The Reverend Professor Ian James Mitchell Haire AC KSJ (born 2 July 1946, Northern Ireland) is a theologian and Christian minister of religion.
He is emeritus professor of theology of Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia and past executive director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture.
During part of 1972 he served in the Presbyterian congregations of Kells, Co. Meath and Ervey, Co. Cavan, in the Republic of Ireland.
From 1972 to 1985 he was a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, serving in Halmahera in the Molucca Islands and Sulawesi, Indonesia, where he worked as a lecturer and principal at Halmahera Theological College,[5] and as professor of theology at the Christian University of Indonesia at Tomohon, Sulawesi.
He has been visiting professor at two Indonesian Universities, and has been on the editorial boards or advisory boards of seven international theological journals (based in Australia, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom and Indonesia) and two international theological book series (based in Germany and The Netherlands).
Since 2012 he has been a member of the Board of International Evaluators for the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise (the successor to the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise) in the Wissenschaftlich-theologisches Seminar at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Germany, where he was also Scholar-in-Residence at the Forschungszentrum Internationale und Interdisziplinäre Theologie (FIIT).
[13][14] In 2001 he became the first non-Anglican to preach at the Opening and Closing Eucharist Services, and to conduct the daily Bible Studies, at the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia.
In 2009 and 2012 he was a member of the Australian delegations to the fifth and sixth governmental Regional Interfaith Dialogues in Perth, Australia and Semarang, Indonesia.
From 2002 to 2014 he was a member of the International Joint Commission for Dialogue between the World Methodist Council and the Roman Catholic Church (MERCIC).
[15] In 2010 he was one of twenty international scholars from the Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed traditions invited to the Vatican to discuss the Harvesting the Fruits document (on forty years of dialogue between these communions and the Catholic Church) with the Roman Catholic Church.
Haire was also a member of the advisory board of the National Institute of Law, Ethics and Public Affairs (later the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance), and was a member and chairperson of the Griffith Asia Pacific Council.
[7] From 2010 to 2011 he was a member of the panel appointed by the Government of Victoria to assess the application of the Melbourne College of Divinity (MCD) to become a specialist university.
In 2012 a Festschrift, entitled in English: Gospel and Cultures: Friends or Foes?, was presented to him to mark the fortieth anniversary of his ordination.
In 2016 a second Festschrift, entitled in English: James Haire: Halmaheran from Beyond, was presented to him to mark his seventieth birthday.