005, she participated in the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York, representing the Association of Presbyterian Women. She founded Christians for Civil Unions and advocated for the passage of the Civil Union Act (2004).

Since 2006, Margaret has been working with the Kettering Foundation in the United States, a non-partisan foundation which fosters citizens participation in democracy. She has undertaken training in deliberative democracy and now applies this in interfaith dialogue and community justice work. In July 2010 she will begin a six-month sabbatical as an International Civil Society Fellow at Kettering researching faith communities as bases for public dialogue.

Margaret's interests include politics and economics, queer spirituality, human rights advocacy, refugee issues, peace issues, sexual justice, reading fiction and theology, film. She lives with her partner Clare, who is also a Presbyterian minister, and her 22 year-old son Andrew, who is a unique and wonderful person with autism.