Progressive Christianity Forum welcomes guest speaker Rev Prof Bart Bruehler. Bart is the Director of Biblical Studies at the Uniting College for Leadership and Theology. He and his family moved to Adelaide from America where he worked with schools and churches in the Wesleyan tradition. He is the author of A Public and Political Christ and Holding Hands with Pascal as well as several academic articles. His research interests include sociorhetorical interpretation, spatiality in biblical narrative, and affect/emotion in rhetoric. He is married to Anne, and they have three children. They love it when he bakes bread and listen nicely when he plays his trombone.

The image of Jesus defeating the powers of sin, death, and the devil has been a recurring theme in the Christian church’s portrayal of salvation. Recent liturgy and worship have focused strongly on Jesus conquering death in the resurrection—that Jesus arose in his divine power and defeated the power of death. Such a view forms a problematic basis for the Christian life and fuels movements like Christian nationalism, which seeks to exercise political and cultural power to achieve spiritual and ethical ends. However, this idea of Jesus conquering death does not reflect the consistent testimony of the New Testament that it was God (the Father) who raised Jesus from the dead. Reassessing the agency of the resurrection can transform the way we approach discipleship, ethics, and politics from a Christian perspective.

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