Zadok magazine has been examining how Christianity intersects Australian society and politics for 50 years.
Publishing a Christian periodical in the great Southland is a tough journey. Eternity, the newspaper and website that started on my dining table, lasted 15 years. So Zadok magazine’s 50-year anniversary deserves admiration, praise, and not a little celebration.
The latest issue has historian Stuart Piggin reflecting that he has spent that last half century engaged in studying Australian Christianity and founding editor David Millikan recalling his experiences writing (and later broadcasting) on the Sunburnt soul.
The Other Cheek turned to the newest recruit to Zadok’s board, veteran journalist and public affairs executive, Graeme Cole, who was invited to join the Board of the Ethos Centre for Christianity and Society – the publisher of Zadok publications – in 2024.
“For more than 50 years, Zadok publications have and continue to enable Christian people to address issues that impact them in their public and working lives. It has been a ‘whole of life’ approach driven by a deep desire to project a uniquely Australian Christian voice into our society.
“The publications have drawn together Christian thinkers and leaders on the many challenging issues that not only affect our personal life but the expression of it in the public square – from the workplace to multi-platformed media, and from the corridors of home to those of parliament.
“Too often, the public face of Christianity has been known for what it stands against rather than what it stands for. Sadly, this has led to the creation of predictable and piecemeal debates that reinforce irrelevance.
“People are looking for an applied theology that provides engagement with the realities and paradoxes of life. In an age when public debate about faith has become more polarised and nuanced, Zadok enables discussion and debate in a forum of freedom and safety. At its heart is an abiding love to see the Christian faith sustain, enrich and empower people so not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but to “the transformation and the renewing of your mind.
“Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2. It is about strengthening minds but also growing church community.
“Founded by a strong and enduring desire to see Australians find faith in Christ, Zadok has played a defining roll in equipping God’s people in apologetics, pre- evangelism and evangelism. What are the questions people are asking and what do we say to those who ask? How then should we live so we point people to the reality of Christ and to a complete understanding of our own humanity before Him? Zadok will keep asking such questions.”
A taste of Zadok
Some quotes from the latest edition:
Why Zadok? David Millikan writes, “Finding a name for the centre was hard work. It seemed to me there were two ways we could go. We could have a name which told the world what we did, like The Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, or we could choose an anonymous name and give it meaning, like Kodak, Xerox and the like. We chose Zadok, partly because we were exhausted by the arguments, but also because it was the name of an Old Testament priest who stood at the edge of religion and politics in Israel.”
50 years of researching the sunburnt Soul: Stuart Piggin “The most distinctive of Christian values has become the most entrenched of instincts in the Australian psyche: Humility. The Greeks and Romans thought that was a terrible flaw in any one’s personality: they valued pride ahead of humility. But the Australian aversion to boasting is deep-rooted, even manifesting itself pathologically in our ‘tall-poppy’ syndrome.”
50 years since the dismissal of Gough Whitlam. Graeme Cole on meeting Gough in Paris as a young journo: “Gough spent an hour with me talking about UNESCO, European railways, Willie Brandt and West Germansocial democracy and the theology and ideology of the conniving Qld Premier and Lutheran Joh Bjelke-Petersen. I explained how evangelicals agreed on basic Biblical tenets but were more diverse on social issues such as poverty, inequality and the treatment and rights of Indigenous Australians.”
The usefulness of Zadok? Millikan again: “There is no question that groups like Ethos and
Zadok are needed today. There are so many people with questions that local clergy are unable or afraid to answer. It is a painful situation. It is so rare to find a priest or pastor who engages theologically with parishioners. The great liberal experiment that sowed seeds of uncertainty concerning the scriptures, creeds and person of Jesus has left a terrible legacy. But questions remain. How do we Christians respond to the loss of equity in Australia?”
Subscribe to Zadok at ethos.org.au/shop/
Correction to Millikan from Milliken