THE CHARLES STRONG TRUST
CHARLES STRONG – My Story
In 1976
I was privileged to become the inaugural president of
The Australian Association for the Study of Religion.
The formation of that association came to the attention of
The Charles Strong Memorial Trust
whose aim was the sympathetic study of religions
other than Christianity
In 1979
I was invited to join the Advisory Council of the Trust
and for the past 20 years have served as its chair.
While a few scholars took an interest in Strong
as the illustrious and controversial founder of
The Australian Church,
the full significance of Strong as a thinker
was not fully appreciated until recently.
In 2006,
fifty years after the close of the Australian Church,
we held a Symposium in Adelaide
at which a range of papers were given
on the life and thinking of Charles Strong.
The more we delved into the thinking of Strong
the more realised just how radical
his understanding of Christianity really was.
His was an expression of Progressive Christianity
that anticipated Bishop Spong
by a hundred years.
My appreciation for Strong as a radical thinker
is reflected in a power point presentation I gave
in Adelaide in 2007, entitled
Charles Strong
A Progressive Christian Long before
Bishop Spong!
For more details about the Strong Trust
and copies of the Charles Strong Trust Lectures
see
www.charlesstrongtrust.org.au