Dr Val Webb

Presenter/Workshop Leader

Dr Val (Skerman) Webb's professional career spans microbiology, business, public relations, writing, art and theology. Born and educated in Brisbane, she obtained a graduate degree in Microbiology from the University of Queensland and worked there in research.

Presentation

Stepping out with the Sacred: Progressives engaging the Divine

In progressive religious thinking, old images of God have been retired and new metaphors for the Divine within the universe, whether Energy, Presence, Spirit, Sacred, Ground of Being, Life, have become more authentic for a scientific world. Yet, in a multi-faith world, we cannot speak of the Sacred infusing the universe without recognizing It as that sought and described in all religions. How do we engage this Divine within the world, or the Divine engage us, if at all, in a multi-faith world? How do human beings step out with the Sacred in everyday life across countries, cultures, and religious persuasions?

Workshop

Florence Nightingale: Victorian England's Progressive Theologian

Although immortalized as the “Lady with the Lamp, it is time to take that lamp and properly illuminate this brilliant woman mystic who changed Victorian England. Nursing was a fraction of the reforms Florence Nightingale instigated in 90 years of life, 50 as a workaholic, invalid recluse. Liberation, Feminist and Process theologian before their time, Florence wrote an 800 page manuscript offering a 'new religion' for the poor which challenging Victorian belief that God ordained us rich or poor. She helped reform the Poor Law, advocated women's rights, wrote the British delegation's draft for the Geneva Convention, advised on aboriginal health in Australia and New Zealand, reformed army health, colonial policy and village poverty in India, edited theologian Benjamin Jo Wett's Greek to English translations of Plato and was first to use statistics in medicine. She studied theology and philosophy, translated the medieval mystics and basically formed a religious Order of One herself  in response to several calls to serve the poor. At 70, she wrote, "When very many years ago I planned a future, my one idea was not organizing a hospital but organizing a religion".

About Val Webb

Dr Val (Skerman) Webb's professional career spans microbiology, business, public relations, writing, art and theology. Born and educated in Brisbane, she obtained a graduate degree in Microbiology from the University of Queensland and worked there in research. After a short time in England, Val and her husband Maurice have spent most of the last 30 years in Rochester, Minnesota, USA, where Maurice was a gynecologic oncologist at the Mayo Clinic. Val owned and operated an Art Gallery, Val Webb Galleries, while pursuing her own art career.

During seven years back in Brisbane in the 1980s, Val was Superintendent of Communications and Public Relations for The Wesley Hospital and, because of this role, was National Secretary of the Hospital Public Relations Officers Association of Australia (1986-8) and on the Executive of the Queensland Chapter of the Australasian Institute of Fund-Raisers (1985-8). For her work at The Wesley Hospital, she was named an Emeritus Fellow. She also began religious studies at the University of Queensland, completing her PhD. in Theology at Luther Seminary, St Paul, Minnesota after the family returned to Rochester.

Since then, Val has taught religious studies at the University of Minnesota and Augsburg College in the USA and at Whitley College, Melbourne, together with visiting lectureships at other Australian colleges. Her books include In Defense of Doubt: an Invitation to Adventure (Chalice Press, 1995), Why We're Equal: Introducing Feminist Theology (Chalice Press, 1999), John's Message: Good News for the New Millennium (Abingdon Press, 1999) and Florence Nightingale: the Making of a Radical Theologian (Chalice Press, 2002). Her latest book Like Catching Water in a Net: Human Attempts to Describe the Divine (Continuum New York & London, 2007) won the 'general religion' category of the USA Best books 2007 Awards. She has completed the manuscript for her next book with Continuum Publishers, Stepping out with the Sacred: Human Attempts to Engage the Divine, scheduled for publication by the end of 2010. Val was a presenter at Common Dreams1 Conference in 2007.