Patronage and people: Paul’s perspective in Philippians

Here are the slides from my talk ‘Patronage and people: Paul’s perspective in Philippians’ at the ‘Engaging with Poverty in the Early Church and Today’ conference at St Mary’s University, Twickenham today, saved in pdf format. This was an enjoyable talk to work on, and allowed me to draw on and develop the thinking inPatronage and people slides  my earlier essay, ‘Paul, Patronage and Pay: What Do We Know about the Apostle’s Financial Support?’ Pages 220-33 in Paul as Missionary: Identity, Activity, Theology, and Practice. Edited by Trevor J. Burke and Brian S. Rosner. LNTS 420. London: T. & T. Clark, 2011—you can find more of the technical details there.

I appreciated the thoughtful and impassioned ‘partner’ talk by Helen Hekel of Tearfund from the modern angle, drawing on her experience as an aid worker in Darfur and other places. She gave us some very helpful angles on patronage today, and (encouragingly for me, at least) ended up in a very similar place to my paper—focusing on the importance of partnership between those who give and those who receive.

More on the conference to follow…it’s day two tomorrow.