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Les Talks
May 25, 2019, 3.30 PM-4.30 PM
Free
Examine the surprising number of allusions to accounting and auditing found in early Seventh-day Adventist literature and their pervasive influence within the moral sphere
“Auditing in Heaven and Order on Earth: The Pervasive Role and Effect of Accounting in Early Adventist Consciousness”
Featuring: Dr Les Hardy, an alumnus of Avondale College of Higher Education and a retired accountant and academic who studied the Sanitarium Health Food Company for his PhD thesis, “Socialising Accountability for the Sacred.”
Les examines the surprising number of allusions to accounting and auditing practice found in early Seventh-day Adventist literature, particularly from the pen of pioneer Ellen White, and notes their pervasive influence not only on Adventist financial practices but within the moral sphere. He makes the claim that very early in the church’s history, the ideas of financial and moral accountability became “merged realities” and that this conjunction, apparently missed by sociologists such as Bull and Lockhart, has shaped much of Adventism. This promises to be a most interesting (and possibly provocative) discussion.
Presented by Sydney Adventist Forum and Avondale College of Higher Education.
Freewill offering—supports ministry of Sydney Adventist Forum.
Biography
Dr Les Hardy is an alumnus of Avondale (secondary education, 1978) who has spent a good part of his life since that time engaged in study: B.Ed.Studs (University of Qld); Graduate Diploma in Accounting (Monash University); Master in Economics (University of New England); and PhD (University of Adelaide).
Les has taught at primary, secondary and tertiary levels, with experiences as diverse as teaching at Fulton College, teaching aboriginal students in the Northern Territory and lecturing at Monash University. In 2008, Les and Harry Ballis published a seminal paper in Accounting, Auditing and Accountability, challenging a dominant idea in accounting theory of the time, the so-called sacred/secular divide between religion and accounting. This is now a much cited paper in what has become a growing body of literature on this topic.
Les retired in 2017 and now lives in Traralgon, Gippsland. His wife, Cathy, is a literacy and numeracy coach in a local primary school. Their daughter is studying nursing at Monash.