Nationalism is pretty much the whipping boy of international progressive politics these days. And not without some reason. It is after all, 100 years this past Sunday, since the guns fell silent, ending the slaughter of the Great War that decimated the cream of Europe’s youth. French President, Emmanuel Macron, summed up the chastened […]
This is the headline in The Conversation online journal today: Much to be done eh? One assumes that there are wedding plans to be pencilled in, flowers to buy, cakes to order (from reputable sources of course), venues to hire and suits and gowns to be tailored. After all as the article by la Trobe […]
The utopian ideal of the modern secular state is a world that looks Scandinavian. Cool, slightly detached, rational, autonomous units, small families, low carbon footprint (apart from all that IKEA packaging), and, most of all, post-religious. But demography is not the friend of those with such utopian ideals. A report in The Times of London […]
“The Establishment is appalled” With those words in his most recent article in The Guardian, Australian public intellectual and journalist, David Marr, revealed just how the marginalised gay community moved so quickly to the cultural centre. His statement is in reference to the storm surrounding the letter written by 34 principals of Sydney Anglican […]
And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? (Jonah 4) The book of Jonah, that great text about racism and evangelism, ends in a curious way. After it’s all done and […]
The recent response from 34 Anglican School principals in Sydney concerning the religious freedom debate in Australia demonstrates once again that when it comes to commenting in the public square, Christianity operates in analogue. And the public square is digital. When I first read the letter, which outlined a clear, irenic and concise concern about […]
Growing up in Australia in the 1980s it was hard to avoid the amazing talents of Imran Khan, the great Pakistani cricketer known as the Lion of Lahore. He was a leader, a cricket god, and a sex god too according to the papers. And according to the French girl I went to uni with, […]
I’m not a team player. But last weekend I was part of a sports team that came third – yes, that’s right, third, a podium finish -, in the Open category of the legendary Blackwood Marathon in the rolling green countryside of West Australia’s south-west. The Blackwood Marathon turned forty in 2018. The event is […]
Right now one of our beloved church couples is winging their way to Taiwan to finally take home their adopted five year old boy; a little one has spent five long years in an orphanage. They would have adopted in Australia, except the adoption laws are way too restrictive and there are no unwanted babies […]
There’s no getting away from it. When it comes to church, some assembly is required. I love that little IKEA visual. It all makes it look so easy! Experience has taught many a person otherwise. But the challenging bit of church is doing the actually church bit; assembling together. Some assembly is required. In fact […]
We only have one church service for our church. We don’t replicate. We don’t run two services and expect the same people to come to both (morning and evening like in the past). We don’t do homogenous unit principle church. We do one service. Now, hear me carefully. When it comes to how to do […]
Are you a “rip it off slowly”, or rip it off quickly person when it comes to the dreaded Band-Aid? Whatever happens it’s going to be “ouchy”, right? So which “ouchy” do we want? Quick or slow? A friend asked me last night if I was feeling pleased that many of the things I’ve been […]
I said here last year that the changes to the Marriage Act would not usher in a slippery slope, but were in fact signs of a precipice. That, in less than 12 months since the plebiscite, this has proven to be the case should be no surprise. And the evidence is mounting. So when did it […]
Noel Pearson’s comments this weekend about the nature of religion remind me of being in a foreign country and struggling to find my way back to the hotel. There you are in Thailand on a week away. You were sure your accommodation was down that side street, but then again it could be the one […]
It’s been a shameful week for those in the left leaning media in Australia this week. For weeks progressive media outlets have been cat-calling the Morrison Government over its failure to release the Ruddock Review on Religious Freedom. “What are you trying to hide?” was the constant cry from the likes of the ABC and […]
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. Our suburb is leafy. And the council intends to keep it that way. We had to flip the design of our house when we built it last year because a scrappy tree that would have had […]
Derryn Hinch – the self proclaimed human headline (it’s his Twitter handle) – is a boofhead. Always has been. Always will be. A TV shock jock with too much to say, and who says things he has been court-ordered not to say. A bloke who has several contempt of court matters to his name, as […]
Is nothing secular anymore? It’s toe-curling watching the manner in which our most famous building, The Sydney Opera House, has been pimped out to the racing industry these past few days. It feels like something has been hollowed out of us as a nation, and that’s saying something given the cultural turmoil of the past […]
For decades my dad would get up in the morning, make a cheese sandwich – the regular boring cheese, not the classy stuff – get in his car, and drive off to work in some form of semi-skilled low paying manufacturing job in a factory on an industrial estate somewhere. Every day the same type […]
While much of the talk is of bunkering down in the face of a coming cultural exile for the traditional church, we might just be in for a surprising gospel harvest at the same time. Not a harvest instead of exile. Nor in spite of. But because of. Amidst the scandals of rotten in churches […]
The human mind is prepared for tribalism I wish I’d come up with that line, but I didn’t. It’s academic and moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s line in his new book (co-written with Greg Lukianoff): The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions And Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation For Failure. What’s Haidt […]
This is what you live for, there is nothing better. This is my religion. The Eagles are my life. Those freshly minted words were uttered by West Coast Eagles supporter, Adam Logan, as he soaked up the thrill of the Eagles defeating Collingwood in one of the all-time great Australian Football League Grand Finals yesterday. […]
In the midst of all the frustration or anger that the current religious freedom debates in Australia engender, spare a thought for Chinese Christians. In a revealing article in The Guardian today China’s myriad unofficial churches are coming under direction pressure, indeed persecution, from Beijing. And all at a time when The Roman Catholic Church is […]
2018 feels like the eye of the storm in Australia. The oft-rampant fury of 2017’s ethical debates around sexuality have dissipated somewhat, and we’re in a holding pattern waiting to see what happens. 12 months ago (has the year really gone that quickly?) we were in the middle of the plebiscite on same sex marriage […]
It’s not too late for those organising the Franklin Graham tour of Australia next year to get on the blower and tell the man not to come. For the problem is not that too few people will turn up, but too many. And quite possibly for all the wrong reasons. We’re being told it’s about […]
