Sunday Bloody Sunday: To the Sydney Opera House’s Bowels (the drama theatre) to watch a very Melbourne play, Sunday. An artistic muse and social radical from the heart of the Melbourne establismnet Sunday Reed have always been a figure on… Continue Reading
Pentecostalism, now the second-largest Christian movement by attendance in Australia, owes its birth to women ministers. Barry Chant, a great historian of Australian Pentecostalism, points out one great distinctive in his Phd thesis: “Of the eighteen Pentecostal churches founded in… Continue Reading
In October the Egyptian government has legalised 293 church buildings, bringing the total of legalised churches to 3,453 according to a government committee set up to oversee a process of giving churches legal protection. The committee is chaired by Prime… Continue Reading
The NSW Labor government has demonstrated its support for volunteer religious teaching in public schools and acted on the need to protect students victimised over their religion. A helpline to report religious intolerance is now available for NSW public schools.… Continue Reading
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the leader of the Church of England, has resigned – because he failed to act in the case of serial abuser John Smyth. Last week, the Makin Report, detailing a decades-long cover-up, was… Continue Reading
OPINION Paul Clark The recent decision of the Lutheran Church to ordain women has sparked familiar debates. Too often discussions quibble over a few isolated verses, losing sight of the larger, transformative narrative woven throughout Scripture—a story that charts the… Continue Reading
An Obadiah Slope column Democracy lives: As I Left the school this week after a volunteer Scripture teaching lesson (SRE in NSW, RI in Qld), I realised that an election was afoot for the school SRC with an impressive array… Continue Reading
OPINION Matt Garvin (Part one of this discussion is here – but this part can be read alone) Donald Trump was uniquely positioned to tap into the massive societal changes brought about by democratising information and the erosion of traditional… Continue Reading
OPINION Matt Garvin I, like many others have been doing some reflection following last week’s election result. I am more and more convinced we are in the midst of a massive societal shift that we are only now beginning to… Continue Reading
Four decades after the alarm was first raised, systematic abuse by a leader in the centre of a Church of England conservative evangelical network has been fully revealed in an official report. The Makin report into John Smyth QC (1941-2018),… Continue Reading