On Friday 13 June, Shore was privileged to host our annual Armitage Lecture. This annual lecture remembers the first Shore Old Boy (Isaac Armitage), who took up Holy Orders in the early 1900s before being ordained in 1906. Isaac Armitage worked in parishes in Sydney after his ordination and was Chaplain to the Commonwealth Military Forces from 1914 to 1942. The Armitage Lecture Series was established in 2005 not only to remember the first Old Boy of the School who entered the ordained Anglican Ministry, but also aims to encourage thinking on matters to do with Anglican schooling.
This year, Shore was fortunate to have Associate Professor Chris Watkin from Monash University speak. Chris is a prolific writer, and his latest book, Biblical Critical Theory, seeks to look at the social structures in our society through a Biblical lens. In this year’s lecture, Chris reflected on what makes a successful school. Throughout this reflection, Chris used the two paradigms of the imperial and the sectarian to showcase his thoughts. He argued that the imperial is the drive to a globalised, standard, optimised, uniformity which assumes the one overarching measure of the good for everybody at all times in all places. In addition, sectarianism is the tendency to fracture ideas of the common good, to seek only the good of one particular group within society.
In a world where both exist and are frequently becoming more entwined, Watkin argued that out of both of these, there is also a cruciform paradigm that not only overlaps both, but can shape and define both. While the imperial paradigm seeks integration without difference, absorbing all particularities into a single, flattened sameness, the sectarian paradigm champions difference without integration, erecting boundaries that isolate and fragment.
For Watkin however, the cruciform paradigm, modelled on Christ himself, dares to bring integration and difference together—to form a community in which each person’s particular gifts and story are honoured, even as all are bound together in a deeper unity of love. In other words, as we look to Jesus and his crucifixion (here is the cruciform paradigm) we can see a measure of success and a definition of success and what this can look like in our institutions and schools in particular.
Click below to watch a livestream recording of the 2025 Armitage Lecture.
Rev Anthony Benn
Chaplain
Previous Armitage Lectures
The 2024 Armitage Lecture saw us welcome Teachers and Heads from other Anglican schools and colleges across the country. The lecture was given by Dr Paul Burgis, Principal at PLC Croydon, who introduced some ideas from his upcoming book "AND, NOT, OR, WITH: The 'Good' in Education."
"What is called The Enlightenment has given humanity many new capacities. STEM programs flourish in schools and provide a framework for critical thinking. This is largely based on the word NOT. We are teaching students that all is not as it seems. We must probe deeper. This is important. Yet NOT is not the only important conjunction for thinking. Magnanimity and generosity are at the heart of learning. AND, OR and WITH also matter. And they matter to Christian educators, who sometimes find themselves as the object of the NOT claims."
Click below to watch a livestream recording of the event.
Watch the 2023 Armitage Lecture by Dr Ruby Holland, titled "What We Have Learned About the Nature of Anglican Education Since Archbishop Peter Jensen’s Seminal Armitage Lecture," in the video below:
Click below to watch a livestream recording of the event.
Watch the 2019 Armitage Lecture by Dr Timothy Wright, titled "Radical Autonomy or Radical Dependence?" with a response from Dr Paul Burgis (PLC Sydney) in the video below:
Response Document
Watch the 2018 Armitage Lecture by Dr Brian Rosner, titled "You Do You? Identity Formation and Anglican Schooling" in the video below:
Watch the 2017 Armitage Lecture by Dr Julie McGonigle, titled "A consideration of how the theological virtue of hope can energise a school" in the video below:
Lecture Document
Watch the 2016 Armitage Lecture by Rev Dr David John Sandifer, titled "Cultivating innocence: Character formation in the age of porn”, with a response from Jann Robinson in the video below:
Lecture Document
Response Document
Watch the 2015 Armitage Lecture by Professor David Smith, titled "Hospitality to the stranger and cross-cultural learning” in the video below:
Watch the 2014 Armitage Lecture by Dr Timothy Wright, titled "Excellence-an Augustinian Tension”, with a response from Professor Trevor Cairney in the video below:
Lecture Document
Response Document
Watch the 2013 Armitage Lecture by Dr Julie Townsend, titled "In the 21st century, should we be educating males and females, or educating human beings?” with a response from Dr Bryan Cowling in the video below:
Lecture Document
Response Document
Click below for the 2012 Armitage Lecture by Darrell L Bock, titled "A Look at Spiritual Formation: How The Spirit Shapes our Identity and Character?” with a response from Milton Cujes.
Lecture Document
Response Document
Click below for the 2011 Armitage Lecture by Briony Scott, titled "What is the measure of success for a Christian School?” with a response from The Rev Dr Michael Jensen.
Lecture Document
Response Document
Click below for the 2010 Armitage Lecture by Rev Dr Bruce Winter, titled “Learning for living or just for earning a living? Schooled for service”, with a response from Judith Poole.
Lecture Document
Response Document
Click below for the 2009 Armitage Lecture by Archbishop Peter Jensen, titled “Is there such a thing as Anglican Education?” with a response from Dr Timothy Wright.
Lecture Document
Response Document
Click below for the 2008 Armitage Lecture by Archbishop Dr Trevor Cooling, titled “Setting the Vision: The Calling of the Christian Teacher in the 21st Century World”, with a response from The Rev Dr Bill Salier.
Lecture Document
Response Document
Click below for the 2007 Armitage Lecture by Dr Simon Longstaff, titled “Ethics and the Mission of Anglican Education”.
Lecture Document
Click below for the 2006 Armitage Lecture by Dr Grant Maple, titled “A Biblical Theology of Childhood and Adolescence”.
Lecture Document
Click below for the 2005 Armitage Lecture by Rev Dr Andrew Cameron, titled “Anglican Schooling in a Pluralistic Society".
Lecture Document