Spiritual not Religious

A Course in May

Spiritual not religious: Celebrating the wonder of life in a troubled world

This is a five-week inter­active course, with input and room for questions and discus­sion. In this course, I talk about the complex­ities of modern living. I introduce a devel­op­mental way of discov­ering and enjoying wonder. In other words, we are meant to grow, learn, and move on. Sometimes, along the way, we need to let things go. In the end, it is about naming, claiming, and living-out our core values. The course will cover the following issues:

The myth of the perfect life
The problem with power

  • Bullying and trauma
  • Losing my religion and finding new direction
  • There is no such thing as the perfect family
  • False leads and new wisdom
  • The value of grief work
  • Contentment, at last
  • An ethic of care
  • Friendship

Biography

Dr Steven Ogden is parish priest at St Mary Magdalene’s Anglican Church 26 Moore St. He is a long-standing ally, former principal of St Francis Theological College Brisbane and Dean of St Peter’s Cathedral Adelaide.

Steven is a social comment­ator and theo­lo­gian, special­izing in issues around human identity, spir­itu­ality, and community. His research interests include political philo­sophy, gender- based violence, and masculinity. He is inter­ested in the work of Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault. He is a member of the North American Foucault Circle, the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, and The Political Theology Network. Steven has published The Church, Authority, and Foucault (Routledge, 2017) examining the use and misuse of power in the church, focusing on hubris and the sanc­ti­fic­a­tion of obedience. Recently, he published Violence, Entitlement, and Politics (Routledge, 2022) identi­fying enti­tle­ment as primarily a masculine gender pattern, distin­guished by possessive thinking and behaviour.