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Reverend Professor Glen O'Brien

Glen O'Brien - EBC Associate Professor

Research Coordinator / Lecturer

BTh (Kingsley), MA Biblical Studies (Kingsley), MA Theological Studies (Asbury), PhD (La Trobe) 

Glen O’Brien has been on the College teaching staff since its formation, and formerly served at Booth College, Sydney, as Head of Humanities and Head of Theology. He is a Uniting Church minister in the Yarra Yarra Presbytery with a placement to full-time theological education in The Salvation Army. As Research Coordinator at Eva Burrows College, he administers the University of Divinity’s Higher Degrees by Research offered through the College as well as lecturing in Christian History and Theology, specialising in Wesleyan studies. Along with Dr Arseny Ermakov he has developed an innovative suite of units at EBC in the area of Futurism and Theology. He is the Chair of Examiners in the University of Divinity and a member of the University of Divinity’s Research Strategy Committee.

Glen is a member of  the Methodist-Roman Catholic International Commission, which commenced its new five-year period of dialogue in Rome in October 2022, with an audience with Pope Francis. He is also a Member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Methodist-related Schools, Colleges, and Universities, a Research Fellow of the Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research, a Fellow of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Policy, and an Honorary Fellow of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre. He is also the past-President of the Uniting Church National History Society and a former Vice-President of the Religious History Association.

Glen’s most recent book, John Wesley's Political World was published by Routledge in 2023. Along with EBC colleague Dr. Arseny Ermakov, he co-edited and contributed a volume of essays entitled, A Curious Machine: Wesleyan Reflections on the Posthuman Future (Eugene: OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023), which was shortlisted for the 2024 Australian Christian Book of the Year. Glen has published widely on Wesleyan and Methodist themes, including three volumes in the Ashgate Methodist Studies Series, entries in dictionaries and encyclopedias, and many articles and book reviews in scholarly journals including The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, The Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, The Journal of Religious History, Methodist Review, Wesley and Methodist Studies, and the Wesleyan Theological Journal, as well as contributing numerous chapters to edited collections.

Areas of Expertise 

  • Wesley Studies
  • Methodist History
  • History of Evangelicalism
  • Eighteenth-century Religion and Politics
  • Australian Religious History
  • Posthumanism and Transhumanism
  • Religion in Popular Culture

Supervision

Professor Glen O’Brien is available for HDR and Minor Thesis supervision and has recently supervised two doctoral candidates to completion. He is currently co-supervising three further PhD candidates on a range of topics including the role of social constructionism in theological beliefs, the experience of LGBTQI+ clergy, and the need to decolonise The Salvation Army. Recent Minor Thesis topics have included Postmillennialism in the Australian Salvation Army, married women officers in The Salvation Army Australia Territory, a Queer reading of 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, Salvation Army evangelism in New South Wales from 1881-1921, and the theological foundations of Salvation Army Indigenous ministry.

Books

  • ‘A Curious Machine’: Wesleyan Reflections on the Posthuman Future (edited with Arseny Ermakov), Eugene: OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023.
  • John Wesley's Political World. London: Routledge 2023.
  • Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia: Hallelujah under the Southern Cross. London: Routledge, 2018.
  • Methodism in Australia: A History (edited with Hilary Carey), Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2015.
  • Christian Worship: A Theological and Historical Introduction. Melbourne: Uniting Academic Press, 2013.
  • Pioneer with a Passion: Kingsley Ridgway, Wesleyan-Holiness Pioneer 2nd ed. Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia, 2011.

Journal Articles

  • ‘“I Wish Them Well but I Dare not Trust Them”: John Wesley’s Anti-Catholicism in Context,’ Journal of Religious History 45:2 (June 2021): 185-210.
  • ‘Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, and the Possibility of an Alternative Methodist History,’ Colloquium 52:2 (Dec 2020): 23-40. 
  • ‘Liberty and Loyalty in the Long Eighteenth-Century: A Global History Approach,’ Aldersgate Papers vol. 12 (Dec 2020).
  • ‘A Trinitarian Theology of Sanctification for the Wesleyan Tradition,’ Phronema 33:2 (2018): 63–81.
  • ‘Methodist, Congregationalist, and Uniting Church Theologians, 1916-2016,’ St. Mark’s Review no. 242 (Dec 2017): 99-113.
  • ‘“A Divine Attraction between Your Soul and Mine”: George Whitefield and Same Sex Affection in Eighteenth-Century Methodism,' Pacifica 30:2 (2017): 177-192.
  • ‘John Wesley, the Uniting Church, and the Authority of Scripture,’ Pacifica 27 (June 2014): 170-83.
  • ‘Methodist Encounters with Other Religious Traditions in the Southern World,’ Australian Journal of Mission Studies 8: 1 (June 2014): 42-53.
  • ‘John Wesley and Athanasius on Salvation in the Context of the Debate over Wesley’s Debt to Eastern Orthodoxy,’ Phronema 28:2 (2013): 28-54.
  • ‘Not Radically a Dissenter: Samuel Leigh in the Colony of New South Wales,’ Wesley and Methodist Studies 4 (2012): 51-69.
  • ‘John Wesley’s Rebuke to the Rebels of British America: Revisiting the “Calm Address,”’ Methodist Review 4 (2012): 31-55.
  •  ‘The Empire’s Titanic Struggle: Victorian Methodism and the Great War,’ Aldersgate Papers vol. 10 (Sept 2012): 50-70.
  •  ‘The Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia,’ Uniting Church Studies 17:2 (December 2011): 67-81.
  •  ‘Anti-Americanism and Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia,’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61:2 (April 2010): 314-343.

Book Chapters

  • Entries on ‘Alan Walker,’ ‘Australia,’ ‘Edward Sugden,’ ‘New Zealand,’ ‘Papua New Guinea,’ ‘Samuel Leigh,’ and ‘Sexuality,’ in Historical Dictionary of Methodism, eds. Christopher Anderson and Jennifer Woodruff-Tait. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2024.
  • ‘Samuel and Catherine Leigh in Australia and New Zealand’. In Weteriana Methodism: Bicentennial Reflections from Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Peter Lineham, 29-44. Wellington: Philip Garside Publishing, 2024.
  • ‘Christ as Bushranger: Ned Kelly as a Secular Saint’. In Seeing Christ in Australia since 1850, edited by Kerry Handasyde and Sean Winter, 33-51. Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
  • ‘Gestating, Birthing, and Nurturing Grace: Reframing Wesleyan Systematics.’ In Sanctifying Theology: At the Intersections of Wesleyan Theology, Dogmatics, and Practice, edited by Jacob Lett and Jonathan M. Platter, 21-36. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2023.
  • ‘Creatures Capable of God: John Wesley’s Theological Anthropology and the Posthuman Future.’ In ‘A Curious Machine’: Wesleyan Reflections on the Posthuman Future, edited by Arseny Ermakov and Glen O’Brien (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023), 25-51.
  • ‘Wesley, Asia and Australasia.’ In The Routledge Companion to John Wesley, edited by Joe Cunningham and Clive Norris (London: Routledge, 2023), 465-476.  
  • ‘John Wesley on the State of the Nation and Its People,’ in Wesleyan Perspectives on Human Flourishing, ed. Dean G. Smith and Rob A. Fringer (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021), 63-80.
  • ‘Methodist Lay Preaching in the Victoria-Tasmania Conference, 1902-1977,’ in Called to Preach: A History of Lay Preaching in the Uniting Churches in Tasmania and Victoria, eds. Robert Renton and Alastair Davison (Melbourne: The Lay Preachers’ Association of Victoria and Tasmania, 2021), 87-110.
  • ‘Methodism,’ in Adam Possamai and Anthony J. Blassi, eds. The Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2020), vol. 2: 491-493.
  • ‘John Wesley’s Sunday Service: A Methodist Urtext,’ in When We Pray: The Future of the Prayer Book Tradition, eds. Stephen Burns and Robert Gribben (Melbourne: Coventry Press, 2020), 65-87.
  • ‘What Does Holy Leadership Look Like?,’ in Open and Relational Leadership: Leading with Love, eds. Roland Hearn, Sheri Kling and Thomas J, Oord (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2020), 77-80. 
  • ‘Holiness as Happiness: A Plain Account of Sanctification,’ in A Plain Account of Christian Faithfulness: Essays in Honor of David B. McEwan. eds. Rob A. Fringer and Dean G. Smith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2020), 147-163.
  • ‘“Seeing the Clouds through the Aperture of the Helmet”: Reading Ned Kelly’s Life as a Christian Life,’ in Finding a Home in the Uniting Church. Proceedings of the Second Uniting Church National History Conference June 7-10, 2019. ed. Robert Renton (Melbourne: Uniting Church National History Society, 2020), 256-271.
  • ‘George Whitefield, John Wesley, and the Rhetoric of Liberty,’ in New Approaches to Religion and the Enlightenment, ed. B.C. McInelly and Paul E. Kerry (Vancouver: Fairley Dickinson University Press, 2018), 105–128.
  • ‘Freedom in the Atlantic World: John Wesley and George Whitefield on Slavery,’ in Wesley and Whitefield? Wesley vs. Whitefield? ed. Ian Maddock (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2018), 161-182.
  • ‘What John Wesley Might Say to the Uniting Church on the Occasion of its Fortieth Birthday,’ in A Pilgrim People: Forty Years On. Proceedings of the Inaugural Uniting Church National History Conference June 9-12, 2017. ed. Robert Renton (Melbourne: Uniting Church National History Society, 2018), 234-255.
  • ‘“A Good and Sensible Man”: John Wesley’s Reading and Use of Jonathan Edwards,’ in The Global Edwards: Papers from the Jonathan Edwards Congress held in Melbourne, August 2015, ed. Rhys Bezzant (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017), 247-60.
  • ‘Irving Benson: Preacher, Writer, Mission Superintendent (1897–1980),’ in Out of the Ordinary: Twelve Australian Methodist Biographies, ed. William Emilsen and Patricia Curthoys (Adelaide: Mediacom, 2015), 217-38.
  • ‘Christian Perfection in Australian Methodism,’ in Sean Winter, ed. Immense, Unfathomed, Unconfined: Essays on the Grace of God in Honour of Norman Young (Melbourne: Mosaic Press, 2013)
  • ‘Reading Wesley’s Sermons in Edwardian Melbourne,’ in The Master: Life and Times of Edward Sugden, ed. Renate Howe (Melbourne: Uniting Academic Press, 2009), 109-124.

Media

Conference Presentations (last five years)

  • 'John Wesley's Catholic Spirit and the Fully Affirming Church of the Future'. Thought Matters Conference. 'To Serve the Present Age: Ekklesia for the 21st Century” Sydney, 1-4 November 2024. 
  • 'Liberty and Loyalty: John Wesley's Political World,' Meetings of the International Association of Methodist-Related Schools, Colleges, and Universities. Gothenburg, Sweden, 13 August 2024. 
  • '"You Writ this Sermon for Hetty": Recovering the Wesley Sisters,' The 15th Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies, Keble College, Oxford, August 2024.
  • 'John Wesley's Influence on Salvation Army Social Services, International Conference Celebrating 140 years of Salvation Army Social Services in Australia, Melbourne, 9 November 2023. 
  • ‘A Curious Machine’: John Wesley’s Theological Anthropology and the Posthuman Future,' ANZATS Conference, June 2023. 
  • ‘Wesley, Australasia, Asia, and Oceania,’ Methodist Studies Seminar on ‘Methodist Theology in a World Parish’, Wesley House, Cambridge (online), 21 May 2022.
  • ‘John Wesley’s Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation (1763) as a Resource for a Wesleyan Eco-theology in the Late Anthropocene,’ Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research Conference, God, the People and the Land, 4-5 August 2023. 
  • ‘“The Rust in the Wheat and the Dearth of the Dry Season”: Ned Kelly’s Victorian Apocalypse.’ University of Divinity Research Day, 7 June 2023. 
  • ‘Methodist Heritage in Uniting Church Schools,’ Transforming Lives: Methodist Education Conference, Bristol, UK, 28 April 2023.
  • ‘Wesleyan Practices and Principles of Conferencing,’ Methodist-Roman Catholic International Commission, Rome, 2-9 October 2022.
  • ‘The Global Methodist Church as a Failure to Live out of John Wesley’s Catholic Spirit,’ Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research Conference, Crisis and Opportunity at the Beginning of the Third Millennium, 1 October 2022.
  • Response to Mark Worthing, ‘Models of the Relationship of Science and Religion in Science Fiction and What They Reveal about Contemporary Attitudes toward Religion,’ ISCAST Seminar, Religiously Human in a Techno-Scientific World, 30 Sept 2022.
  • ‘Teaching Future Theology,’ (with Arseny Ermakov), ANZATS Conference on Future Theology, Alphacrucis University College, Sydney, July 2022.
  • ‘John Wesley and ‘the Execrable Villainy’ of the Slave Trade,’ Keynote Address at the University of Divinity Research Conference, June 2022.
  • ‘Primitive Methodism in Australia,’ Hugh Bourne Centenary Celebrations, The Primitive Methodist Museum in Englesea Brook, UK (online), Feb 2022.
  • ‘The Social Impact of Artificial Intelligence,’ The Salvation Army International Moral and Social Issues Council’s Symposium, On Earth as it is in Heaven: Exploring Moral and Social Issues through a Kingdom Lens, Sept. 27-30, 2021.
  • ‘A Curious Machine”: John Wesley’s Theological Anthropology and the Posthuman Future,’ ANZATS Conference on Theological Ethics, 5-7 July, 2021.
  • ‘Gestating, Birthing, Nurturing Grace: Reframing Wesleyan Systematics,’ University of Divinity Research Conference, 2-3 June 2021.
  • ‘“I Wish Them Well but I Dare not Trust Them”: John Wesley’s Anti-Catholicism in Context,’ University of Divinity Research Conference, June 2020.

 

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Eva Burrows College delivers higher education awards as an affiliated College of the University of Divinity (TEQSA Provider ID: PRV12135) and delivers vocational courses as Eva Burrows College Vocational Training (RTO 0328)