ISCAST Mission and Mammon - ISCAST

ISCAST Mission and Mammon

Chris Mulherin, our Executive Director has been busy. Amongst his numerous writing and speaking engagements, he featured recently on ABC Radio National’s God Forbid program wrestling with issues of truth and faith (see here).

Chris also interviewed bionic ear inventor (and a Distinguished Fellow of ISCAST), Prof. Graeme Clark, about his lifetime of integrating his faith and his science. Video snippets and the full transcript of the 50-minute interview will be available on the website soon. Ken Freeman, another ISCAST Distinguished Fellow, also featured on ABC RN after his appearance at the World Science Festival Brisbane where he promoted the ISCAST message. The conversation is here on the ABC’s The Spirit of Things.  Jon Clarke, ISCAST Fellow and Board Member, likewise featured various times at the WSF and here doing an ABC interview.

Speaking of ISCAST Fellows, the Board has recently approved the names of Emeritus Prof. Ian Harper (noted economist and Reserve Bank board member) and Prof. Peter Harrison (Australian Laureate Fellow at UQ and author of The Territories of Science and Religion) as new Fellows.

However, while good things are happening, 2017 looks fiscally fraught!  To employ the Executive Director three days a week costs $90,000 (including his travel and other expenses, and administrative support). As you might have read in Alan Gijsbers’ president’s letter (download here) our budget for the director was based on an agreement with a benefactor to fund one day of Chris’s time. Sadly he died before signing the agreement.

The ISCAST Board is convinced of the importance of our mission and of Chris’s work in leading us. So, it is crucial to keep funding his position. To date we have raised $26,050 due to consistent, faithful giving by regular supporters as well as some substantial donations.  Our thanks go to those people and to God for providing in this way.

This year, we are starting an Executive Director support team and ask you to consider committing to donate $1,000 or more during the year, either in a single payment or in increments.

Would you please consider supporting Chris for 2017 by either:

  • making a one-off donation (perhaps of $500 or some other amount that you can afford) or
  • joining the Executive Director support team and commit to donating $1,000 or more (and letting us know so that we can budget for this amount for the remainder of 2017).

Below is a link to a formal response form.  Please fill this out and send it to the ISCAST office, or simply send us an email with your commitment and we will invoice you.  Thank you for sharing in this important work.

Richard Gijsbers, ISCAST Secretary