Life & Faith: Recent Episodes
Centre for Public Christianity
A weekly conversation from the Centre for Public Christianity about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century.
Ralph Jackman left a successful career in sports broadcasting to become a teacher. He didn’t expect that choice to land him behind bars.
Ralph had been a sports reporter for 25 years but felt he needed a change and in his early 50s trained to become a teacher.
That might be tough enough of a transition, but Ralph’s first appointment was to Melbourne’s Parkville Youth Detention Centre teaching literacy and numeracy to boys on remand. He was teaching some of our country’s most damaged and vulnerable boys.
Ralph has written about that experience in his book Detention: A Rookie Teacher. The Toughest Prison School in Australia, where he narrates some amazing experiences he had in that environment. Jackman shows how being extra creative, as well as personally honest and vulnerable was necessary to make a connection with the boys.
He also tells of the reason he came to be a whistle blower against a system he felt was badly failing those in its care.
Explore:
Detention: A Rookie Teacher. The Toughest Prison School in Australia
Meet winemakers and brothers(-in-law) Daniel and Theo, who make good wine and have thought deeply about why.
What’s it like to win best in the world at the ‘wine Olympics’? Do you need a degree to make great wine, or will Google get you through? Is wine only for snobs? And what do grapes suggest about God?
Daniel Chaffey Hartwig and Theo Engela are the brothers-in-law behind Chaffey Bros Wine Co. In this celebratory episode of Life & Faith, they talk about the ups and downs of winemaking (mostly the ups), and why they think it’s a natural fit for people of Christian faith like them to be in this business – despite certain stereotypes! Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that wine is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, and Daniel and Theo can definitely get on board with that idea.
Whether or not you’re a wine drinker, we think you’ll enjoy this episode about work and family; loving what you do, but knowing you're not in control of it; and what wine can teach us about life. So pull up a comfy chair and raise a glass with us to the goodness of wine.
Explore:
Chaffey Bros Wine Co
Author, radio host and columnist Richard Glover talks to Life & Faith about his career, the joys of radio and why ordinary life is so special.
Richard Glover was the host of ABC Radio Sydney’s drive program for 26 years, retiring from that role at the end of 2024.
He is the author of 18 books including 3 for kids. He has a regular Saturday column at the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age which he’s been doing for over thirty years.
He started out as a cadet journo for the Herald and has been a foreign correspondent and news editor there.
In all of his work – whether it be on the radio, his weekly column or the books he has written there is an inquisitiveness about the world and other people, a generosity of spirit and good humour.
He really is a much loved figure in, especially Sydney’s public life.
He speaks to Life & Faith about highlights of his radio career, why communication and humour have been so important to him and what things most nourish his soul.
Explore:
Richard Glover’s Website: https://www.richardglover.com.au/
In a world where we are inundated with options, it feels as though everything rides on making the right choice. Enter decision paralysis.
LONG From TikTok influencers to productivity bros, there’s no shortage of people today doling out lifehacks. But there’s a difference between generalised advice from online gurus and the specific guidance we want for our lives – especially when we’re faced with weighty decisions, like what to do with our lives, where to live, how to push through a difficult time.
Alan Noble, an Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and the author of To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, has talked to many young people navigating such questions, and understands, firsthand, the anxiety of feeling adrift in a sea of options while also feeling pressured to make the right decision.
In this interview with Life & Faith, Alan speaks into the existential overwhelm and choice paralysis people feel, what T.S. Eliot’s image of ‘a heap of broken images’ has in common with the scattered life advice on offer today, and what it would mean to revisit older notions of ‘virtue’ and ‘character’ to help us make sense of how we should live.
We also speak with Sofia, Brodie, Jordan, and Ana. Each tells us about a significant life decision, or challenging circumstance, they’ve faced lately, and what they’ve learnt from the experience. Sofia, 22, and Brodie, 21, have transitioned from university study to the workplace. Jordan, 25, tells us about navigating a career setback. And Ana, 43, tells us how life took an unexpected turn when she became a newlywed at 40, and fell pregnant last year.
Through their stories, we experience not only the difficulty of choosing well but grappling with uncertainty since, as Alan writes in To Live Well, ‘you can’t wait for certainty before you act’. Along the way, the stories of Ana, Jordan, Brodie, and Sofia each have something to teach us about being courageous – with ‘courage’ or ‘fortitude’ being one of the virtues.
Explore
Alan Noble’s To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times
His other books On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living
You can sign up for his Substack newsletter here
We think we’re fully human when we’re independent of other people. We couldn’t be more wrong, says Leah Libresco Sargeant.
Is dependence taboo?
We may be happy to lend a hand to others, but we probably squirm at the idea of asking for help ourselves. In a world that prizes autonomy and independence, it feels almost shameful to be dependent.
Which is partly why Leah Libresco Sargeant got pushback from her publisher about putting the ‘d’ word – dependence – in the title of her book The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto. (Actually, as she tells Life & Faith, every word in that title proved controversial).
The word ‘dependence’ was especially tricky, says Sargeant, because we resist the idea of someone ‘taking from someone else’ without being able to pay them back.
But this is the very idea Sargeant, a Catholic thinker and author, is trying to defend: ‘There are periods of our lives where we receive from others and where we can’t pay back, and that’s a normal period of a human life’.
Sargeant points out that when we operate with a faulty anthropology – a false picture of the human – then the world only works for those who conform to that false image. If we believe that a full human life is an independent one, we’ll stigmatise dependence.
But this is untrue, since every human begins life completely dependent on others. It also leaves out vast swathes of people – including women who, for a variety of reasons, are more exposed to the need of others. Which is partly why our conversation begins with the striking claim Sargeant makes on the first page of her book: ‘The world is the wrong shape for women’.
Explore
The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto
Leah Libresco Sargeant’s Other Feminisms Substack newsletter
Interview featuring Leah Libresco Sargeant in conversation with Helen Andrews on Ross Douthat’s podcast Interesting Times
Changing careers can be tough. Is it worth the risk?
Shifting careers into something completely new, especially if you have been doing a job for a long time, can be a daunting prospect. But it can also be immensely rewarding. In this episode of Life & Faith we speak to three people who made radical changes in their careers and lived to tell the tale!
A hairdresser trains to be a nurse. A singer shifts to art teaching. A customs agent becomes a paramedic.
What did these changes involve? What was the motivation? Was it all worth the pain? And where do we find the deepest satisfaction in our work?
Philosopher Meghan Sullivan on why Christianity has a vital role to play in helping us maintain our humanity in the face of AI.
With the AI revolution upon us we all face great uncertainty about the future and what this technology will mean for our lives. There will be plenty that we can be grateful for, perhaps excited about.
But there are serious concerns being raised as well. What will this technology mean for future employment, communities and how we understand our humanity?
What do faith traditions, and particularly Christianity, have to contribute to this urgent discussion.
Meghan Sullivan is a professor of philosopher at Notre Dame university in the U.S. and also the founding director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good.
Her institute recently received a very large grant to develop a faith-based approach to AI ethics.
Here Meghan Sullivan speaks to Life & Faith about what concerns she has about AI, the ways it could go badly, but also why she is optimistic about a future with AI firmly in place.
Explore:
Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good (ethics.nd.edu)
The Good Life Method: Reasoning through the big questions of happiness, faith and meaning.
Kutter Callaway on Comedy, Horror and human imagination.
Since he first encountered Star Wars as a young boy, Kutter Callaway has been fascinated by film, television and the stories that capture our collective imaginations. With PhDs in theology and also psycho-social science, he applies his skill and experience in these areas to interpret visual storytelling and examine key aspects of being human.
What are the factors of modern life that enhance our imaginations? And how much do we find ourselves part of a story that can sustain us and answer our deepest longings?
Kutter Callaway speaks to Life & Faith about comedy, horror and how beauty can be found in even the darkest of places.
Discover:
Dr Callaway’s website https://www.kuttercallaway.com/
His upcoming book on Horror Films, Be Afraid: What Horror Reveals about Facing the Darkness
Reel Dialogue: Pulling back the curtain to see the connection between film and faith.
Social researcher and demographer Mark McCrindle tells us how Australia is changing (and sometimes staying the same). What are the likely impacts of generational shifts and trends?
Mark McCrindle is a social researcher and demographer who has been studying Australian life for twenty years. He and his team have gathered important insights into who we are, what we love, how we have changed and how we have stayed the same. Also, where we are finding meaning, purpose and joy, and what’s driving our behaviour.
Mark discusses with Life & Faith the prevalence and likely causes of loneliness and the place of faith and faith communities in Australian life. Are we more open to spiritual conversations than we once were? In a rapidly changing world what are the positive changes and signs of hope? What are the likely future directions of the country?
Explore:
https://mccrindle.com.au/
Generation Alpha: Understanding our children and helping them thrive
Work Wellbeing: Leading thriving teams in rapidly changing times
Word up: A lexicon and guide to communication in the 21st century
The Generations Defined: Navigating the New Landscape of employees and consumers (report)
Jennifer Powell McNutt has spent years studying Mary Magdalene. She wants us to know who she really is.
Mary Magdelene is both well-known and yet not known at all. She has appeared prominently in art and popular culture in things like the musical Jesus ChristSuperstar (1973) or in the film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) or Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003).
She has often been inaccurately portrayed as a penitent prostitute and is sometimes presented as a romantic partner of Jesus. She was present at all the crucial moments of Jesus’ story, but history has frequently failed to recognise her remarkable contribution.
Jennifer Powell McNutt wants to correct that error. She is a Professor of Theology and History at Wheaton College in Illinois and the author of The Mary We Forgot. She thinks we are right to remember Mary Magdelene, but not for the reasons that many people think.
Explore:
The Mary We Forgot: What the Apostle to the Apostles Teaches the Church Today
Brigid Delaney, Australia’s resident expert on Stoicism, draws on ancient wisdom to survive the storm of modern life.
How do you cope when things seem to be spinning out of control?
In recent years, the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism has made a comeback. It’s especially big in Silicon Valley, where modern Stoics pore over the writings of the ancient Stoics – Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca, and Greek slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus – to work out how to thrive in challenging times.
The philosophy has a reputation for being dour and stiff-upper-lipped. But if this world is all there is and there is no one coming to save us, then for Stoics it makes sense to face reality and get on with life.
Brigid Delaney is enormously prolific. She has worked as a political speechwriter, lawyer, journalist, travel writer and screenwriter. She’s also written two books on Stoicism: The Seeker and the Sage: A Stoic Conversation to Hold You Together in a Fractured World, published late in 2025, and Reasons Not to Worry: How to Be Stoic in Chaotic Times, published in 2022.
Brigid explains how Stoicism has made her less angry and reactive, and changed how she thinks about the world. Also how, in places, it overlaps with Christian thought and practice – to the degree that someone even forged a correspondence between Seneca and the Apostle Paul, who were contemporaries of each other.
In this episode, we also talk to Louis Markos, the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities at Houston Christian University, and a passionate devotee of ancient Greek thought, to get a sense of how Christianity differs from Stoicism. Stoicism assumes an impersonal, yet ordered universe. Christianity asserts that the order guiding the universe is personal, that in Jesus, “the Word became flesh”.
Explore:
Brigid Delaney’s The Seeker and the Sage and Reasons Not to Worry.
Brigid Delaney’s previous interview on Life & Faith: Misadventures in Wellness.
Brigid Delaney’s column in The Guardian on the experience of attending two funerals – one secular, one faith-based – in quick succession.
Follow Brigid Delaney on Substack or Instagram, or check out her consultancy Stoic Solutions.
Lou Markos explains the similarities and differences between Christianity and Stoicism, and why he thinks the latter is the sanest, most reasonable option out there – if Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead.
Lou Markos’ From Aristotle to Christ, From Plato to Christ, From Achilles to Christ.
New York Times columnist and ex-soldier David French on his surprising career trajectory, faith and politics, and what Jesus has to say about power.
David French has a fascinating life story that has seen him work as a constitutional lawyer for 20 years, a journalist and writer for places like the National Review, the Atlantic, and now the NYT.
He is a writer and commentator with a conviction to wrestle with and try to make sense of the country that he loves – its history, its possibilities and its faults, and how it can be the best version of itself that it can be.
It was at least partly that conviction that led him, at age 37, to sign up to the U.S. Army where he deployed to Iraq. That experience changed him in many different ways, he says, for better and also worse.
In this interview with Life & Faith, French talks about polarisation, faith and politics, Jesus and power, Christian nationalism, and where he sees green shoots of hope in an otherwise troubling landscape.
Explore:
David’s New York Times Columns.
His book, Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.
Some principles, some practices, and a bit of inspiration for the digitally exhausted.
We pick up our phones 150 times per day on average.
Three out of four Australians check social media as soon as they wake up. Four out of five check it before they go to bed.
These ‘micromoments’ add up – the ways we choose (consciously or not) to spend our time shape us. Many of us find ourselves dissatisfied in the ‘relationship’ we have with our phones, and wanting to make a change. But breaking up is hard!
In this first episode of Life & Faith for 2026, we consider the forces at work when it comes to our digital habits, why we might choose to reduce our phone use, and how.
Simon, Justine, and Natasha confess and compare their daily average screen time. Felicia Wu Song, author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age, describes the ‘digital ecology’ we inhabit and the ‘liturgies’ we participate in – and proposes some practices, or ‘counterliturgies’, that might help us move in a different direction. Plus, a bunch of people who’ve taken various steps to get off their phones tell a remarkably consistent story about why they did it, and how it’s changed their lives.
More and more of us are joining the ranks of the ‘digitally exhausted’, and looking for a better way forward. If you want it to be, this is the year of getting off your phone.
Explore:
Felicia Song’s book Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age
Life & Faith brings you a conversation with an Aussie icon.
“Write the song and just let the song be a mirror on life, and then see if people see themselves in the picture.”
You might know Colin Buchanan as an Australian country music star, as a much-loved writer and performer of kids’ music, as a Play School presenter, or from one of the other myriad hats he’s worn over the years. And if you don’t know him, you’ll definitely feel like you do at the end of this rollicking hour spent in his company.
Come along for the ride as Colin takes Life & Faith on a journey into the heart of the outback, the inner workings of the creative process, and the depths of the Bible, with stops along the way to chat comedy, Christmas, and Play School bloopers. He also plays us a song or two.
EXPLORE:
Check out Colin’s music (past and forthcoming), and upcoming performances, here
Greg Sheridan on why the early Christians were able to change the world.
Greg’s third in a trilogy of books on Christianity examines the “success” of the early Christians in upending the ancient world, and how this story speaks to contemporary life.
Greg Sheridan has been the foreign editor at the Australian newspaper since 1992. He is one of Australia’s leading national security and foreign affairs analysts, and has interviewed Prime Ministers and Presidents all over the world.
He also writes about Christianity and culture and his last three books have been on that subject. The first, in 2018 was “God is Good For You: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times.” In 2021 he delivered “Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World.” And in 2025 we have “How Christians Can Succeed Today.”
Greg is able to bring ancient stories to life with his journalistic style, insight and good humour. And he makes a compelling case for why this story remains relevant and life-giving for our times of upheaval, conflict and uncertainty.
Explore:
How Christians Can Succeed Today
Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World
God is Good For You: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times
Getting inside the Bible, the most published book of all time.
The Bible is the most published book of all time, and not just historically. It continues to be the case today. In fact, in 2024 Bible sales were up by 22%.
In Western Countries the Bible is easily accessible but increasingly there are people who have very little contact with or understanding of the Bible.
So what even is the Bible? How was it put together? What kind of influence has it had on our lives, even if we are not Bible readers ourselves?
Life & Faith delves into these questions in a suitably epic episode. We speak to an academic about the cultural influence of the Bible, and a New Testament lecturer about how the Bible came together. We talk to the Australian representative of the biggest Bible app in the world about to celebrate their billionth download. And we hear from two people whose lives have been changed by reading the Bible.
What do we know about “The biggest story ever told” and what does this story still have to tell us?
Explore:
The Great bible Swindle
YouVersion and the One Billionth Download
Youth worker and founder of the Red Frogs, Andy Gourley, tells Life & Faith how a trip to the Gold Coast to look after his skateboarding crew changed his life.
The group known as Red Frogs have become a legendary presence at schoolies weeks, at music festivals and wherever large groups of young party-goers congregate. Offering food, assistance, a listening ear, protection and of course, the famous red jelly frogs, this movement of young volunteers has become a household name in Australia and overseas.
Andy Gourley, the founder of Red Frogs, tells us the origins of this remarkable movement. Twenty seven years ago Andy, who was a youth worker at the time, turned up at “schoolies” on the Gold Coast with a small team of people to try to lend a hand and help keep things under control. And keep people safe from life changing mistakes and consequences.
Andy could not have imagined that the steps he took that week would lead to a movement in nine countries that has assisted tens of thousands of young people to party safely, and to make better decisions at a crucial stage of their lives.
This year 24 tons of red frogs will be delivered to sites around the country as around 1500 volunteers assist 70,000 school leavers. Andy says he never gets tired of helping out when people most need it. For him it’s an honour. Find out why on this episode of Life & Faith.
Explore: TheRed Frogs website
With outrage and division at an all-time high, the need for intelligent and respectful persuasion has never been more urgent.
Michael McQueen is an author, speaker and social commentator. In an age of intense polarisation and tribalism, he hasn’t given up on the possibility of changing people’s minds. In this interview with Life & Faith, Michael talks about the psychology of stubbornness and how – even on tricky and controversial debates - we can build trust, strengthen relationships and move minds.
Explore
Michael McQueen’s website: https://michaelmcqueen.net/
Check out Michael’s latest book Mindstuck: https://www.mindstuck.michaelmcqueen.net/
Take a look at this Google Talk by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, on his book as referenced in this episode: Thinking, Fast and Slow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0
That’s what disability advocate Emily Korir OAM calls one of the worst things that ever happened to her.
In June 2012, Emily Korir suffered a massive stroke. She was just 37 years old, with two young children. It was unclear whether she would survive; and then, whether she would ever walk or speak again. Her road to recovery was long and gruelling – and surprisingly life-giving, both for her and for others.
This was far from the first challenge Emily had faced in her life. Born of rape and raised in the slums of Kenya, her journey has been an unlikely one; as the title of her memoir attests, it has been Against All Odds: A Journey of Resilience, Identity & Success.
Emily was recently awarded an OAM (Order of Australia) for her service to people with a disability and to multicultural communities. In this conversation, she tells Life & Faith about how she ended up in Australia, why she calls what happened to her a “stroke of luck”, and how she is trying to change the narrative for people living with a disability.
“She [my grandmother] made me believe that nothing was impossible. She was a Christian woman and she made me believe that: never, ever to let anybody else’s perception of you become a reality.”
EXPLORE
Check out Emily Korir’s memoir Against All Odds
Learn more about the work of BET Group Global
How Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Lewis’ That Hideous Strength predicted our current world disorder.
Which vision – of a world gone sour – has proved prophetic?
Is it George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which introduced terms like “Big Brother”, “doublethink”, “thoughtcrime” to our vocabulary?
Or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people exchange freedom for pleasure ... and everyone is too busy having a good time to worry about being manipulated?
Or is it C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength: the third book of Lewis’ “Ransom trilogy” or “Space Trilogy”, published 80 years ago this year?
In this episode of Life & Faith, we hear from three expert fans about how each book anticipated our times.
Peter Marks, Emeritus Professor in the Discipline of English and Writing at the University of Sydney, walks us through why Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is “news that has stayed news”, and how Apple, once the upstart defender of individuality, has become a Big Brother-type figure. Peter has written the books Imagining Surveillance: Eutopian and Dystopian Literature and Film and George Orwell the Essayist: Literature, Politics and the Periodical Culture.
Scott Stephens, Editor of ABC Religion & Ethics, and co-host with Waleed Aly of the podcast The Minefield, talks about the endless entertainment of Huxley’s Brave New World, and why he thinks Huxley could have invented the recommendation algorithm.
And Susannah Black Roberts, an essayist and editor of Plough Magazine in the United States, explores how C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength anticipated the transhuman ambitions of Silicon Valley, and why “staying human” is a way to survive the looming age of AI.
Explore
Why Peter Marks believes Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is “news that has stayed news”.
Matthew Purdy, in The New York Times, arguing: “We are all living in George Orwell’s world now”.
Episode of The Minefield podcast where Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly discuss Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and being on the brink of a world without books.
Susannah Black Roberts contributed an essay to this collection of writings on the Ransom Trilogy – Life on the Silent Planet: Essays on Christian Living from C. S. Lewis’ Ransom Trilogy
George Orwell’s review of Lewis’ That Hideous Strength
The Rolling Stone article by Miles Klee arguing “People are losing loved ones to AI-fuelled spiritual fantasies”
“They asked an AI chatbot questions. The answers sent them spiralling”, by Kashmir Hill in The New York Times
For 80 years Prison Network has helped women find hope, dignity and purpose in and beyond prison.
In 1946, a young woman by the name of Myrtle Breen knocked on the door of Pentridge Prison in Melbourne to ask if she could visit the women inside. She was allowed in to spend time with the prisoners, listening to their stories and showing them kindness.
She was invited back to do the same and it became her mission in life, becoming the founder of Prison Network, that has been going into prisons ever since.
Today, the organisation is working with women in prison, running programs for them and wraparound services, like finding accommodation and employment, assisting them to break cycles of social disadvantage and other factors that land them back in gaol.
Today we speak with CEO of prison network Amelia Pickering, and also Pattie Phillips who is someone who received support from Prison Network when she was incarcerated and now participates herself in the work of the organisation striving for dignity, hope, and purpose for women in and beyond prison.
Explore:
Prison Network website
Peter Hartcher joins Life & Faith to discuss his life in journalism and the precarious state of the world.
Peter Hartcher is a leading Australian political and foreign affairs journalist. He has had a long career in the media, beginning with a cadetship at the Sydney Morning Herald fresh out of school in 1982. He is now the Political and International editor for the Herald and for The Age.
He had a couple of stints in Tokyo and Washington and at the Australian Financial Review. He is the author of several books, the latest being, Red Zone: China’s Challenge and Australia’s Future.
He’s won a number of awards for journalism including a Gold Walkley.
Hartcher is known for his incisive commentary, his lively and engaging writing and his careful, sober but hard-hitting style. He hasn’t always been loved by politicians, which is no doubt part of the job description.
In this conversation he talks about his career, the future of journalism, the perilous state of the world and why he won’t give in to despair.
Explore: Books by Peter Hartcher
To The Bitter End: The Dramatic Story of the Fall of John Howard and the Rise of Kevin Rudd (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin), 2009.
The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made Its Own Luck – And Could Now Throw It All Away (Black Inc.), 2011.
Red Zone: China’s Challenge and Australia’s Future (Black Inc.), 2021
Sheridan Voysey, from Friendship Lab, explains why, in an age of increasing loneliness, the art of cultivating friendship is needed as much as ever before.
When Sheridan Voysey was confronted with the question, “Who can you call at 2am when everything goes wrong?”, he realised that friendship was a facet of his life he had neglected for too long. This set him on a path to consider how we cultivate good friendships, how we can learn the skills required to be a good friend and maintain deep, rich friendships.
He now runs the Friendship Lab, a movement and a course to help adults build the skills to create and sustain healthy friendships. Reflecting on ever-increasing loneliness, Sheridan recognised the need to help people develop skills in collecting more “2am friends”. This is an art you can get better at with the right help. Sheridan says that even those who enjoy great friendships can get better at them.
What are the factors that help grow close friendships? What things get in the way of healthy, long-lasting friendships. How can we be better friends to those we are close to?
Life & Faith delves into all of this with writer, speaker and broadcaster, Sheridan Voysey, along with a couple of groups of people with enduring and interesting friendships.
EXPOLRE
Friendship Lab
Sheridan Voysey's website
Niall Williams discusses the conversion of his treasured novel into a major film starring Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter and Gabriel Byrne.
Four Letters of Love is the 1997 novel by Irish writer Niall Williams, and has just been adapted, by Williams, into a movie starring Pierce Brosnan, Helena Bonham Carter and Gabriel Byrne.
Life & Faith speaks with Niall Williams about the film and the book. It’s a love story that offers up intriguing and provocative portraits of faith, loss, tragedy, meaning and God.
The story itself engages with human longing, the notion of fate and calling and whether our lives have any pattern or purpose. How do we make sense of the vicissitudes of life? Is there a God behind it all? Can we still believe in miracles?
Niall Williams is an Irish writer of novels, plays and works of non-fiction. Four letters of love was an international best-seller. The film is released July 2025.
Explore
Four Letters of Love trailer
Four Letters of Love novel
Nill Williams website
Julia Verdouw used silence, faith and writing poetry to survive the sudden death of her husband.
Julia is an accomplished academic and policy expert, but her book In the Valley of the Shadow may be her most important work. Through reflection, poetry and prayers, the book documents her journey of grief.
Regardless of who we are or what we believe, suffering comes for us all. Perhaps the worst kind of suffering is the grief that we face when we lose someone we love. How can we navigate such immense loss and deep sorrow?
In this episode, we explore Julia’s journey of finding comfort, strength, hope, and even redemption, through the deepest suffering.
EXPLORE
Purchase Julia’s book through her website
A columnist’s job is to process deeper currents in news, politics, and culture – all in 800 words.
Who are we as a nation and a people, and what’s going on for us beneath the daily headlines of the 24/7 media cycle?
Few of us stop long enough to wonder – but if we ever wanted to find out, a good place to start would be Sean Kelly’s writing in The Sydney Morning Herald.
Sean Kelly is a former political staffer in the Rudd and Gillard governments, who now writes a weekly column on politics for The Sydney Morning Herald. He’s also the author of the book The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison.
Sean has a front row seat to what’s going on for us as a nation and combines that perspective with an insider’s view of how politics works. In this interview with Life & Faith he considers what it might mean to be considered a chronicler of the national soul.
Explore
Sean Kelly’s column on how “kindness” won Anthony Albanese the 2025 Federal election.
His column about what might be called “the Albanese effect”: the move towards the centre, and the adoption of a less divisive tone, in the new leadership of the Greens and Liberal Party.
His book The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison
Stories and stats from the UK suggest that something has shifted, spiritually, over the past few years.
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Since 2018, two million more people in England and Wales have started regularly attending church – an increase fuelled largely by Gen Z, and by young men especially.
So say the results from a new survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society, results which cut across a bunch of our assumptions: that Western societies are on a secularising trajectory; that women are more religious than men; that young people are more likely to reject “traditional” beliefs such as Christianity.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we gather a few reports from abroad to get a handle on what’s happening in the UK, spiritually speaking. Vicar-in-training and Oxford research student Daniel Kim, who has written extensively about spirituality and occult beliefs in contemporary culture, talks about the spiritual openness of Gen Z. Bri Walsh, an Aussie who spent a season in London recently, offers an insider/outsider perspective on UK churchgoing in the 2020s. And Rob Barward-Symmons, co-author of The Quiet Revival – the report that puts concrete numbers to the anecdotal rumblings of the last few years – talks us through the data and what might be driving the recent surge in church attendance.
Explore:
Check out The Quiet Revival report, by Rob Barward-Symmons and Rhiannon McAleer, from British and Foreign Bible Society https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival
Read more from Daniel Kim about contemporary spirituality https://www.seenandunseen.com/contributors/daniel-kim
Got a burning creative project? Face your finitude, says this productivity expert, by learning to number your days.
Everyone is pressed for time, and in a never-ending quest to conquer their schedules. It’s why productivity tips and hacks are big business these days.
But underneath our productivity problem is a reality no one wants to face: the fact that we’re all going to die, argues self-described “recovering” productivity expert Oliver Burkeman, and the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. The average human life is about 80 years, or some 4000 weeks, and the sooner we come to grips with the ultimate deadline, the better off we’ll be, argues Burkeman.
In this interview with Life & Faith, Oliver explains how “mortality” emerged as a theme for his 2021 book, how the solace of “deep time” – as experienced during times of flow, prayer, meditation, and hiking – connects us with our humanity, how AI might change the game for human creativity, and how he, as someone more drawn to Eastern religion, makes sense of our yearning for more time, for more than one life.
The shadow of Christianity – with its promise of transcendence, eternity, and being situated in an unfolding story that stretches before and after our earthly lives – looms over the conversation.
Explore
Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals: A Four Week Guide to Doing What Counts
Oliver Burkeman’s website
Journalist, author and theologian, Stan Grant on responding to injustice with grace and love.
In a decades-long career as a journalist and foreign correspondent, Stan Grant saw some of the worst that humanity is capable of. It took its toll on him. And as a Wiradjuri man he has had to wrestle with identity, belonging, and who we all are in 21st century Australia. He went through a period of angst and anger, and he would say, some bitterness, as he and his people confronted injustice, prejudice and a history of oppression, violence and dispossession.
But through a serious spiritual re-awakening, Grant has found a different way to be. On Life & Faith he describes the shape of that spiritual life and the surprising ways it has impacted him and how he sees the world and his place in it. Turning his back on anger, Grant outlines his renewed motivation for meeting hate with love and grace.
His latest book, Murriyang: song of time, is a poetic account of his life and that of his family and his people, and offers a vision of the healing balm of Christian faith that has inspired Grant to see himself, other people and the creation itself, in a new light. Don't miss this confronting and inspiring conversation!
Explore:
Stan latest book: Murriyang: Song of Time
Lifeline Australia: 13 11 14
Beyond Blue: 1300 22 46 36 or beyondblue.org.au
There are currently 7 living generations. That makes for plenty of crossed-wires, misunderstandings and confusion about each other, and the future.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we speak to futurist, speaker and author Ashley Fell from McCrindle, a social research and advisory firm that uses cutting edge research and data analysis to decode the generations and make sense of each other and even predict the future.
It turns out that there’s much more to each generation than our slang, cultural references or relationship with technology. Join us as we explore how a better understanding of the generations can foster empathy, strengthen social trust and even offer us a window into the future.
Explore:
McCrindle Research website: https://mccrindle.com.au/
What defines a Generation? (video clip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMB2_aNINdM
Inside the mind of Generation Alpha:
https://mccrindle.com.au/article/topic/generation-alpha/inside-the-mind-of-generation-alpha/
Welcome Gen Beta (Article): https://mccrindle.com.au/article/generation-beta-defined/
An Anglican priest on Ash Wednesday, a Benedictine nun on Lent, and a Lutheran minister on Bonhoeffer’s last words.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we go beyond the chocolates and hot cross buns to sit with the darkness of the Easter story that unfolds in three acts: dust, desert, and death.
Our guests provide different snapshots of the Easter season, and the unexpected glimmers of life to be found in the time.
From Anglican priest Chris Allan, from St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, we hear about the visceral experience of having the cross marked on your forehead in ash, and why Ash Wednesday is the ultimate reality check about who we are.
Then, Sister Antonia Curtis, from Jamberoo Abbey on NSW’s South Coast, allows us to briefly experience a Desert Day, a time set aside for reflection and contemplation observed by her and her community on Sundays throughout Lent.
Lastly, we dwell on the last words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor, theologian, and unlikely co-conspirator in the Hitler assassination plot. On the eve of his execution by the Nazis in 1945, Bonhoeffer said, “This is the end. But, for me, the beginning of life”. Rev Dr Mark Worthing, a Lutheran minister and Bonhoeffer scholar, explains how the Easter story decodes those words, and how death is transformed into life.
Explore:
Sr Antonia Curtis’ online retreat offered through Jamberoo Abbey: “High Horses, Scapegoats, and Donkeys: A Lenten Odyssey”.
The Adelaide Bonhoeffer Conference 2025, where Rev Dr Mark Worthing is giving a keynote address in late April.
In the 1940s a group of German students saw it as their duty to oppose the tyranny of Nazism.
The members of The White Rose, young students and some lecturers, became convinced that they had to take action against their own government and its crimes. They began a campaign writing and disseminating thousands of pamphlets condemning the Nazis and calling on Germans to embrace passive resistance in order to bring down the regime and end the war.
It was a highly risky thing to do. The Nazis were at the peak of their powers and opposition like this simply not tolerated.
Brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl were part of the group, and, with their friend Christoph Probst, were the first to be arrested, tried and executed.
The story of the White Rose continues to challenge and inspire all of us to think about courage in the face of injustice and moral bravery when it costs you a lot.
Explore
Alexandra Lloyd's book, Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets
In an age of outrage, how can we rise above cynicism and work towards a healthier and more vibrant form of political debate and engagement?
With a Federal election campaign looming and cynicism about politics at an all-time high, Life & Faith interviews eminent Political Scientist Professor John Warhurst about how we can navigate an increasingly grumpy political landscape.
If politics is downstream from culture and we get the politics that we deserve, how can we do better? Do we expect too much from our politicians or not enough? And do we give up too quickly when things don’t go our way in elections?
John Warhurst brings decades of experience to these questions. He believes there are more silver linings than we think and that self-reflection, compassion, gratitude and intelligent humility are an important part of the answer. Instead of focusing on what we think of our politicians, this interview explores how recalibrating how we approach politics as citizens, can put us on a path to a healthier democracy and a more positive public square.
Increasing interest in psychedelics, the occult, and the supernatural all point to one thing: enchantment is back.
“The thing is you can't have enchantment that's only selective. You can't only have the bright side. You also need to acknowledge the dark side. That's one of the things I really wanted to do with this book and it caused some consternation with my first publisher. She didn't want the dark side in there.”
The modern experience is one of disenchantment, argued sociologist Max Weber – a world from which the supernatural, and all gods and monsters, had been scrubbed.
Not anymore, apparently. Increasing interest in the occult, and people’s willingness to share about their ecstatic experiences, as well as their evil encounters with the supernatural, suggests a higher tolerance for talk about the spiritual realm – for good and ill.
Life & Faith kicks off 2025 with an eye-opening interview with journalist Rod Dreher, author of Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. In this wide-ranging chat, Rod talks about the budding religion of technology worship, the experience of art and beauty as a gateway to enchantment, the possibly malign spiritual forces at work in our world, and his increasing conviction that the world is not what you think it is.
Explore:
Rod’s book Living in Wonder
Rod’s Substack
What does the Christmas promise of “peace on earth” mean in the face of human suffering, natural disasters, and other heartbreaks that are part of all our lives?
Twenty years ago, the Indian Ocean tsunami claimed the lives of some 225,000 people, after battering the coastlines of India, Indonesia, Malysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Thailand, and Somalia.
Tim Costello, then CEO of World Vision, was among the first to be on the ground in Sri Lanka, which was among the countries worst affected. He recounts being confronted with the mammoth scale of devastation on the ground and the tragedy of so many lives lost.
Then we hear from former CPX-er Mark Stephens, now Lecturer in New Testament at Sydney Missionary Bible College, about what the Christmas promise of “peace on earth” could possibly mean in the face of untold human suffering – and what are the grounds of hope now and into the future.
This is our last episode of Life & Faith for the year but we will be back in 2025. From the whole team at CPX, we wish you a Merry Christmas.
In 1894, South Australia was the fourth place in the world to grant universal female suffrage. Christian housewives were key to the cause.
History was made on Dec 18, 1894, when a bill passed in the South Australian parliament granting women the right to vote and the right to stand for public office.
This made the South Australian Parliament the first in Australia, and the fourth place in the world, to extend voting rights to women.
In August of that year, a petition of 11,600 signatures had been presented to parliament, supporting women’s right to a voice in the political process. It was the result of long campaigning and legwork by women’s groups: the Women’s Suffrage League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Working Women’s Trades Union, which gathered signatures from all over the state.
In this episode of Life & Faith, Dr Nicole Starling, historian of 19th century Australian religious and political history, explains the role of the WCTU in gaining women the vote, and also how temperance activists, often denounced as stuffy wowsers looking to curb alcohol consumption, were the first to spot connections between alcohol abuse and what we now call family and domestic violence.
Explore:
Nicole Starling on X
More info on Nicole Starling’s book Evangelical Belief and Enlightenment Morality in the Australian Temperance Movement, 1832-1930
Journalist Michael Visontay uncovers intriguing stories from the fragments of a 1450s Gutenberg Bible, including an amazing link to his own family.
In 1921 when rare book collector Gabriel Wells broke up his Gutenberg Bible and began to sell off individual pages, it caused a scandal, and a rush for collectors to get the chance to own and be a part of the Gutenberg mystique.
Was Wells’ action an act of vandalism, or just a smart move from an enterprising rare book dealer? Either way, these fragments became much sought-after, and Wells became a rich man. Decades on, Michael Visontay traces these “noble fragments” as they pass through various collectors' hands and carry with them fascinating stories.
Michael’s own family – holocaust survivors from Hungary who immigrated to Australia in the 1950s – have their own connection to Gabriel Wells and the Gutenberg Bible. Michael Visontay tells this “detective story”/intriguing family history with panache.
Here he tells Life & Faith about that history and how it captured him so completely.
Explore:
Noble Fragments: The Maverick Who Broke Up the World’s Greatest Book
International Justice Mission wants tech companies to step up efforts to protect vulnerable children.
Warning: distressing content.
The Philippines is the global epicentre of the online sexual exploitation of children, where children are abused by parents and other relatives in their own homes, in front of a video camera, for a fee.
It’s awful and sickening trade in vulnerable human lives, one that’s particularly insidious since it distorts a child’s relationship with their primary caregivers and that transforms a child’s home – the exact place they should be safe – into a predatory environment of abuse. And Australians are the third-highest consumers of this content worldwide, paying for these crimes to be live-streamed, and often through commonly used social media platforms and video conferencing tools.
International Justice Mission (IJM) works to end modern slavery, partnering with NGOs, social workers, child advocates, faith communities, and law enforcement to bring about justice for survivors of trafficking, and to strengthen justice systems to hold offenders accountable. The organisation is now advocating for greater online safety, including pressuring tech companies to be more intentional about child safety from the point of product design.
Life & Faith spoke to Gigi Tupas, head of National Activation and Partnerships at IJM Philippines, and Grace Wong, Chief Advocacy Officer, IJM Australia, to hear about what’s happening on the ground.
Explore:
Support the work of International Justice Mission by becoming a Freedom Partner.
Read the Sydney Morning Herald article: “The children for sale – and the Australians who exploit them”
Read the 2023 UNSW report featuring research cited by Grace in the episode: “Identifying and understanding child sexual offending behaviours and attitudes among Australian men”
Read more about IJM’s 2023 report that found roughly one in 100 Filipino children were trafficked to produce live-streamed child sexual exploitation material.
Tell us what you think of Life & Faith in this 5-minute survey
Erinch Sahan believes that the key to building safer, healthier and stronger communities can be found in a doughnut.
Doughnut Economics is a visual framework and growing movement that seeks to tackle humanity’s biggest problems through a fresh new understanding of our world.
Erinch shares how his experience as a senior executive at Procter & Gamble, Oxfam and head of the World Fair Trade Organisation, led him to his current role as head of the Dougnut Economics Action Lab, where he and his team works with businesses, governments and communities, to re-imagine how economics can be used to build a better future.
Erinch also teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a respected global voice on global trade, business practice and bringing ethics to economics.
We examine how this innovative new movement brings a fresh perspective to some of our biggest local and global challenges. And we take a closer look at how it’s possible to include ideals like stewardship in our continued pursuit of profits, pleasure and happiness.
Explore:
Doughnut Economics Action Lab website
Kate Raworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’ Ted Talk
Tell us what you think of Life & Faith in this 5-minute survey
Tim Winton talks to Life & Faith about his new novel Juice.
Tim Winton is one of Australia’s most loved writers. He is also well-known as an environmental activist and defender of landscapes and fragile ecosystems. And now, as a grandfather to 6 children, he is clearly deeply concerned about what we might be leaving behind to them and those who come after them.
His lates novel, Juice, is set in the distant future, a time when climate catastrophe has wreaked havoc on the globe. Civilisation has crumbled. Huge parts of the earth, in a band emanating from the equator, are completely uninhabitable. It's all about the global unravelling that could accompany climate devastation. It’s frightening and sobering. And yet somehow determinedly hopeful.
Tim came into the CPX studio to talk about Juice and what inspired this challenging piece of art.
Explore:
Tim Winton’s novelJuice
Ningaloo Nyinggulu
Simon Smart’s review of Juice at ABC Religion & Ethics
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Living out one’s commitments and beliefs is the most political thing we can do, says theologian and public commentator Michael Jensen.
Politics, both here in Australia and around the world, feels increasingly existential as we angst over whether our political tribe, or the other side, will gain office.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we get public commentator Michael Jensen to set us straight: how do we solve a problem like the ultimacy of our politics – the fact that it feels as though the fate of the country rests on whoever gets elected to lead it?
We cover the way Christianity is often identified with one side of politics and why “sin”, though an unpopular idea, acts as a helpful check on anyone who wields political power. Michael also offers us “a litmus test for whether a political position is Christian” and challenges everyone to be more realistic, and less idealistic, about what earthly politics can achieve.
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Explore:
Michael Jensen’s book Subjects and Citizens: The Politics of the Gospel
The US will soon choose its 47th president. Peter Wehner, former Republican insider, explains the national mood.
In the week before the 2024 US presidential election, perhaps the most consequential election in this year of elections, we hear from former Republican speechwriter and evangelical Peter Wehner on what has happened to the party he used to call his own.
Wehner served in three Republican administrations. He explains how President Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a “shining city on a hill” drew him to conservatism in the first place and contrasts that aspirational national myth with the current mood in the Republican party.
Now a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum based in Washington D.C., Wehner’s public commentary on politics, faith, and the politicisation of faith regularly appears in The New York Times and The Atlantic.
We delve into the role of self-described evangelicals in American politics, and Wehner’s grave concerns for the future of not only the Republican party, but his country.
Explore
Peter Wehner’s profile on X (Twitter)
Peter Wehner’s article in The Atlantic: This Election is Different
Simon’s interview with Michael Wear, Cultivating Better Politics.
Simon’s interview with Darrell Bock, The US Election and the Politicisation of Faith.
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker makes a case for history as a key part of understanding who we are and where our lives find meaning.
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker says we are living in an ahistoric age – where we are increasingly ignorant of the past and therefore less equipped to understand ourselves and those around us. In her latest book Priests of History: Stewarding the past in an ahistoric age, Sarahurges her readers to attend to history; to seek to understand the past – it's people and events. She promises that if we do, we’ll find out “that it's far stranger and far more fascinating than you realise.”
In an age underpinned by the idea that life is about self-invention and fulfilment, Sarah believes that paying careful attention to history we will find ourselves more connected, more embedded in stories larger than ourselves. This is something deeply needed in our rootless and disconnected age.
Explore:
Sarah's book: Priests Of History: Stewarding The Past In An Ahistoric Age
Tell us what you think of Life & Faith in this 5-minute survey
Investigative journalist Nick McKenzie explains what drives him to risk huge amounts to expose injustice and corruption.
Nick Mackenzie is a 14 x Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist who has uncovered some of the highest profile cases of corruption in recent Australian history. Nick has exposed the local mafia, Crown Casino’s links to criminal figures, political donations by Chinese interests, national security issues, foreign bribery by the Reserve Bank and other companies. Most recently he uncovered corruption in the CFMEU - Australia's main trade union in building and construction.
When he and veteran journalist Chris Masters together revealed shocking war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, they opened a wound in the Australian psyche. Huge and powerful forces tried to shut them down, but they wouldn’t keep quiet. When the “defamation case of the century” was launched against them, they relied on SAS soldiers themselves telling inconvenient truths about their war experience.
Nick’s book on the war crimes saga and the unsuccessful defamation case against him and Chris Masters is Crossing the Line: The Inside Story of Murder, Lies and a Fallen Hero.
Explore
Nick McKenzie’s website https://www.nickmckenzie.com.au/
The book Crossing the Line: The Inside Story of Murder, Lies and a Fallen Hero
Tell us what you think of Life & Faith in this 5-minute survey
Author Shankari Chandran believes storytelling may be our most powerful weapon in the search for hope, truth, empathy and justice.
Shankari is a Sri Lankan Thamil Australian author. Her third novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens won Australia’s most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin, last year. In this interview with Life & Faith, Shankari shares her story, her inspirations and the power of storytelling as a carrier of hope, an antidote to injustice and a catalyst for empathy.
Explore:
Shankari’s website
Research uncovers the secrets to thriving as individuals and communities.
What are the ingredients of a life that will help us to thrive as people? How do we go about cultivating those ingredients? What does it mean to truly flourish as a person?
Policy makers are interested in these questions. So are educationalists. And as individuals it’s a topic that we increasingly seek answers to. People these days are very focused on wellbeing and what will aid or hinder that.
Tyler VanderWeele’s research in this area engages huge data sets and deep analysis. He is Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Director of the Human Flourishing Program.
Professor VanderWeele’s many insights into what makes for human flourishing are worth hearing. Some might come as a surprise!
In a money-hungry world that's focused on profits, ethical impact investing seeks to re-introduce compassion and benevolence to our system of buying, selling and money-making.
Sam Richards is the Managing Director of Brightlight, an investment firm that seeks to do more than simply make money. Brightlight - along with a growing number of family offices and individual investors - seeks to use financial markets to improve social and environmental outcomes for real people in real communities. In this interview with Life & Faith, Sam offers us a glimpse into the world of ethical investing - its motivations, its challenges, its inner workings and its growing impact.
Explore:
- Brightlight website
- CPX Podcast Episode: The Ethics of What We Eat
- Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’
Life & Faith producer, Allan Dowthwaite, takes over the studio to mark 500 episodes of amazing conversations.
Allan Dowthwaite, CPX’s media director, normally runs the recording studio for the team. But in this special episode, marking twelve-and-a-half years of the podcast, he’s commandeered the mic as your personal guide to Life & Faith’s greatest conversations, organised into the following categories for your listening pleasure.
Links are included to any episode you want to listen to in full.
- The cultural waters in which we swim, featuring Sydney Morning Herald Economics Editor Ross Gittins, political scientist Dale Kuehne, New York Times film writer Alissa Wilkinson, cultural critic Andy Crouch, and author Tim Winton.
- How Christianity explains our world, featuring cold case detective Jim Warner Wallace, author Marilynne Robinson, author Francis Spufford, and historian Tom Holland.
- Surprising stories, featuring Oxford mathematician John Lennox, Alex Gaffikin, who wintered on Antarctica for two years, Johnnie Walker, beloved authority on the Camino de Santiago, and the late scholar of African-American religion, Albert J. Raboteau.
- Indigenous Australians, featuring Yorta Yorta man William Cooper, Torres Strait Islander leader and pastor Gabriel Bani, and Aunty Maureen Atkinson, member of the Stolen Generation.
- Changing one’s mind about faith, featuring ABC Religion & Ethics editor Scott Stephens and author Susannah McFarlane.
- Ordinary people, extraordinary acts, featuring Australian nurse Valerie Browning AM, Zimbabwean fast bowler Henry Olonga, and Danny and Leila Abdallah, whose remarkable act of forgiveness stunned the nation.
Big thanks to Hugh Clark, Karen Tong, and Anthea Godsmark who have all worked on Life & Faith over the years.
Thanks to Phillipa West for her photographic prowess on this episode's artwork.
Get tickets to this year’s Richard Johnson Lecture with Tim Winton.
On the 24th anniversary of the Sydney Olympic Games, we look back at what made those games so special. Simon Smart and Mark Stephens ask what these kinds of events can tell us about who we are as human beings.
Former Olympics Minister Bruce Baird talks us through the hair-raising bid process and the joy of seeing the whole thing come together so well. Veteran sportswriter Greg Baum outlines what he found so special about Sydney 2000. And seven-time Paralympian Liesl Tesch recalls the buzz of playing in front of packed houses cheering the home team on, and what this event did for Paralympians generally. And Simon Smart gets all nostalgic remembering his experiences going to anything he could get tickets for.
Reconstructive surgeon Tertius Venter tells Life & Faith how his life changed forever when he saw how much he could impact the lives of desperate people.
Dr Venter is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who spends 8 months of every year volunteering his time to two charities helping the poorest people on the planet get surgery they’d have no hope of getting were it not for people like him.
Over 20 years ago Tertius went on a mission to The Gambia in West Africa where a hospital ship was providing medical care to extremely poor people. His surgical skills were needed and completely altered the prospects of those coming for help.
He returned home a different person, so animated by both the incredible need that he saw, but also the difference he was able to make in people’s lives.
Since then his life has been dedicated to providing relief to suffering and poor people whose lives are very often completely changed by what Tertius and his team are able to offer them.
Tertius’s Christian faith drives him on through challenging and sometimes heartbreaking situations, and he says he never feels closer to God than when he is doing this work.
His is a challenging and immensely inspiring story.
Explore:
Mercy Ships where you can support the organisation or even Tertius directly
Cure international
Dr Venter’s Website
Operation Smile
Trevor Cooling explains how educating the whole person lays foundations for the ‘life worth living’.
Professor Trevor Cooling has spent a life time in education, in universities and also public and independent schools. Here he talks to Life & Faith about why teaching worldview is a crucial skill students need to learn as they engage in a pluralistic society.
We discuss the true purpose of education, the lessons that are life-long and where religious education fits, even in a culture that has been moving away from institutionalised faith. Trevor also explains why vocation and a sense of calling can be such a gift for a student finding their way in the world.
What vision of a full and flourishing life can we offer the young men in our lives?
Justine Toh interviews Simon Smart about his new book The End of Men? Simon wrote this book after observing that boys and men are struggling in many ways—socially, emotionally, and at school. Boys are finding it difficult to understand their place, and wondering if there is something inherently toxic about their masculinity. Simon explores a more holistic understanding of what it means to be a man, and the importance of harnessing a tender masculinity for the common good. Boys need good examples of men to lead them into a healthy expression of their masculinity, to encourage them to use their strengths to benefit others and to protect the vulnerable: to operate with a “lens of love”.
Get the Book: The End of Men?
The ex-Rolling Stones journalist throws open the door the devil hides behind. Warning: not for kids.
The devil’s best trick, according to French poet Charles Baudelaire and/or criminal mastermind Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects (1995) was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.
Randall Sullivan’s new book, The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared, argues that despite our sceptical age that dismisses the existence of the supernatural, evil is at work in the world, and can’t be dismissed as the product of a bad upbringing or warped psychology.
In this interview with Life & Faith, Sullivan, the author and former investigative reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, tells us about his miraculous conversion experience, recounted in his earlier book The Miracle Detective: An Investigation of Holy Visions.
He also spills on his new book, which took him 20 years to write, and his experience of coming up, close, and personal with the divine... and what felt like a malevolent presence in the Piazza Navona in Rome.
Explore:
The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared
The Miracle Detective: An Investigation into Holy Visions
Randall Sullivan’s Wired article on Michelle Gomez, the world’s best bounty hunter (paywalled)
A short Thinking out Loud column quoting Randall Sullivan in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in 2024
With despair on the rise and hope in short supply, children’s literature offers people of all ages a treasure trove of wisdom.
Dr Amanda B Vernon is a children’s literature expert who believes that children's stories are not just for children. In this interview with Life & Faith, Amanda talks about how stories written with children in mind often shed light on deep human needs, including our longing for justice, agency, truth, wonder and redemption through suffering. From Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter to Winnie the Pooh, Amanda explores the joy, the wonder and the enduring wisdom of children’s literature.
Explore:
Amanda B Vernon’s website: www.amandabvernon.com
George Macdonald’s, ‘The Fantastic Imagination’
Joe Pompeo’s Vanity Fair article on utopia, dystopia and the modern imagination
Darrell Bock fears the church in the U.S. is in danger of losing its distinctiveness. How might it recover?
The United States is a divided country, and this year’s presidential election will bring that into sharp focus. Darrell Bock is a New Testament Scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary and the Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center.
Life & Faith interviews Darrell about the divisions in the U.S. and how tribal and ideological they have become. Darrell is concerned that the church has increased this polarisation with its misplaced loyalties, and by creating a social atmosphere that does not deal well with difference. Darrell believes it has been a mistake for the church to become an extension of a political arm, and that younger people have left the church in droves as a result.
Darrell sees a great need to return to a sense of welcome and care for the marginalised, as a distinctive marker of the love of God.
Explore:
The Hendricks Center
Darrell Bock books (there are many)
- Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone’s Asking
- Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ
- Gospel of Luke Commentary
The spirit of our politics feels negative and harmful. Michael Wear believes the improved spiritual health and civic character of individuals can change that.
“We belong to a political party because we believe things, we should not believe things because we belong to a political party”.
Michael Wear is the author of The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life. In this episode he talks to Life & Faith about his desire to cultivate a more healthy and vibrant political and civic life in his country that is wracked with polarisation and enmity across the political spectrum.
Wear is under no illusions as to how large a challenge that is but remains committed to making a contribution towards a healthy pluralism.
He also has huge reservations about the way in which faith has been captured to further political, rather than religious, outcomes. Wear think there is huge danger in Christianity being instrumentalised as a means of advancing one set of political ideas. Instead, faith should be about the flourishing of all society.
Explore:
Michael Wear’s latest book The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life.
Michael’s previous book Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama Whitehouse About the Future of Faith in America.
The Centre for Christianity and Public Life
The headlines are grim, and the world feels apocalyptic. It’s time to become the people the world needs right now.
“I don't know how to fix climate change or geopolitics, but I know what I'm called to do, which is put my roots down deep into love and be growing up, be becoming the kind of person that the world needs.”
Elizabeth Oldfield is the author of the book Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times – and turbulent our times are. Climate anxiety, political polarisation, social unrest, and diminishing attention spans haunt our days. Also present, but perhaps less obviously so: our gnawing spiritual hunger and desire for connection with ourselves, each other, and maybe even what Elizabeth calls “the G bomb”: God.
In this interview with Life & Faith, Elizabeth talks about “steadiness of soul” in an increasingly chaotic world and what it means to live in a small, intentional community or “micro monastery” that can fit 18 people around the dinner table. The conversation also covers how Elizabeth has managed to cultivate a space for profound chats across social divides in the podcast The Sacred, and what it meant for Elizabeth to flout careerist dogma and quit her stable, secure job to rest and lean into a different way of life.
Explore:
Elizabeth Oldfield’s book Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times
Her letter about leaving her job that hit a nerve with people
Her Substack newsletter Fully Alive
The Sacred Podcast
A philosopher and a butcher dig into what we should and shouldn’t eat, and why.
“As society has shifted away from being in close proximity to farms and food production, people are increasingly concerned about where their food’s coming from – the condition under which animals are raised and reared, and certain farming practices, [such as] pesticide use and the effects that that may have on the environment as well as on human health.”
Philosopher and sociologist Chris Mayes has thought about eating a lot more than most of us (which if we’re honest, is already quite a bit). The ethics of food involves a whole raft of factors: not only the treatment of animals and the environmental impact of production, but also the treatment of workers and the impact of the growth of pastoral land on indigenous peoples.
“In Australia it seems natural that we would have sheep, and natural that wheat would be here, but in thinking of the obviousness of those practices and products here, we forget their role in dispossessing indigenous Australians – the way that the expansion of sheep, particularly throughout NSW and Victoria in the early to mid-nineteenth century, was coinciding with a lot of these most brutal massacres.”
Chris considers what it means for lamb to be Australia’s national cuisine – and how you make Scriptures that rely on the language of sheep and shepherds meaningful within a non-pastoralist culture.
Then: Tom Kaiser is Simon Smart’s local butcher. Perhaps unusually for a butcher, he thinks people should eat less meat. He sells meat products that many would consider to be expensive in what he calls the “Masterchef era”.
“Affluence definitely plays a big part. They can afford to have the product that they see on TV. We know for a fact that we wouldn’t be able to charge the price, nor have the same model we have in different parts of Australia. … Ethics is obviously multi-layered. It comes to personal beliefs. It comes down to knowledge.”
Explore:
Chris Mayes’ book Unsettling Food Politics: Agriculture, Dispossession and Sovereignty in Australia
CPX’s new podcast The Week @ CPX
The astonishing technological progress humans have made sometimes raises the warning that we shouldn’t be “playing God”. Nick Spencer from Theos think tank disagrees.
In their book Playing God: science, religion, and the future of humanity, Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite insist that contrary to the warnings to avoid “playing God”, human beings are in fact a God-playing species and have a responsibility to ‘play God’ well.
They examine remarkable advancements we have made in technological capability—AI, pharmacology and genetic engineering, knowledge of outer space, genetic editing, healing in the womb—and note that the world that science is creating raises exactly the kind of questions that science can’t answer. Their book is a plea to maintain an open and multi-voiced language to address these questions drawing on ethical, humanistic and spiritual layers.
On Life & Faith this week Nick Spencer joined Simon Smart to delve into some urgent contemporary questions that all coalesce around the notion of who we are as humans.
Explore
Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite, Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity
Theos Think Tank
Centre for Public Christianity
Bill Bennett, director of the film The Way, My Way and Camino legend Johnnie Walker Santiago reflect on the spiritual riches of going on pilgrimage.
“I see this walk as an 800km long cathedral”. So says Australian filmmaker Bill Bennett in the film The Way, My Way, which depicts Bill’s experiences walking the Camino de Santiago.
The Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St James, is a network of pilgrimage roads and paths running through Spain, France, and Portugal, leading to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in north-western Spain, long believed to be the burial place of the Apostle James.
The Camino has been an oft-travelled pilgrimage route since medieval times. These days, plenty of spiritual seekers like Bill, and others looking for connection and adventure, become modern-day pilgrims, driven to discover deeper truths about life along the way.
This episode of Life & Faith interviews Bill Bennett, the director of The Way, My Way as well as Johnnie Walker Santiago, a beloved expert and authority on the Camino de Santiago.
Explore:
Trailer for The Way, My Way
The book Bill Bennett wrote, upon which the film is based: The Way, My Way: A Camino memoir
Johnnie Walker Santiago’s guidebooks: Camino to Santiago: A spiritual companionand It’s About Time: A call to the Camino de Santiago
Check out CPX's new podcast, The Week @ CPX
This dreaded disease seems to strip away everything that makes us, well, us. A chaplain and a psychiatrist remind us of the human at the centre of the diagnosis.
The ‘d’ word – dementia – is one that everyone fears. It seems to strip away everything that made that person with the disease the person we once knew. It’s easy to lose sight of the person, the human at the centre of the diagnosis.
Today, 420,000 Australians live with dementia, a number projected to double in the next 30 years, which makes it a significant and growing health challenge for Australia’s ageing population.
This episode of Life & Faith brings you two conversations that bring the human at the centre of the dementia diagnosis back into focus. We’re featuring two interviews Natasha Moore did before going on maternity leave: with Neil Jeyasingam, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Sydney. Neil is also a CPX Associate.
Natasha also spoke to Ben Boland, a chaplain with 15 years’ experience in residential aged care – and whose father lives with dementia.
Explore:
Dementia Australia, the national peak body representing people with dementia, their families, and carers.
Mercy Aiken tells Life & Faith of the joy-filled, yet painful life of Palestinian Christian, Bishara Awad.
Bishara was a child in Jerusalem when his father was shot and killed during the Israeli-Arab war of 1948. The story of his life and that of his family provides a sobering portrait of life in Israel/Palestine during decades of war, violence, tension and dashed dreams for those seeking a peaceful resolution to conflict.
Somehow, Bishara, a Palestinian Christian and community leader, remains unbowed, but also forgiving and empathetic towards his opponents.
His story is told in the book, Yet in the Dark Streets Shining – a Palestinian Story of Hope and Resilience in Bethlehem.
The coauthor of the book is Mercy Aiken – who came into the CPX studio. Mercy was in Australia with the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Network.
The book:
Yet in the Dark Streets Shining – a Palestinian Story of Hope and Resilience in Bethlehem
Palestine Israel Ecumenical Network
Asuntha Charles has lived in some toughest places in the world. And she’s loved it.
Long
As a young woman, Asuntha Charles stubbornly defied her culture to advocate for vulnerable women and girls. That determination never left her as she dedicated her life to voiceless people in not only her native India, but places like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sudan and Iraq.
Here she tells Life & Faith about her extraordinary life of service and care for people who needed that care most. And we also get an insight into the early influences that shaped her life and contributed to her holding a faith that sustains her even in the face of risk, and heartbreaking losses.
Try listening to this and not be challenged and inspired!
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War correspondent Janine di Giovanni has covered the near-extinction of the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East.
“They’ve survived plagues, they’ve survived pillages, they’ve survived raids, they’ve survived purges – and they most recently survived ISIS.”
The Christian communities of the Middle East – in places like Iraq and Syria, Egypt and Palestine – are ancient, and over recent decades have been facing various kinds of existential threat. Janine di Giovanni’s book The Vanishing: The Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East is a work of “pre-archaeology”, recording the stories and courage of these communities even as they disappear.
Di Giovanni is a war correspondent and human rights investigator who has covered 18 wars and 3 genocides across her career, bearing witness to the terrible things that happen in our world. In this episode, she talks about visiting churches in war zones, why people stay, and whether faith – including her own belief in God – is strong enough to survive war. She also shares a bit about her current work with The Reckoning Project, a war crimes unit working within Ukraine.
“It's been an honour to work for 35 years in all these war zones with these extraordinary people. I feel very privileged and lucky every day of my life that I do this work, because … I have a purposeful life.”
EXPLORE:
The Vanishing: The Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East, by Janine di Giovanni
The Reckoning Project
Sign up for the CPX newsletter here
CPX writers talk about how they’re hoping to breathe new life into a very old story.
Get a glimpse into the CPX writers’ room as Simon, Natasha, Justine and Max talk about what they’re writing about Easter, or how they go about working out how to write about Easter.
Natasha talks about American novelist Marilynne Robinson’s new book Reading Genesis and how Robinson’s courteous and unapologetic way of doing “public Christianity” messes with how public conversations about God usually happen.
Max discusses how we may admire heroes for their greatness – like Homer’s Achilles, for example – but we really long for goodness, expressed by saviours who willingly sacrifice themselves for others.
Simon discusses how a quirk of the calendar can put Anzac Day and Easter in proximity to each other, bringing those two events and their focus on sacrifice into conversation.
Justine talks about death denial among the tech titans of Silicon Valley who hope to solve the problem of death. She argues that they express what life feels like if Easter Saturday – the day Jesus lay dead in the grave – is never followed by Easter Sunday – the day that changed everything, according to the Christian faith, because it is the day that Jesus rose to new life.
Explore:
Natasha’s piece on Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis
An article Simon wrote linking Anzac Day with Easter
Sign up for the CPX newsletter here
We explore the spiritual needs of people in intensive care in hospital, or behind bars.
“I went to see this lady and as soon as I walked in, she actually said, ‘f*** off, I don’t want to have anything to do with you people’.”
Chaplaincy in Australia is contested. If people have had a bad experience with the church or concerned that someone might be trying to manipulate them, a chaplain walking up to say hi might get that response. Not least because people can be very vulnerable if they’re dealing with a shocking medical episode in hospital or grappling with life in prison.
This Life & Faith episode takes you behind the scenes of two very different environments: the intensive care unit of a major Sydney hospital, and Kirkconnell Correctional Centre in regional NSW. Two chaplains from Jericho Road, a social service organisation linked with the Presbyterian Church in NSW, tell us about what it’s like to care spiritually for people during very difficult times in their lives.
Content warning: there are some challenging stories told in these interviews. This episode is not suitable for children.
Explore:
Jericho Road’s Love Your Neighbour course on chaplaincy
Sign up for CPX's regular email newsletter to find out more about our work.
For decades now in the West, religion has been on the retreat. In places where, 50 years ago, going to church on a Sunday was just what you did, we’ve had generations now for whom that would be a very foreign concept.
Justin Brierley is an author and very popular podcaster. For 17 years he hosted a podcast called Unbelievable where he would bring together atheist and Christian thinkers for civil and robust discussion. He presided over conversations with some of the world’s great minds for these dialogues and modelled a brilliant way to disagree civilly.
Justin has just published a book called The Surprising Re-birth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again. He detects a shift in the air and the possibility that the thoroughly secular vision of the world might not be cutting it for people today. Is that his imagination or might there be something to this?
Explore:
Justin’s latest book: https://justinbrierley.com/the-surprising-rebirth-of-belief-in-god/
And the podcast at:
The Surprising Rebirth podcast: https://justinbrierley.com/surprisingrebirth/
Sign up for CPX's regular email newsletter to find out more about our work.
Sarah Williams explains how the mother of modern feminism fell off the pages of history.
After her death in 1906, Josephine Butler was described as one of the “few great people who have moulded the course of things”. (For the record, she was also described by peers as “the most beautiful woman in the world”.)
Yet how many of us have heard of her? A bit too feminist for later Christians, a bit too Christian for later feminists, this pioneer of the movement against sex trafficking is only now being remembered.
Sarah Williams is an historian at Regent College and a research associate at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford. And over the last few years, she has gotten to know Josephine Butler well – she would even go so far as to call her a friend.
When Natasha Moore asked what she finds so remarkable about Butler, Sarah speaks first about her persistence – the sixteen years she spent working to overturn one law that unjustly discriminated against women.
“I don’t think that we lack vision in our culture, but we definitely lack stamina … I think she did it by recognising that she couldn’t do it. Does that sound strange?”
For International Women’s Day this year, meet the woman who’s been called the mother of modern feminism – and join an ongoing conversation our culture is having about power, justice, gender, and what it means to “change the world”.
“We might imagine that the real centres of power are where powerful people change culture through influencing spheres of culture – media, politics, the law, and so on … And yet what’s extraordinary about somebody like Josephine Butler or Mahatma Gandhi or any other of the great social reformers that we can think of in history, is that they somehow manage to see that really the margins matter a lot. And that what goes on at the centre, if it fails to understand what’s going on at the margins, does so at its peril.”
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Pre-order Sarah Williams' biography of Josephine Butler, When Courage Calls.
Reflections on a human experience that’s at once routine and exceptional; both very costly and very good.
Life & Faith has covered many stories relating to birth over the years – incredible stories of courage and heartbreak, difficult decisions, life and death – but we’ve never done an episode on birth itself: what’s amazing about this process, what’s so hard about it, what makes it so meaningful for so many people.
This year Simon Smart is celebrating a once-every-four-years occasion (yes, he was born on 29 February!) and Natasha Moore is due to head off on maternity leave soon, so Justine Toh joins them for a conversation about birthdays – that is, birth ... days. And midwife Jodie McIver, author of Bringing Forth Life: God’s Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth, offers some insights on the journey to becoming a parent, including how surprisingly frequently pregnancy and birth – in story and as metaphor – feature in the Bible.
“I think the fact that God chooses birth to help us understand deep spiritual realities about his character and work in the world really gives honour to women’s bodies, and to these human experiences as well, as we kind of share in the cost of bringing forth life in our own little way.”
EXPLORE
Jodie McIver, Bringing Forth Life: God’s Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth
A few other Life & Faith episodes related to birth, touching on disability, loss, infertility, and fostering:
Speak Up, Show Up
Intensive Care
When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan
Home Extension
…of which CPX’s Justine Toh is first and foremost.
In the lead up to Easter, Justine is giving up not only sugar, but her ignorance about all things Lent. She speaks to Catholic theologian Matt Tan, who goes by Awkward Asian Theologian on socials, about Lent and its three-fold focus: giving up, alms-giving, and prayer. They discuss the difficulty of self-sacrifice and the way that, strangely enough, it often proves the easier option over alms-giving, which needn’t only include giving to charity, but also intentional, active investment in the lives of others.
Matt also alludes to the way church seasons induct the believer into an entirely different order of time. He cites the work of Neil Postman, who said the clock was originally invented to help monks keep to their daily prayer schedule. In time, however, the clock, went beyond the monastery and conquered the rest of the world. Time is now subdivided into increasingly minute moments that all need to be filled. So, what does it mean to live according to the rhythms of sacred time?
Explore
Simon Smart’s Ash Wednesday article
Life & Faith episode with Matt Tan on the metaphysics of pornography
Follow Awkward Asian Theologian on Instagram
20 years on from the founding of Facebook, what role do these platforms play in our lives?
February 4 marked 20 years since Mark Zuckerburg launched the site that was initially known as The Facebook from his Harvard dorm room, so this seems like a good time to take stock of what social media now looks like, and what our lives look like as a result.
Whether you’re an avid user of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and more, or a social media sceptic, join Simon Smart, Justine Toh, and Natasha Moore for a frank chat about the better and worse of these platforms in 2024. With cameos from Andy Crouch, CPX brand manager (and socials pro) Clare Potts, and recent social media quitter Jess Forsyth, the discussion ranges from whether group chats count as social media to whether the internet is “made of demons” - as well as the advantages (and disciplines) of being an iceberg vs an ocean liner.
EXPLORE:
New York Times article How Group Chats Rule the World
Philippa Moore’s article about quitting social media
Paul Kingsnorth’s Substack essays The Universal and The Neon God
Alan Jacobs’ New Atlantis piece
Andy Crouch’s Spiritual Practices for Public Leadership
Anglican Priest David Pileggi talks about what Christmas means in his town of Jerusalem in the midst of war.
Anglican priest David Pileggi has lived in Jerusalem for over 40 years. In that time he has seen a lot, but recent events in Israel and Gaza have been as shocking and disturbing as any he has encountered. He talks to Life & Faith about his life in the “Holy City” - what he loves about it and the things he weeps over.
Despite all that has transpired in recent days David Pileggi refuses to despair. As he prepares his Christmas 2023 message for the gathered locals and pilgrims, he remains convinced the story of the baby born down the road in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, remains the best hope for not only that troubled part of the world, but for all of us.
Christ church Jerusalem is the oldest protestant church in the Middle East
British journalist David Goodhart on the Anywhere-Somewhere divide challenging national unity abroad and at home.
Is Australia polarised?
The country is no UK roiled by Brexit, or US torn apart by the election of Donald Trump to the American presidency in 2016. But we’ve had our own brushes with polarisation – most recently on the question of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
On this episode of Life & Faith, we look at the issue of national division from a sideways angle: could the Anywhere-Somewhere divide explain contemporary polarisation and the gulf in people’s instincts?
The terms belong to David Goodhart, author of The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics and Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century.
People in the Anywhere class, Goodhart says, tend to be well-educated, mobile, and cosmopolitan, making up about 20-25% of the national population. Their Somewhere counterparts, on the other hand, tend to be more rooted in their local communities, perhaps more conservative and communitarian, and make up 50% of the population.
Neither worldview is better or worse, he argues, but Anywheres tend to run the country, and don’t reliably read the national room. For Goodhart, this explains the cry for recognition of recent populist movements – and raises the question of where someone might seek what Goodhart calls “unconditional recognition”.
“The institutions that gave people unconditional recognition like the family, like the church or indeed the nation, all of these things are weaker and the weakening of that unconditional recognition bears most heavily on the people who are the lowest achievers, as it were, in modern liberal democracies.”
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Explore
David’s book The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics
David’s book Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century
David’s “Too Diverse?” essay for Prospect
Brigid Delaney’s piece in The Guardian after the 2019 federal election
The LSE blog post on British Parliament’s “class problem”
The SMH report on the backgrounds of Australia’s federal MPs
Our cultural narrative says there is no supernatural or transcendent realm. The CPX team wants to break that spell.
Seen & Heard is back – and this time, the team have disenchantment in their sights, or the belief that there is no more supernatural or transcendent realm to life, that science is the only verifiable path to truth, and that all things religious are debunked, once and for all.
But is this true? The books and films we’ve been reading and watching might disagree.
Natasha highlights beloved Australian author Helen Garner’s encounter with an angel and our flirtation with the supernatural through occasions like Halloween, before taking us through the supernatural stylings of the latest Poirot film A Haunting in Venice, based (extremely loosely) on Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party.
Simon has been reading the biography of tennis icon and former World No. 1 Andre Agassi who, it turns out, hated tennis and wrestled with fame, but discovered that helping people is the “only perfection there is”.
A world that has cast off religion and the transcendent also leaves behind any account of the good life that goes along with those claims. Yet Agassi discovered that being the best tennis player in the world didn’t fulfil him. Only serving others did, which resonates with the Christian claim that the good life is a life lived for others.
And Justine raves about Susannah Clarke’s novel Piranesi and its vivid portrayal of what the disenchanted view of the world lacks: wonder, deep communion with the world, joy, and hope. Plus, Justine makes a bold claim: Susannah Clarke is the 21st-century successor to C.S. Lewis.
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Explore
Helen Garner describing her angelic encounter at the 2018 Sydney Writers’ Festival(from 30 mins)
Sean Kelly’s column mentioning Hilary Mantel’s possibly demonic encounter
Trailer for A Haunting in Venice
Natasha’s article on Halloween, published in the Sydney Morning Herald
Andre Agassi’s Open: An Autobiography
The Guardian’s interview with Susannah Clarke
Piranesi by Susannah Clarke
Wikipedia entry on the real-life Piranesi, the 18th-century architect and artist
A new book tells the stories of people whose encounters with New Atheism set them on the path to Christianity.
“He said, I’ve been a scientist all my life and I was an atheist – quite a happy atheist, you know, I wasn’t particularly looking for other worldviews. Until I read The God Delusion in 2006. And that really shook my faith in atheism.”
It’s around 15 years ago that the so-called New Atheism – represented most prominently by the “Four Horsemen” Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and of course Richard Dawkins – had its heyday. The conversation they instigated gave many people permission to fully and publicly embrace disbelief in God; perhaps even a strong belief that religion was harmful and should be done away with.
For others, encountering the work of the New Atheists had quite the opposite effect. A new book, Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity, edited by Alister McGrath and Denis Alexander, tells the stories of people for whom, paradoxically, New Atheism became a doorway to Christian faith.
In this episode of Life & Faith, co-editor Denis Alexander explains how the book “wrote itself” and why it’s not meant to be a triumphalist read. And contributors Johan Erasmus and Anikó Albert explain why the New Atheism had such a significant – and contrary – impact on their lives.
Buy Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity
This week marks 60 years since the death of CS Lewis and that seems like an appropriate moment to return to a very popular episode from a couple of years back.
A lot of people know the date 22nd of November 1963 because that's the date that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. That dramatic event overshadowed another death that same day on the other side of the Atlantic – the death of the beloved writer and public Christian CS Lewis, best known still today for his Narnia stories. It's 60 years this week since Lewis's death and that seems like an appropriate moment to return to a very popular episode from a couple of years back. In 2021 we marked 80 years since the origins of Lewis's book, Mere Christianity, which in an unlikely turn of events became one of the most influential books of the past century. Mere Christianity and Lewis's other writings have only grown in popularity since his death in 1963, and this episode goes some way to explaining why.
Seeing war up close and surviving nonetheless leaves its mark.
Andrew Hastie would not be the first person to join the defence force out of both a hunger for adventure and deep-seated sense of duty.
After a distinguished career in the army, including being an officer in the elite Special Air Service (SAS), Hastie speaks to Life & Faith about the experience. He explains why he joined up, his gruelling entry into the SAS and his three tours of Afghanistan.
Here we learn about the Afghan people Andrew worked with, the pressure and intense experience of engaging an enemy in an unfamiliar land and culture, and the toll of responsibility when the stakes are so high. This is a raw and honest assessment of the cost of war, the ethics of battle and the weight of the hard-won lessons of the combat zone.
What can faith offer to those experiencing the wounds of moral injury so prevalent in those who have been taken out of civilian life and placed into the extreme environment of war?
Hope feels scarce, but it’s not lost – and it’s within our power to be people of hope.
“I certainly have clients who are in their twenties who are saying to me, I will not have children because look at the world! So, the question is, where is the vision of hope?”
Clinical psychologist Leisa Aitken gets that hope seems in short supply right now. Daily headlines are a barrage of bad news – of wars and rumours of wars, politics in breakdown, the life support systems of the earth in crisis. Rising rates of poor mental health among the young show that the next generation is struggling. The future doesn’t seem all that bright.
We need collective action to address the world’s growing disorder. But who do we need to be in the face of our present hope crisis?
Leisa has been researching hope for the past decade. In this interview, fresh from her 2023 CPX Richard Johnson Lecture, she runs us through the psychology of hope, offering us tools to help us cope with the times in which we live.
Leisa also covers the limits of mindfulness, the correlation between hope and feeling connected to something bigger than the self, and what is within our power to do – right now – to be people of hope.
“It’s easy to spend our lives just in distraction. But we can surround ourselves with people who are going to help us bring about our hopes and we can have eyes to see the glimpses of what we hope for – and to be those glimpses,” Leisa said.
“The beauty of glimpses is we don’t have to change everything in the world to bring hope about. We need just a taste. Just a glimpse.”
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Explore
Leisa’s website
The “sunny nihilism” article
Fancy some marriage advice from Leisa?
More on mindfulness from Leisa
Why have conspiracy theories gained so much traction? And are Christians more prone to believe them?
“I’d like to say that it’s all intellectual, but I don’t think it is.”
The belief that behind the visible mechanisms of society, powerful forces are up to no good is hardly a new idea (or reality). But geopolitics and culture wars in recent years have thrown up plenty of material for conspiracy theorists to work with.
What’s so appealing about these theories? When do they become a problem? And how can we have constructive conversations about them, without one side just infuriating or dismissing the other?
Nigel Chapman is the lead author of the ISCAST paper “Who to Trust? Christian Belief in Conspiracy Theories”, which digs into the phenomenon of conspiracism, including how Christian faith and community can either feed into or mitigate against such beliefs.
And Michel Gagné is someone who’s been down the rabbit hole himself, and returned – starting with the myths and theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 60 years ago. He explains how he got in – and out! – and offers advice for families and friends who find themselves divided and exhausted by conspiracy theories.
“If we dehumanise others, we are on the slippery slope of creating a false reality, a simplistic myth that does not reflect our world.”
EXPLORE:
ISCAST discussion paper, Who to Trust? Christian Belief in Conspiracy Theories
Michel Gagné’s book, Thinking Critically about the Kennedy Assassination: Debunking the Myths and Conspiracy Theories
Michel Gagné’s podcast Paranoid Planet
Why might someone who’s not religious want to send their kids to a faith-based school?
“Teachers are one of the few groups of people in society who can tell other people what to do in their discretionary time and – by and large – they obey.”
Education is among our core activities as a society – so it’s unsurprising that it can be a battleground for all sorts of ideas.
David I. Smith is Professor of Education at Calvin University, and he has spent decades thinking about how education really forms people. He says that there’s no such thing as a “vanilla” or “neutral” education – and that even a maths or a French textbook will imply a whole way of seeing the world and other people.
“We spent a lot of time learning how to say in French and German, ‘This is my name. This is my favourite food. I like this music. I don’t like biology. This is what I did last weekend. I would like two train tickets to Hamburg. I would like the steak and fries. I would like a hotel room for two nights.’
So the implicit message of the textbooks was that the reason why we learn other people’s languages is so that we can obtain the goods and services that we deserve and so that we can tell people about ourselves … It’s not really imagining us as people who listen to other people’s stories or as people who care about the members of the culture we’re visiting who don’t work in hotels, or as people who might want to talk about the meaning of life and not just the price of a hamburger.”
Given that about a third of Australian schools are religious, and that faith-based education is the subject of nervousness on both the left and right of politics these days, it’s worth asking: why do parents who aren’t religious want to send their kids to Christian schools? What’s the content of a “Christian” education? And what happens when religious schools get it wrong?
We’ve heard of burnout and PTSD but what about “moral injury”, that’s affecting soldiers and also Covid-19 health workers?
“Soul sick”.
That’s how some of the literature describes the effects of “moral injury” on people. Perhaps we’re more used to violence leaving a physical mark or causing psychological trauma that disrupts a person’s ability to live their everyday life.
But moral injury is a different kind of wound altogether. As defined by Andrew Sloane, theologian and Morling College ethicist, “it’s when somebody has either done or witnessed something which is in deep conflict with their internalised moral values, and it leaves them damaged psychologically, emotionally, ethically, spiritually.”
“It is a disruption to someone’s understanding of themselves. It’s a matter of wounded identity and a wounded sense of what the world is meant to be and who they’re meant to be in it,” Andrew said, before explaining how the experience of caring for people during the Covid-19 pandemic left many health workers morally injured.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we also hear from Sam Gregory, the last Australian Defence Force (ADF) chaplain in Afghanistan, sent there as Coalition forces were withdrawing after 20 years in the country.
He describes the turmoil of feeling “the sense [that] we weren’t done yet, and that we were being constrained by political forces to bring about the end of that operation”. Then there were his “feelings of profound shame” that Australian military involvement in Afghanistan meant that soldiers essentially had to dehumanise not only the enemy but also their local allies.
“My faith tells me that every human is made in the image of God and therefore worthy of dignity and respect and value. And then I’m part of an organiszation that has taken that dignity and respect away from a whole nation of people,” Sam said.
This is a confronting and difficult exploration of the invisible wounds suffered by those to whom we entrust our safety and security. But as health workers leave the caring professions, and returned war veterans struggle to adjust to normal life, it’s an increasingly necessary conversation.
Explore
Andrew Sloane’s article for ABC Religion & Ethics on moral injury and Covid-19 health workers
Atonement: the Australian Story episode featuring Dean Yates
Australians are used to filling in forms that ask whether they have Aboriginal or Torres Strait heritage. But not many of us have contact with people from the farthest northern reaches of our country.
This week on Life & Faith we talk with Torres strait community leader and pastor Gabriel Bani. We hear about his growing up on the islands where houses were crowded but community life was very strong.
Gabriel tells us about his, and his people’s embrace of Christianity, despite the dubious methods used to bring that message to his people.
What has been the cost to the people of the Torres Strait of their encounter with Europeans? And what can be learned from the islander people? Gabriel Bani urges us to listen to his people, and to be hopeful, as we all search for meaningful and positive engagement.
A detective and a scholar tackle the question: why are we all so obsessed with crime stories?
“When I was a child, not everything was a detective story. Now it is, on television. And it’s almost as if we all want to know, we want to know the big question: who did it??”
Judging by the perennial popularity of detective novels and crime shows, and the current wave of true crime podcasts, it’s not a stretch to call our culture murder-obsessed. Why are these stories so fascinating to us? Is there something wrong with us?
It’s a topic writers have long been drawn to, in essays like George Orwell’s “Decline of the English Murder” and W. H. Auden’s “The Guilty Vicarage”. In this episode of Life & Faith, Natasha Moore speaks with literary scholar and theologian Alison Milbank about the hold these stories have over us – and also Jim Warner Wallace, who’s been dealing with the real thing for decades in his work as a cold case detective.
“When you knock on the door of the neighbour of a serial killer, they’re likely to say, ‘Oh I’m so glad you’re taking that guy to jail, that guy is crazy – I mean it smells bad over there, there’s all kinds of weird noises, he’s always digging holes in his backyard’ … When you think of my kinds of cases, you knock on the neighbour’s door and tell them ‘I’m taking your neighbour to jail for this case from 30 years ago’, they’ll generally say, ‘No, I’ve known that guy for 30 years, he’s a great guy. No way could he have done that.’”
From our deepest convictions about human nature to how you can tell if a suspect might be lying, this episode delves into the appeal of the murder mystery, and also unfolds the surprising story of how Jim came to apply his particular skill-set to the truth claims of the Christian faith.
“All of my cases, I call these ‘death by a thousand paper cuts’ – cases where you’ve got 80 pieces of evidence that point to this suspect. Any one of those pieces of evidence I’m not sure I would want to go to trial with … but when you have all 80 and they point to the same reasonable inference, this is now heavy and weighty. And that’s where I was with the Gospels.”
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Reading mentions:
George Orwell, “Decline of the English Murder”
W. H. Auden, “The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict”
Jim Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity (10th Anniversary Edition)
And check out the rest of Jim’s work at https://coldcasechristianity.com/
Sixty years ago, MLK declared “I have a dream”. As Australia votes on the Voice, we grapple with racism.
It’s been 60 years since Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. ascended the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., declaring that “one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers – I have a dream today.”
More than half a century on from King’s dream, where are we in Australia on the vexed question of race relations?
In this episode of Life & Faith, we speak to fellow CPXer Max Jeganathan, who’s recently written about the Voice and his own experience of racism in Australia – according to him, the “least racist” country he’s ever lived in.
Max was born into a Sri Lankan Tamil family with close personal experience of the Black July riots of 1983, a government-sanctioned program of racial discrimination against minority Tamils. His family wound up in Australia as humanitarian refugees.
While Max is very positive about growing up in Australia, he’s still experienced racism. Which provides a glimpse, perhaps, of the racial discrimination experienced by Aboriginal Australians on an ongoing basis.
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Explore
Max’s article on how the Voice is a question of love and moral imagination
Max’s article on racism in light of the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s speech
The Martin Luther King Jr. segment from For the love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined.
An award-winning Australian novelist shares her experience of grief, chronic pain, great joy – and the supernatural.
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“As I’ve travelled the world and talked to endless strangers and asked them, did they ever have an experience they couldn’t explain? … I would have asked that question many, many hundreds of times. There’s been nobody who said no.”
49% of Australians say they never have a spiritual conversation. We think of ourselves as a very secular people – yet behind labels like “no religion” and “spiritual but not religious” lies a rich and varied (and sometimes strange) story.
Heather Rose is the award-winning author of Museum of Modern Love and Bruny – and now, the spiritual memoir she says she didn’t mean to write, Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here.
Heather’s life has been punctuated by encounters with the supernatural and intense spiritual experiences. In this conversation, she talks about nearly becoming a Buddhist nun, participating in a Native American Sun Dance, the beauty of her father’s Christian faith, and her wrestle with the idea that perhaps nothing bad does ever happen here.
Rob Stokes reflects on the joys and challenges of his political career, as well as his latest challenge – solving homelessness.
Simon Smart speaks with ex-politician Rob Stokes about public service and the most satisfying aspects of his life in politics. Stokes gives an honest account of not only the best aspects of being able to “get things done” but also the frustrations of compromise, the exhausting demands and the life of a politician. Ultimately Stokes encourages would-be political operatives to dive in with an attitude of service and sacrifice and urges us all to be more engaged in the political process.
His latest project aims to tackle homelessness, a challenge Stokes is remarkably upbeat and energised about.
Explore:
Faith Housing Alliance
This week we take on a topic most of us want to avoid and find it surprisingly life-giving.
Sydney Morning Herald opinion editor Chris Harrison faced death as a teenager and lived to tell the tale. Listeners will find his account of returning to the sports field where, after being hit with cricket ball, he was clinically dead for two minutes, both moving and confronting.
This week we hear from Chris about that experience as well as from Marianne Rozario, the co-author of a report that was conducted in the UK into attitudes to death and dying. Rozario explains the way our feelings about death, dying and the memorialisation of those who have passed, have changed (and how they have stayed the same), and what all this suggests about us as human beings.
Justine and Simon are left to consider the way we process death and the loss of those we love and where we might find hope in the face of the harsh reality that is true of every life.
Explore:
Chris Harrison: “"I was clinically dead for 2 minutes. This is what I saw, Sydney Morning Herald (January 29, 2022)
Theos Think Tank report: Ashes to Ashes: Beliefs, Trends, and Practices in Dying, Death, and the Afterlife
This highly acclaimed, speculative novel tackles the mind-body problem, and the mystery of consciousness.
If given the choice, would you agree to be uploaded to an entirely digital existence: freed from death, pain, and suffering – because freed from the body? Or would you remain human on a dying planet?
That’s the thought experiment behind Grace Chan’s speculative novel Every Version of You, a book that fleshes out our anxieties and fears – and also, desires – about technology and how it affects what it means to be human.
In Chan’s vision of the future, Australia in the 2080s has been ravaged by climate change. With the physical world in breakdown, people spend more and more time in Gaia, a digital paradise. But then the option to be uploaded to Gaia – indefinitely – becomes a reality. What will Chan’s characters choose – and what would you?
In this episode of Life & Faith, Justine Toh interviews Grace Chan about her novel, the winner of the University of Sydney People’s Choice Award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards 2023.
Hear Grace talk about how her book has gotten book clubs buzzing and how her training as a psychiatrist influenced the novel’s take on identity and the self. Then ask yourself: would an uploaded humanity remain human?
Explore
Seen & Heard: Mrs Davis and other tech misadventures, featuring Grace Chan’s Every Version of You.
Would you want to be uploaded to a digital heaven? Justine Toh’s article for CPX
Grace Chan on Twitter
Scholar and peacemaker Riad Kassis, from the perspective of a region in crisis, calls all of us to hope and generosity.
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“We talk about peace in our region; we have a greeting that says, peace be upon you, and we respond, and be upon you as well. But it is just a greeting. We would like to see it in practice.”
When Riad Kassis was a teenager, he and his family left their home in Lebanon during a civil war and took refuge next door, in Syria. These days, living back in Lebanon not far from the Syrian border, the situation is reversed: around 2 million refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war are now living in Lebanon, a country with a total population of 5 million.
This is just one of the crises faced by Lebanese people: economic collapse, the wake of the terrible explosion in Beirut in 2020, the pandemic of course, and the recent earthquake in the region have caused continual turbulence and hardship.
This week on Life & Faith, Dr Kassis describes what life is like in the midst of continual crisis, and what helps him to hope for more peaceful days. An Old Testament scholar, he also discusses feelings of frustration with God, and shares some of his wife Izdihar’s work with Syrian refugees, especially young women. And he has a message of encouragement for Australians specifically.
How the “invisible hand” of the market relies on the critical – and undervalued – work of care.
“We need to put care at the centre of the Australian economy.”
Before Sam Mostyn headed up the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, advising the Federal Government on ways to improve women’s economic equality, she gave a blistering address to the National Press Club about the long-ignored contribution of care – and the women who were mostly expected to do it – to national wellbeing.
Mostyn gave that address in late 2021 after months of lockdown, during which women did disproportionately more housework and childcare than men. Beyond individual households, feminised care industries full of “essential workers” – nurses, teachers, childcare workers, and aged care staff – also shouldered an extra load caring for vulnerable people through the pandemic.
Both kinds of work make up the care economy, or the paid and unpaid work of keeping people alive and well. It’s powered by women, and it’s typically taken for granted.
This episode of Life & Faith is timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher, economist, and “father” of capitalism. Smith held that the “invisible hand” – a metaphor for a hands-off approach to buying and selling in the marketplace – would produce beneficial outcomes for all.
Not so fast, say care feminists. They argue that the “invisible hand” can do nothing without the “invisible heart”: the compassion and love that drives the care economy, and on which the market economy is entirely reliant, but which isn’t accounted for in measures of GDP.
In this episode, we sample two stories of care, highlighting its invisibility and yet the essential role it plays in people’s flourishing.
We speak to Andie Thorpe, a doctoral student who became her mother’s official carer when she was 10 years old. Andie was also named NSW Young Carer of the Year in 2014.
We also interview the journalist and social critic Anne Manne, who has been speaking and writing about the care economy long before it hit the mainstream.
Note: we had a technical difficulty in the Anne Manne interview that makes Justine periodically sound like a robot! Apologies for that.
Explore
Anne Manne’s Quarterly Essay: Love and Money – The Family and the Free Market
Anne Manne’s book Motherhood: How should we care for our families?
Anne Manne in The Monthly, writing about making women’s unpaid work count
Nancy Folbre’s book The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values
SBS profile on Andie Thorpe
Simon Smart writing in The Sydney Morning Herald about Robert Putnam’s work on social capital and faith communities
The CPX team freaks out about AI, explores stories of “efficiency” run amok, and probes our tech utopias.
The apocalypse will be ... boring.
Or so says Charlie Warzel, tech journalist for The Atlantic. He means that AI won’t put you out of a job or take over the world, so much as overstuff your inbox and give you more mind-numbing tasks to complete.
Other people in the know about AI are less optimistic. Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of AI who resigned from Google in May, Sam Altman, the CEO of the company behind ChatGPT, and others have sounded the alarm: AI is progressing too quickly, no one knows exactly how it works, and without careful regulation it will upend life as we know it.
There are a lot of unknowns where technology is concerned. One thing we do know, though, is it makes for great TV, and stories and books.
In this edition of Seen & Heard, the CPX team debriefs on what they’ve been watching and reading.
Natasha takes us through the twists and turns of Amazon Prime’s Mrs Davis, a “bonkers” show about a nun facing off against Mrs Davis, the all-knowing algorithm against whom she has a grudge.
Simon looks at the way George Saunders’ short story “Escape from Spiderhead” (and the Spiderhead film based on it) explores how “the greater good” is used to justify all kinds of evils.
Justine looks closer at the digital utopia on offer in Grace Chan’s speculative novel Every Version of You, and finds that its promise of agelessness, no death, no suffering, and no body is basically heaven without God.
Explore:
ABC article on Replika
Every Version of You by Grace Chan
Escape From Spiderhead by George Saunders (via The New Yorker)
Mrs Davis trailer
Her and a Disembodied Future by Mark Stephens
Andy Crouch’s Richard Johnson Lecture on why technology keeps disappointing us and Q&A
Charlie Warzel: Here’s how AI will come for your job
Jo Swinney grew up in family committed to environmental care and community. Her parents’ efforts to revitalise a small piece of land in Portugal eventually spawned an international family of organisations committed to conservation of the natural environment.
In this wide-ranging discussion, Jo Swinney talks to Simon Smart about growing up in a commune-type existence in Portugal where her English parents were committed to conservation and fostering biodiversity. And also community.
Jo left for boarding school in the UK when she was 13 and live a nomadic existence for many years before settling into marriage and family in England. The smells and sounds of her childhood in Portugal never left her and nor did her commitment to hospitality and creation care.
This is a conversation of touching honesty about family, friendship and the things that sustain us when tragedy strikes.
Explore:
A Rocha
Books by Jo Swinney
- A Place at The Table: Faith, hope and hospitality
- Home: The quest to belong
Can Australia’s “dreaming beauty” – our Indigenous languages – be reclaimed? Meet some people who say a joyful yes.
250 years ago, hundreds of languages were spoken across this continent; today, only about 3 percent survive.
What happened in between is a familiar and harrowing story of dispossession – of land, lives, and culture – including a story of linguicide, or the deliberate killing of language.
Is it possible to revive a language that has been long dormant – that has “gone to sleep on country”, as Charmaine Councillor, a Wardandi-Balladong woman heavily involved in the revival of the Noongar language of southwestern WA, puts it?
In this bumper episode of Life & Faith, Charmaine and her Yamatji colleague Roslyn Khan describe what their language means to them, what the process of learning or relearning it has been like, and how they go about reviving Noongar – including by translating the Bible.
“It’s like when you’re riding a bike for the first time, and you’ve got your training wheels on – then all of a sudden you’re taking off down the road and then you forget about how you’re riding the bike, you’re just riding it and enjoying it. That’s where I am at the moment, I’m getting to the part where I’m really enjoying it and start speaking it more.”
We also hear from Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Professor of Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide, an Israeli linguist who has been using the work of a 19th-century German missionary to help the Barngarla people of South Australia reclaim their language.
“Aboriginal people who reconnect with their heritage tongue, they feel totally empowered … I would argue that language reclamation can improve the diabetes problem among Aboriginal people. We do need to change our understanding of Aboriginal culture; there are billions or if not trillions of dollars being wasted by the government on tangible things, and I think that there is a total overlook of the intangible. Language is intangible, you cannot touch it. But I think that this intangible element can have a huge benefit when it comes to tangible elements.”
Explore:
The Story of Ruth in Noongar
Gospel of Luke in Noongar/English
Ghil’ad Zuckermann’s book Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond
Nicholas Spencer insists the history of the relationship between science and religion is infinitely more interesting than the myths would have us believe.
Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half–truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century.
Nick Spencer takes these myths on in his comprehensive book, Magisteria: the entangled histories of science and religion. The history of science and religion is complex. It’s a story of religion at times inspiring scientific discovery and endeavour, and at other times stifling it.
And it’s a deeply human story that remains potent today as we continue to face the profoundly important question: “What is the human being?” And “Who gets to say?”
Explore
Nicholas Spencer, Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and faith
Nick Spencer Darwin and God
Nick Spencer Atheists: the origin of the species
Nick Spencer CPX’s Richard Johnson Lecture, “Where did I come from?: Christianity, secularism and the individual.”
A tender conversation about the start of life, the end of life, and quality of life.
1 in 10 babies in Australia are born premature, and 15% of all babies will need some form of extra care at birth.
Today on Life & Faith, we venture into a place that will be unfamiliar to many – but all too familiar to some: the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. Dr Annie Janvier is a neonatologist (she takes care of sick babies); she’s also a researcher and ethicist, thinking about difficult decisions doctors have to make, and trying to understand the perspective and experience of parents in the NICU.
And 17 years ago, she also became the mother of an extremely premature daughter. Violette was born at 24 weeks – and her mother discovered that knowing how a respirator works did not help her to be the mum of a baby on a respirator.
Annie shares some of the emotions that arise from being a parent in NICU; and some of the questions that arise – about life, death, disability, and meaning – for people in this situation.
And we have a bonus story for you here too: Andy Crouch describes the short, vulnerable, but deeply significant life of his niece Angela.
Explore:
Annie’s book Breathe, Baby, Breathe! Neonatal Intensive Care, Prematurity, and Complicated Pregnancies
Andy’s book Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing
“The Pill is a bad metaphysic”: Mary Harrington on says the pill has changed everything – and not really for the better.
“Is there something to be said for all of these things which I’ve been busy trying to dismantle? Because I’d taken it at face value that they were all just bad by definition.”
As Mary Harrington writes in her book Feminism Against Progress, she’s someone who has “liberalled about as hard as it’s possible to liberal”. In her 20s, she pursued maximum sexual freedom, non-hierarchical relationships, and communal forms of living. By the end of that decade, she experienced a “personal crash” that coincided with the global financial crisis. And she found she no longer believed in “progress”.
These days, Mary calls herself a reactionary feminist, one who is against “progress”. She disbelieves that we are steadily moving into a better and brighter future of freedom and human perfection. Neither does she believe that self-determination and liberation from every constraint is the path to that utopian goal.
This doesn’t mean that Mary wants to wind back the clock to a time when women were permanently pregnant and lacked rights as well as the vote. But she argues that “progress” has meant a series of trade-offs in the name of freedom, and she’s sceptical that these have delivered unmitigated gains, overall, for women.
In this interview with Life & Faith, Mary Harrington explores how the technological shocks of industrialisation and the contraceptive pill have deeply shaped feminism and male-female relationships, and changed everyone’s lives – not really for the better.
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Explore:
Mary’s book Feminism Against Progress
An article in First Things where Mary explains “reactionary feminism” and tells a bit about her own story
An essay in The UK Spectator – and edited extract from Feminism Against Progress – where Mary makes the pro-sex case against the pill.
A column in UnHerd on the place of faith in the “newly-ascendant post-Christian moral regime”
Mary Harrington on Twitter
You have probably mucked things up once or twice in your life. Congratulations, you’re human. There’s hope for all of us in the Easter story.
This week, Simon Smart and Justine Toh tiptoe through the minefield of ‘guilt’, ‘sin’, and ‘morality’: three words and ideas that are offensive to the modern ear – no doubt partly due to the perception that Christians and the church have been all too judgmental of others.
The weighty, Christian baggage of these words aside – is there not something good about acknowledging the times we’ve hurt people and gotten things wrong? Simon and Justine discuss how The Picture of Dorian Gray, directed by Kip Williams for the Sydney Theatre Company, confronts viewers with the darkness of the human heart. And in discussing parenting fails and climate inaction, they explore the mismatch between the people we want to be and the people we actually are.
This episode of Life & Faith grapples with our human tendency to ‘muck things up’ – a sanitised version of author Francis Spufford’s working definition of ‘sin’ – and how even this seemingly fatal flaw is not the whole human story. The hope of the Easter narrative is not just one of sin confronted, but conquered.
Also appearing in this episode: contributions from The Sacred podcast host Elizabeth Oldfield, New York Times columnist David Brooks, theologian Alister McGrath, author Marilynne Robinson, and author Francis Spufford.
Explore:
Conal Hanna’s article in The Guardian on the “teal paradox”
Elizabeth Oldfield’s full interview – with transcript – with David Brooks for The Sacred.
Alister McGrath on why sin is such a useful idea
Marilynne Robinson on original sin
Life & Faith interview with Francis Spufford about Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.
Francis Spufford on your ruined life I
Francis Spufford on your ruined life II
On March 25, it’s Tolkien Reading Day: a day to enjoy all things Tolkien – including what makes The Lord of the Rings so beloved.
“… above all shadows rides the Sun”.
That’s a line from a song that the hobbit Samwise Gamgee sings to give him hope at a critical moment in J R R Tolkien’s epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings. Sam is stranded in the dark land of Mordor and Frodo, his master, has been captured. Their quest to destroy the one ring of power looks hopeless. But hope is not lost.
Kaitlyn Facista, who runs the online fan community Tea with Tolkien, says that this belief is what draws people to The Lord of the Rings: the hope that helps people persist through dark times.
On Tolkien Reading Day, observed on March 25 every year, Kaitlyn enjoys reading Tolkien’s writings along with other similarly devoted fans. The poem quoted above – “In Western Lands Beneath the Sun” – is a particular favourite.
In this interview with Life & Faith, Kaitlyn explains the significance of March 25 within the world of Lord of the Rings: it’s the day the one ring is finally destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. The date is also significant within Tolkien’s own Christian tradition. It’s when the Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated – when the angel Gabriel told Mary she would bear Jesus, God’s son. March 25 is also regarded as the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Tolkien once described The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”. Kaitlyn explores these religious resonances and tells us about being invited to meet the showrunners of The Rings of Power, the Amazon Prime TV show and prequel (of sorts) to Lord of the Rings.
Explore:
www.teawithtolkien.com
To Middle-Earth and Back Again: Kaitlyn’s companion journal to The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien’s poem: In Western Lands beneath the Sun
Bruce Robinson knows more than most about the impact of suffering on human beings. But he also knows about resilience and joy in the face of life’s biggest challenges.
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As a doctor, Professor Bruce Robinson has been on the front line of Tsunami-ravaged or earthquake-devastated poor regions of Indonesia. And as a lung specialist and expert in asbestos-induced cancer, he has had decades of experience breaking bad news to patients.
His book, Behind the tears – understanding, surviving and growing from suffering, is a practical guide to dealing with suffering – either our own, or that of someone we care about – in a positive, life-affirming way.
Here he shares hard won wisdom about what helps and what doesn’t and ways we can all prepare for the inevitability of grief and pain.
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Explore:
https://www.brucerobinson.com.au/suffering/
Cynthia Banham barely survived a brutal plane crash. She speaks about trauma, suffering, and hope.
It was supposed to be a routine assignment. Back in 2007, journalist Cynthia Banham was sent to Indonesia by the Sydney Morning Herald to cover a visit by then Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
But tragedy struck. The Garuda flight she was on crashed on landing at Yogyakarta International Airport. 21 people were killed. Cynthia survived but with terrible injuries, including a broken back and life-threatening burns. She wound up losing both her legs.
It’s been a very long and painful road to recovery, one Cynthia has written about in A Certain Light: A memoir of family, loss and hope.
In the years since, Cynthia has become an academic, pursuing doctoral studies and a Masters in International Affairs. She also became a mum.
In this raw interview with Life & Faith, Cynthia talks about rebuilding her life after trauma, her hard questions about God and suffering, and what has given her hope along the way.
What our love affair with food reveals about us; and navigating a modern no-no: judging others.
Life & Faith is 450 episodes and counting, and we’re about to hit a million downloads. We’re excited to mark the milestone – even we’ve forgotten all the things we’ve ever talked about.
That’s why we’ll occasionally dip into the Life & Faith archives this year and bring you two conversations from the vault.
This time, we’re hearing from chef Alex Woolley, Simon Smart and Justine Toh on the pleasures of eating, our love affair with food, and what feasting can tell us about the spiritual life.
After the break, we tackle a modern taboo: do not judge others. It’s a notion that comes to us from Jesus but has taken on a new life in our times – especially online, where people condemn each other all the time. Steve Liggins joins Simon and Justine to talk about a very human dilemma – why we hate judgemental attitudes, and yet are often guilty of them ourselves.
Christopher Watkin on why reading culture through the lens of the Bible makes the most sense of everything.
“If all we think of when we hear the term critical theoryis something like critical race theory, then we tend to think of ourselves as some sort of SWAT team parachuting down into society to deal with one particular spot fire, and then airlifting ourselves out at the end of it – without realising that there are lots of different ideas in culture that are connected with each other and that rely on each other and that sort of form an ecosystem. And in order to understand any particular part of it, you've got to see where it fits in the whole.”
Does the term “critical theory” or “cultural theory” make you nervous – or make your eyes glaze over? Christopher Watkin, a lecturer at Monash University and author of the book Biblical Critical Theory (and a CPX Associate), argues that theory isn’t just for academics, nor merely a political hot potato. He says it's about reading the world and everything in it – which makes it an everyone thing.
“That’s the origin of cultural critique, isn’t it? It is the ability to say not simply ‘I don’t like things as they are’, but things as they are are either unjust or not right or cruel.”
In a conversation that touches on globalisation, the profit motive, radical justice, the nature of society, and a God of “superabundance”, Chris makes the case for why he thinks looking at our culture through the lens of the Bible makes the most sense of reality as a whole.
EXPLORE:
Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory
Pilgrim Hill is an off-grid, family-run hostel in the beautiful Huon Valley, Tasmania.
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“We have these people coming into our community every single year, and they’re a huge part of our economy and they’re a huge part of our community, but they're not really seen by the Australian public.”
Christina Baehr was a professional harpist, and Peirce Baehr planned to be an academic. But after they fell in love and got married, they decided instead to pursue a different dream: to create a place together where travellers could come from all over the world, be cared for, and have a place to think through the deeper questions in life.
Pilgrim Hill is an off-grid, family-run hostel in the beautiful Huon Valley, Tasmania. The Baehrs – along with their nine (yes, nine!) children – love living close to the land, and they love showing hospitality to the fruit pickers and others who come to their valley. In this conversation, they tell Life & Faith what led them to choose this life, and why they find it so fulfilling.
“People come here and some of them have only ever lived in cities. I remember at one point taking somebody on a walk to the veggie garden, and they clearly couldn’t recognize any of the plants … and I was like, this is a carrot, and they were looking at this green foliage thinking I had lost my mind – and then pulling it out of the ground and just the gasp of astonishment. We get people like that, but we also get people who come here specifically because they want to try out this lifestyle, and so that’s exciting.”
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EXPLORE:
Find out more about Pilgrim Hill
Sheridan Voysey is very familiar with the pain of broken dreams – and the beauty of what can come next.
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“Life is not made of straight lines. Nothing in nature has straight lines – that’s a human-created invention, the perfectly straight line. All else in creation has a curve, it has a kink, it has a twist … and here I am expecting life to go from Point A to Point B in a nice straight line.”
After the last few years of curveballs and cancelled plans, you may well be wary about making new plans and dreaming new dreams for your life.
Writer and broadcaster Sheridan Voysey has learned the hard way the pain of a broken dream – and where to go from there. In this conversation about the highs and lows of life, he tells a story of childlessness, giving up a cherished career, and the flourishing that can be found in a life we didn’t plan – including the remarkable twist of his wife Merryn being in the right time and place to help save six million lives.
“There’s a wonderful proverb: Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And gosh, we now know that when that hope is deferred and deferred and deferred, and another month and another month and another month, and you don’t get what you desperately want, your heart can really become sick. You try that for ten years. But there’s a second part to that proverb that we often forget, and the second part goes: but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. That doesn’t mean the same dream – it can actually be a different one.”
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Explore:
Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams Into New Beginnings
The Making of Us: Who We Can Become When Life Doesn’t Go As Planned
What qualifies as a Christmas movie? And what version of Christmas do they offer?
It’s the final episode of Life & Faith for 2022! And time for Simon Smart, Justine Toh, and Natasha Moore to talk Christmas movies past and present: the films that stand the test of time and those that don’t; the borderline cases that feature Christmas but may or may not count as Christmas movies; and some new contenders for the title of Christmas classic.
The team discuss Violent Night, a cinema release that sees Santa caught up in a Christmas Eve hostage situation – picking off mercenaries one by one in a Die Hard-type situation while also having his own faith in Christmas restored. They’ve also seen Spirited, Apple TV’s take on A Christmas Carol starring Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell, and have a … spiriteddiscussion about the film’s preoccupation with redemption. Are people naughty or nice? Can they change? And how might Christmas come to the rescue?
Discussed in this episode:
Violent Night (out in cinemas now)
Spirited (available on Apple TV)
Love Actually
Ted Lasso Christmas episode 2021
While You Were Sleeping
Die Hard
2022 Life & Faith episodes mentioned:
A Good Look in the Mirror
Ice and Isolation
Forgiving the Unforgivable
The story of what happened when one family decided to live simply so that others could simply live.
The rising cost of living is forcing hard questions upon plenty of Australians: can we afford our lives? More to the point: is our way of life sustainable – for us and the planet?
Jonathan and Kim Cornford and their two daughters are an Australian family leading a fairly ordinary, middle-class existence in the suburbs of Bendigo, Victoria. But through a series of small changes over the past 20 years, this family of four has reined in their spending – and earning – in order to live more simply.
These days, Jonathan and Kim both work part-time, they volunteer and donate to good causes, and they have the time to be around their kids. They also only send one bag of rubbish to landfill each week and use less than half the electricity consumed by the average Australian family. They may live on ‘less’ but according to Jonathan, they’ve gained so much ‘more’ in the process.
The Cornfords live by a vision of ‘everyday economics’ – one informed by their Christian faith. Jonathan points out that the words ‘economy’ and ‘ecology’ both stem from oikos, the Greek word for ‘house’ – which helps us to recognise the multiple and interrelated ‘households’ we inhabit.
This Life & Faith, we’re training our gaze on the household economy, and why it makes good spiritual and material sense to live within limits.
Explore
Jonathan’s book Coming Home: Discipleship, Ecology, and Everyday Economics.
Manna Gum, the non-profit organisation Jonathan runs.
Justine’s article on all the economies, published in Eureka St
You don’t need to be a creative or an entrepreneur to share the human calling to make culture.
Here at CPX, we’ve been raving about Andy Crouch’s work on technology lately. But in this Life & Faith conversation, we revisit Andy’s earlier work – especially his influential first book Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling.
Andy tells us why he believes all humans are called to be culture makers: people who make culture or who are drawn to make something of the world. This creative calling is for everyone, he says, not just the creatives or the entrepreneurs among us.
We also sample Andy’s thoughts about Christianity in the United States and get into the weeds of why we’re so down on power these days, or why we suspect that an influential person or institution will be corrupted by power.
As Andy explains, the problem isn’t so much power, but the way powerful people and organisations refuse vulnerability.
“True power always involves an element of vulnerability – if I want to bring something into being in the world that will have any kind of life to it,” Andy said. “But the moment you create life, you take a risk. So all creative power, which I would see as the deepest form of power, involves an element of vulnerability.”
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Explore
Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling
Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power
The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World
Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk, and True Flourishing
Listen to Andy Crouch’s Richard Johnson Lecture Disconnected: Why Technology Keeps Failing Us
It’s often said that religion is a cause of war – but can it also be a cause of peace?
“Part of what makes religion such a powerful motivator in support for peace, is also what makes it a powerful motivator in support for violence.”
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
This principle of retaliation, that a person who has injured another should be penalized in a similar way, and to a similar degree, forms the basis for many codes of justice around the world. But Jesus had a radically different approach.
Turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we dive into the world of peace building with Dr Maria J Stephan and Susan Hayward from the US Institute of Peace. Discover whether non-violent movements actually work, and explore the role that religious faith plays in making and maintaining peace.
Explore:
These interviews were for our documentary, For the Love of God: How the church is better and worse than you ever imagined.
Why Civil Resistance Works by Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth
An author and an abbess reflect on the solace of nature and the art of stillness in a noisy world.
“We need the tonic of wildness,” wrote American author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau in Walden, or A Life in the Woods.
What is that tonic – and why is the natural world something of a cure?
Dr Eleanor Limprecht discovered ocean swimming during lockdown. She’s also the author of The Coast, a work of historical fiction about Alice, a nine-year-old girl with leprosy who’s sent to live with her mother in a lazaret (leper colony) at the Coast Hospital in Sydney – today's Prince Henry Hospital, which was originally a hospital for infectious diseases.
The ocean becomes a source of solace for Alice – as it turned out to be for Eleanor. She tells us about her first ocean swim and the overlaps between Covid and The Coast, since she finished writing the novel during lockdown.
We also hear from Abbess Hilda Scott or Mother Hilda of Jamberoo Abbey on NSW’s South Coast. She tells us about the Desert Fathers and Mothers, early Christian hermits who pursued their religious callings in the wilderness. They have much to teach us, she says, about the search for silence in a noisy world.
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Explore:
Dr Eleanor Limprecht’s latest novel The Coast
Eleanor’s discovery of ocean swimming during lockdown
Jamberoo Abbey
Journalist Greg Sheridan on why he can’t stop talking about his Christian faith
Greg Sheridan has been the Foreign Editor at the Australian newspaper for 30 years. He’s known for his vast knowledge of domestic and foreign affairs – analysing and writing about Australia’s relationship with Asia, and including the rise of China, the U.S.’s influence in the world, the changing geopolitical landscape that has shifted so substantially during his career.
Sheridan is a regular guest on Sky news but also the ABC.
Until recently he was less known for his Christian faith but has written two books about this now, “God is Good for You: a defence of Christianity in troubled times” and “Christians: the urgent case for Jesus in the world.”
Greg shares with Life & Faith his most recent thoughts on faith in public, and the religious landscape in Australia and around the world.
Never shy of controversy, Greg is happy to wade into topics others might rather avoid.
Explore Greg Sheridan's Books:
Good is Good for you: A defence of Christianity in troubled times
Christians: the urgent case for Jesus in the world
Can we possibly still trust each other across some of the bitterest divides of our time?
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“We’re not going to live in a theocracy, we’re not going to replace the governor-general or a president with an ayatollah, a chief rabbi, a pope, or a Dalai Lama. The state must consider itself both neutral in religion and incompetent to adjudicate on religious affairs.”
The Australian anthem may cheerfully assert that we are “one and free”, but periodic clashes show that we’re at a bit of an impasse when it comes to the question of religious freedom: is it legitimate, or just a cover for bigotry? Can we agree to disagree on fundamental things? What does it all mean for employers and employees?
This episode of Life & Faith offers some framework thinking for what it would look like to get out of the rut of the culture wars and trust one another again. Theologian Michael Bird vividly sketches what secularism should and shouldn’t look like, and law professor Nicholas Aroney pierces beneath the turbulence of these culture clashes to talk about the fundamentals of love, trust, and hope in our life together.
“All of us experience hurts, and I think we’re all tempted to respond by hurting others. But when we encounter love, it makes a very big difference – and I think that religion is very much driven by that. So if you don’t recognise that and you don’t allow room for that to blossom in your society in the small local ways just down the street, then you’re cutting off a source of support, a source of help, and even a vision for the future.”
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EXPLORE:
Michael Bird, Religious Freedom in a Secular Age: A Christian Case for Liberty, Equality, and Secular Government
Doing the right thing can have consequences or rewards that last a lifetime.
In this episode we consider the price we are willing (or not willing) to pay for holding on to our principles. We speak with Max Jeganathan about our society’s apparent willingness to absorb higher costs of living in order to support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia. This dynamic is evidence that we are not only selfish consumers but rather moral agents sometimes willing to make sacrifices in order to do what’s right. Suzanne McCourt, author of the novel The Tulip Tree reflects on the complexity and ambiguity in the courageous and costly acts of her characters and their moments of altruism. And Mick Slatter tells the story from his youth of working on a building site and paying a heavy price for being honest when he was under huge pressure to fudge the truth for his boss. Was it worth it? Listen in to find out. ----- Explore: Suzanne McCourt The Tulip Tree (Text Publishing) 2021. Max Jeganathan The Cost of Living and The Cost of Principles Eureka Street, 2022.
John Stackhouse explores evangelicalism’s contribution to the world.
In this conversation John Stackhouse explains who the evangelicals are in history and who they are today. What are they like? What do they believe? What makes them so busy and active in the world?
While lamenting some of the more regrettable failures of the tradition he belongs to, Stackhouse gives a convincing account of the contribution of evangelicalism in making the world a fairer, more compassionate and just place.
Explore:
John Stackhouse's new book with Oxford University Press, Evangelicalism: A very short introduction
Andy Crouch has some questions about your relationship with your devices
Are you ever troubled by the way technology impacts our lives?
Andy Crouch loves technology, but he is concerned that we use it wisely. What are the ways modern technology might diminish our humanity and how might it help us to flourish?
In this episode of Life & Faith Andy talks about the difference between devices and instruments and it’s a distinction that might help change your life in positive directions. There is some wisdom here to help us be more deliberate and intentional about how our technology might serve us rather than enslave us.
For many of us with a nagging sense of unease about our relationship with our phones and tablets, Crouch offers some hope and a way forward that is life-giving and uplifting.
“I think technology is not helping us be what we actually maybe are meant to be, which is people who live with fullness of heart, soul, mind and strength.”
“I love talking about this because it activates a sense of hope. I think we sometimes feel a little out of control in this technological world. And what I hear back when I describe this transition from devices to instruments is people actually feel very empowered to take charge of how they use their device.”
Andy’s latest book is: The life we’re looking for: Reclaiming relationship in a technological world
Explore some of Andy’s other books
- The Tech-Wise family
- My Tech-Wise life
- Culture making
Theologian John Swinton was Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland. He spoke to Life & Faith on the day she died.
John Swinton has been many things in his life: Mental Health Nurse, Presbyterian minister, academic and author. He was also Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland, a role his mother was especially proud of! On the morning he was due to come into the CPX studio news came through that Queen Elizabeth II had died.
We talked about the Queen, her faith, and the role of Chaplain, that John briefly played. What made the death of this 96-year-old woman so profound for so many people?
This topic led to a broader discussion about the caring professions, and spiritual care as a crucial part of any wholistic approach to true health.
“... the way you learn how to be a decent person is by looking at decent people. And she always strikes me as a decent person that I have learned a lot from, even though … from a distance until relatively recently.”
Explore some of John Swinton’s books:
Dementia: Living in the Memories of God.
- A Graceful Embrace: Theological Reflections on Adopting Children
- Finding Jesus in the Storm: The Spiritual Lives of Christians with Mental Health Challenges
What does it look like not only to survive, but to thrive after trauma?
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“Banksias, if you can imagine, they’ve got this woody core, with those eyes dotted around the core. So those eyes contain the seeds of the banksia tree, and these seeds – these pods – open up after the ashy heat intensity of a bushfire. So we really loved this metaphor because it represents our hopes for survivors who’ve experienced something incredibly painful and traumatic – like a bushfire can be – without minimising the severity of that incident, but also capturing the possibility for new life and beauty and hope.”
Banksia Women is a domestic violence support service affiliated with St John’s Anglican Church Darlinghurst, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. It was born just as Covid was kicking off – which complicated what they do, but certainly hasn’t held them back.
In this episode of Life & Faith, manager Keely Oste explains what it means for women to heal and even flourish after surviving domestic abuse. She talks about the needs, courage, and triumphs of the women she works with – and Shradha, who joined Banksia Women in January 2021, opens up about how it’s made such a difference to her, and to others.
“The first basic thing was: I’m not alone in this. I think that was the biggest thing that helped me to not feel ashamed about the situation because it was not my fault, and I was not the only one - there were a group of women who were of different ages, of different ethnicities, of diverse backgrounds. And it still gives me goose bumps to see that so many beautiful women, so many educated women, so many middle-aged women and pretty young women are going through such things … and that gave me, like, 50 percent I was out of my pain, to see that I can get help from someone and my story can help someone else.”
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Explore:
Banksia Women
If you or someone you know is experience domestic violence, please know that help is available. Here are just a few of the resources out there:
- If it’s an emergency, call the police on 000 (in Australia)
- Call the National Domestic Violence line (1800 656 463) to be connected to a support service
- Call Full Stop Australia (1800 385 578) or 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) to be connected to a support service, receive free anonymous counselling, or for information if you are supporting someone who is experiencing domestic violence
A smorgasbord of delights for both the history nerd and the history sceptic.
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“I think people just arbitrarily impoverish their experience by the prejudice against the past.”
Does history get you excited – or make your eyes glaze over? This episode of Life & Faith draws together morsels of insight, warning, and surprise from some superstar historians and thinkers who want to show you a different side to the past.
Simon and Natasha discuss the question: if history were a person, what would your relationship to them be like? Marilynne Robinson urges us not to separate ourselves from the pain and error of those who’ve gone before, Alister McGrath challenges our flattened-out version of the past, Nick Spencer ponders the law of unintended consequences, and much more. Join us for a whirlwind tour of the pitfalls and pleasures of history!
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Included in this episode:
Marilynne Robinson, “On our prejudice against the past”
Marilynne Robinson, “On original sin”
Rodney Stark, “On judging the past”
Alister McGrath, “On Christianity vs Darwinism”
Sarah Coakley, “On an early escape hatch for women”
Nick Spencer, “On popes and power”
Robert Woodberry, “On the invisibility of missionaries”
Robert Woodberry, “On what makes missionaries invisible”
Catherine Brekus, “On how women keep churches going”
Nick Spencer, “On historical amnesia”
David Bentley Hart, “On modernity’s creation myth”
David Bentley Hart, “On how Christianity revolutionised our world”
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Check out more For the Love of God interviews
Get tickets to CPX's 2022 Richard Johnson Lecture
In honour of a special occasion, CPX distils 111 years’ worth of marriage experience into one episode.
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Mawwiage is what bwings us togevver for this episode of Life & Faith! With nuptials rapidly approaching for one member of the team, Simon, Justine, and Natasha talk to the experts – and among themselves – about what it means to not just get married but stay that way.
“You get married and then, sometime right after you get married, you wake up and you go, I have now committed to be with this person for life. And then your next reaction is … AHHHHHHH!! Don't be surprised if you have that reaction, it's a perfectly normal reaction. It’s just hit you, the commitment that you’ve made. And then rejoice in the potential of what you have.”
Bible scholar Darrell Bock has been married to Sally for nearly half a century; psychologist Leisa Aitken has been counselling couples for 25 years. These friends of CPX weigh in on why marriage is so hard, and what can make it worthwhile.
“I always think of the couples that have been married for 50 years and they have stuck it through hard times and easy times and they’ve been faithful and they’ve worked out how to bring the best out in each other. There is something profound and really special about that. And I think it’s profound and special because it does echo, it does resonate with something much bigger that’s going on in the universe.”
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Explore:
Relationships Australia
Lisa Taddeo, “My Husband and I Don’t Speak the Same Love Language”
Get tickets to CPX's 2022 Richard Johnson Lecture
Astrophysicist Jennifer Wiseman on star-gazing, human significance, and the prospect of extra-terrestrial life.
For Science Week we are rebroadcasting this chat with Jennifer Wiseman who joins us to speak about her journey to becoming an astrophysicist and how she resolved the ‘science and religion’ question.
Born and raised in rural Arkansas, Wiseman grew up gazing at the night sky and had a general love for nature. Eventually, that love for space became a full-time job, where her curiosity about the universe taught her plenty about the God she believed in.
“Science is a wonderful gift and tool to address certain types of questions. How does gravity work? How do stars form? What’s the evolutionary history of the universe?”
But beyond the general mechanisms of science, her curiosity goes further:
“But science is not really good at answering other types of questions like, why are we here, how I should live, can I have a relationship with God. These kinds of things I can’t measure with my microscope or my telescope.”
Jennifer was in Australia speaking at the World Science Festival in Brisbane. Thanks to our friends at ISCAST – Christians in Science and Technology for arranging time with Jennifer.
Get tickets to CPX's 2022 Richard Johnson Lecture
Esther Meek’s childhood questions led her on a decades-long philosophical journey to towards truth and "the really real”.
As a 13 year-old Esther Meek was plagued by her questions about what is real and what is truth. A quest to find answers led here towards the study of philosophy where she has spent decades developing her thinking around how we know what we know. Can we ever have confidence in that?
Her passion is helping make philosophy accessible. We all qualify to be philosophers simply by being born, she likes to say.
She reacts against the idea that knowledge is information and data and facts but much more complicated for embodied, spiritual, emotional and imaginative beings that we are.
“There's one thing you need to be philosophical and that's to be born. And so then I feel that philosophy philosophizing should be done for everybody. And it should not just be, as I say, the rock musicians who do philosophy in the streets.”
Explore:
Esther Meek’s books - Longing to Know; Loving to Know; and A Little Manual for Knowing
Gospel Coalition Conference
Bible Society Australia’s Bible Conference
CPX’s 2022 Richard Johnson Lecture
Two years on an Antarctic research station taught Alex Gaffikin about iso long before lockdown.
When Alex Gaffikin was 22, she took a nine week voyage from South London, where she grew up, to the Halley Research Station on Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica. She ‘wintered’ there for two years as a meteorologist.
In this interview, she gives us an insight into daily life on the south pole, the pressures and joys of living alongside other winterers, and her dark night of the soul experience during which she experienced a crisis of faith.
Still, there were other consolations: like visiting a colony of emperor penguins, and waking up in the middle of the night to see the southern lights and the Milky Way with no light pollution nearby to obscure her glimpse of the galaxy.
Listen in to what Alex experienced on Antarctica, and gain insight into what she learnt about isolation, long before lockdown, and the concrete difference it made for her to live out her faith by loving her neighbour.
Explore:
A short article giving us a further glimpse into Alex’s daily life on Antarctica
Darrell Bock talks about the things that pushed him, as a young man, to ask deep questions about life and meaning. And where he found answers.
Darrell Bock is a world-renowned Biblical scholar with a keen eye on the cultural water we swim in. He’s also an incurable sports fan.
In this interview he talks to Simon Smart about the impact of losing his parents at a young age and where that took him in his search for meaning and purpose. Darrell discusses his life and career what what he thinks leads to lasting satisfaction. What is surprising about the Bible? What is its essential message? What does it have to say to a person in the 21st Century?
Explore:
Some of Darrell’s books
- Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse, Pluralistic World
- Studying the Historical Jesus
- How would Jesus vote?
The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary
We’re languishing (still!) after two years of the pandemic. Can a burnout psychologist help?
Feeling a bit blah mid-way through 2022… still?
In 2021, organisational psychologist Adam Grant named that pandemic feeling. He called it “languishing” and described it as “the absence of well-being”.
“You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work,” he wrote in the New York Times.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we call it something else: pandemic fatigue. Or just “not coping”. Natasha gives us her take on “not coping” being the new “busy” - in other words, the standard reply to the question “how are you?”. And she tells us how potatoes relate to pandemic fatigue.
We also ask clinical psychologist Dr Valerie Ling how exhaustion and burnout relate to all of the above. For even if these conditions go by different names, they all seem to describe similar things.
It’s enough to make you want to throw your hands in the air and go, “Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto, let’s call the whole thing off”.
Explore:
Natasha’s piece on “not coping”
Adam Grant’s article that named the blah we feel
Dr Ling’s ebook My Burnout Prevention Plan: From a psychologist who knows the cost of burnout
The Centre for Effective Living
Our episode on burnout with Jonathan Malesic
Philosopher and theologian John Milbank on left vs right, Harry Potter, and how none of us behave like we’re just atoms.
If you’re wanting a crash course on “isms” like liberalism, secularism, and populism from anyone, it’s John Milbank.
In this wide-ranging conversation with Simon Smart, the philosopher and theologian has a way of never saying quite what you expect him to. He questions the idea that left and right are really in opposition to each other, calls the final Harry Potter book “a profound theological meditation”, and is enthusiastic about people’s longing for paganism.
What does he think Christianity might give people that’s surprising? “Pleasure,” he replies immediately. “It would make their lives far more interesting, exciting, and pleasurable - and physical, because they’re essentially alienated from their bodies if they think their bodies are just bits of matter.”
Does he think a revival of religion is on the cards? “The reason I do think religion may revive is that it is on the side of common sense … all the time people behave as if they had minds, as if they had souls, as if the good, the true, and the beautiful, the right and wrong, were real - and yet the scientific discourses which we have, or rather their scientistic reductive modes, can’t really allow the reality of any of these things.”
From politics to angels, Milbank turns his formidable intellect on some of the quirks and contradictions of our time.
Simon, Justine, and Natasha debrief on their fave reads/watches of 2022 thus far.
The CPX team - no surprises here - love a good book or film, and also love a good gossip about them afterwards.
Join Simon Smart, Justine Toh, and Natasha Moore as they gush about what they’ve seen and heard of late.
Natasha repents of her snobbery about audiobooks, having been converted to the form by Trevor Noah’s remarkable memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood.
Justine makes the case for her claim (less than halfway through the year) that the fantasy/sci-fi film Everything Everywhere All At Once is the best film of 2022.
And Simon is super impressed by Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel Crossroads - especially by his depiction of people of faith, in the context of a pastor’s family in 1970s Illinois.
Race, faith, family, the multiverse, and struggling through hard times: some themes emerge as the team consider their recent cultural consumption, and try to persuade you to watch or listen as well.
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Explore:
Listen to Trevor Noah’s memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Watch the Everything Everywhere All at Once trailer
Read Jonathan Franzen’s novel Crossroads
Watch Trevor Noah’s monologue about Kim Kardashian and Kanye
Listen to the Radio National interview with Jonathan Franzen
It’s been 50 years since the Watergate scandal. Our trust in institutions has never quite recovered.
On June 17, 1972, police arrested a group of burglars at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Evidence linked the attempted burglary to US President Nixon’s campaign for re-election – leading to a Senate investigation that ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation.
Since then, the suffix ‘gate’ has been attached to any scandal (political or otherwise), story of mismanagement and abuse, or suggestion of a cover-up. The net effect has been to dissolve people’s trust that they’re being told the truth.
Half a century on, we live in societies of chronic distrust, as measured by annual polls like the Edelman Trust Barometer, and research conducted by organisations like More in Common, which studies polarisation and political division across the West.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we revisit the main beats of the Watergate scandal and its reverberations in our culture – and popular culture. We also explore what it means for our societies when distrust has become a way of life, and the role of local communities - including, surprisingly, communities of faith - in nurturing trust between people.
Explore:
Garrett M. Graff’s Watergate: A New History
More in Common’s 2021 research report Two Stories of Distrust in America
Edelman Trust Barometer 2022
What our favourite companion animals can teach us about ourselves – and about God.
Are you a dog person or cat lover? You’re one or the other, apparently.
Wth 69% of Australian households now owning a pet, according to a 2021 survey by Animal Medicines Australia, this week Life & Faith is pleased to get controversial: we reveal that Australia’s “two-pet” system has a clear winner. Dogs.
We speak to Barney Zwartz, long-time dog tragic, about the dogs in his life: the border collie-labrador cross Nessie, whom Barney dubs “Mary Poppins” because she is “practically perfect in every way”, and Lennie, a border collie-whippet who had a special connection with Barney’s late son Sam.
What explains the human-dog bond? Is it dogs’ “hypersociability”? Or “exaggerated gregariousness”? Professor Clive Wynne, the founder of the Canine Science Laboratory at Arizona State University, just calls it dogs’ capacity for “love”.
Barney draws on Professor Wynne’s Dog is Love: Why and how your dog loves you when discussing his own immensely popular columns in The Age reflecting on how heaven-sent dogs seem to be, given their loving, forgiving natures. But don’t worry, cat people: Justine demands Barney account for his outrageous quip in one of those columns that “cats, of course, are despatched from below”.
Meanwhile, we borrow a snippet from Nick Spencer’s interview with philosopher John Gray about his book Feline Philosophy: Cats and the meaning of life. In this extract from the podcast Reading Our Times, John Gray ponders what cats reveal about the problem of human consciousness: we worry endlessly, while they don’t really seem bothered by anything.
So if you, a human animal, are weighed down by many cares, we hope this lighthearted look at what our pets can teach us about God, or what it means to be human, is as fun as a dog with a bone, or a cat toying with a mouse. Enjoy.
Explore:
Barney’s columns about Lennie and Sam and Nessie (pictures included!)
Nick Spencer’s interview with John Gray about Feline Philosophy from the podcast Reading Our Times
Clive Wynne’s book Dog is Love: Why and how your dog loves you
John Gray’s book Feline Philosophy: Cats and the meaning of life
Benjamin and Jenna Silber Storey’s book Why We Are Restless: On the modern quest for contentment
For centuries, all kinds of people have testified that Dante and his epic poem changed their life.
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Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path.
A 700-year-old epic poem may not be the first place you’d think to turn when life gets messy, painful, or confusing. But across times, cultures, and different walks of life, people say that reading The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri changed - or even saved! - their life. What is it that they find in this strange old book?
In this episode of Life & Faith, Simon and Natasha hear from a scholar and also a few recent - and enthusiastic - readers of Dante about what this story of one man’s imagined journey through the afterlife (hell, purgatory, paradise) has meant to them.
“Dante finds us in hard times,” says Professor Jane Kim from Biola University, who found herself returning to the poem during the peak of the pandemic. “I think for those of us who may be experiencing the proverbial midlife crisis or who may be feeling lost or stranded, Dante is reminding us that the midway point is the beginning of the epic, the middle is always the beginning of a new adventure.”
Explore: One Hundred Days of Dante
Sexuality, consent and pornography might not be the first topic of conversation we’d raise at a dinner party. But perhaps we should!
Issues around consent, pornography and sexuality are a minefield to navigate for young people today and sometimes it’s hard to find helpful places to go to find help.
Daniel Principe, Youth Advocate and Educator at Collective Shout, is one source of information and encouragement for young people and his work is hitting a nerve.
What are ways to help young women and men flourish together when pornography and objectification are such powerfully warping influences and so hard to counteract. Daniel Principe is out in schools offering a different way to think and to be, and young people are lapping this message up.
Listen to Dan tell something of his story, his passion for the subject and why he thinks there are things that can be done to help people find healthy and life-giving relationships that will serve both individuals and the common good.
Despite the darkness of the subject matter, this is an uplifting and optimistic conversation.
www.collectiveshout.org
Last of the Romans: Reimagining Masculinity, restoring virtue
1800 Respect or 1800 737 732
Men’s Referral Service or 1300 766 491
Lifeline or 13 11 14
Steph Judd was a healthy, sporty and musical teenager when, unexpectedly, things that she could, up until then, do naturally and easily, suddenly became physically difficult, and then, eventually, impossible.
Steph has now had about 15 years to process a significant physical change and adjust to living with a disability. But she has learned plenty of things about herself and picked up some wisdom along the way. Her thinking and writing on the topic of our limitations offers a counter-cultural approach to engaging not with our “potential” but the things that limit us.
Steph believes there is something vital about coming to terms with those limitations and hence our humanity. In wrestling with her own limits, and accepting her vulnerability, Steph has found she has been opened up to relationship, community and a connectedness that might otherwise have eluded her.
This is an honest, refreshing and challenging conversation that cuts against the grain of our culture’s obsession with “maximising” our potential and shrugging off human limits.
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Read Steph on “The Gifts of Our Limitations”
Steph writes about Dignity in Aged Care
Listen to Steph’s Lecture for ADM on The Dignity of Our Limits
Tim Dixon illuminates the forces across the Western World that are driving us apart and the challenge this presents for how we live together in pluralistic societies.
Tim Dixon gave CPX’s Richard Johnson Lecture in 2019, and in this extended podcast we revisit the timely insights we gained from Tim that night. This speech turned out to be eerily prescient given all that came to pass in the years after it was delivered.
In a lively and engaging presentation, we are reminded of the perils of public conversation that is overrun with a spirit of contempt. Our democracies are precious and fragile, and Tim believes there really are things we can do to preserve them.
He offers realistic initiatives that help us withstand the forces of division and strengthen the social glue that healthy societies require. Might faith communities have something unique to offer in this regard? Tim Dixon believes so.
Explore:
Richard Johnson Lecture
More in Common
On May 21, Australians won’t simply elect a Prime Minister but the nation’s “comforter-in-chief”.
Bushfires, floods, and pandemic: Australians have weathered plenty of crises over the last few years. Who do they look to in times of trouble – and what do they want from those who lead them?
In this Life & Faith, we explore an unofficial but significant part of any political leader’s job: their responsibility to not only steer people through a crisis but also comfort them with empathy, compassion, and wisdom.
Regardless of whether we have a Prime Minister or a President, we also want our leader to be a pastor to the nation.
Tim Costello, Senior Fellow at CPX, explains the role of the pastor and how former Australian Prime Ministers have inhabited that role over time.
Erin Wilson, Professor of Politics and Religion at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, explains how “civil religion” – the intertwining of religious symbols and language with the political state – accounts for the “priestly role” of national leaders.
Mike Baird, Former NSW Premier, gives an insight to the pastoral role he played during the aftermath of the Lindt Café Siege in Sydney.
We also hear a few American presidents in that “comforter-in-chief” mode and sample the stylings of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in this area as she prepared New Zealanders to bunker down in the fight against Covid-19.
Explore:
Want more on civil religion? Read Erin Wilson’s article for CPX
Hear more about what Mike Baird has been up to since leaving politics
Listen in on Part 1 and Part 2 of Life & Faith’s interview with Tim Costello as he looks back over a long career advocating for social justice
To sacrifice for Queen and country is one thing, but would you lay down your life for an enemy?
This week we are repeating an episode that first aired in 2017 when, like this year, Easter and Anzac Day were very close together.
“Australian service men and women serve for their Queen, their country and their comrades. They do that willingly, and they do that well. But Christ laid down his life for his enemies, which is just an incredible thing to do when I think about it.”
As a member of the Australian Defence Force, and a Christian, Colonel Craig Bickell is all too familiar with the reality – and cost – of sacrifice.
In this episode, we asked him about Easter and Anzac Day, what Christian faith has to offer the profession of arms, and how he remains hopeful even in the face of the darker side of humanity. Also, he shares his own journey of faith involving a girl, warrior’s guilt, and a stained-glass window.
The Enneagram helps us ask questions like: who am I, and is who I am good?
I strive for perfection. I am prepared for any disaster. I seek out experiences that I know will make me feel happy or excited.
Have you heard people say “I’m a seven” or “oh, that’s because you’re a five” … if you’re not familiar with the Enneagram, a model which describes people in terms of nine interrelated personality types, that will sound like gibberish. And if you’re into the Enneagram, you’re probably very into it!
In this episode of Life & Faith, the CPX team venture into the world of the Enneagram. Simon Smart invites Justine Toh, Natasha Moore, and producer Allan Dowthwaite to take the test, find out their types, and re-examine what they think they know about themselves and their relationships. And Sandra Van Opstal, author of Forty Days on Being an Eight, explains how understanding herself as a “Challenger” has changed her approach to advocacy, parenting, and her own sense of self.
“The Enneagram’s main focus as I understand it is to help us understand our motivations – what's happening on the inside. And so for me, I'm asking the question: who am I, and why do I do what I do? They're questions of intention, questions of identity. Way beyond any label someone could put on us is the question of who are we, and why were we created this way?”
Explore:
Check out the Enneagram Daily Reflections series from IVP
Take the Enneagram test from Truity
A plumber, a pastor, and a pilgrim forge poems out of what’s right in front of them.
She will keep you like she keeps the Sabbath.
Did you know that 21 March is World Poetry Day? Do you … care?
In this episode of Life & Faith, we speak to three poets about why they write poetry, and find out how intimately linked to real life their words actually are.
Sit back and enjoy a feast for your ears as Erin Martine Sessions, Drew Jackson, and Jonathan McKeown bring you poems they’ve written about (respectively) an ancient city; about mass incarceration and the fight for justice; about mushrooms and motherhood.
From very different starting points, all three wrestle to give words to the realities of the world around them - however beautiful, overwhelming, devastating, infuriating, or even repulsive.
“Plumbing has really given me a physical connection to both work and my own body that has forced me to come to some kind of reconciliation between this flighty mental side that just wants to remove itself from all the awkward matter and stuff that you have to deal with in the physical world at times … there's a lot of very physically disgusting stuff plumbers get to deal with on a daily basis. So for me, working out some kind of synthesis, which I think is what selfhood is really about … to do that in your own experience is I think part of the process of becoming the self that you are.”
Explore:
Read more of Erin’s poetry
Check out Drew’s book God Speaks Through Wombs
Check out Jono’s book Genesis
From Roman emperors to modern PMs, Life & Faith tackles the fraught relationship between church and state.
“At the end of the day I am quite happy that the throne-and-altar accommodation was shattered, and that the church does not wield that kind of power.”
Dust-ups between religion and government are rarely out of the news for long. Sometimes church and state seem too cosy, sometimes they’re fiercely at odds. What has this relationship looked like, and how should it look?
In this episode of Life & Faith, Simon Smart and Natasha Moore trek back to the dramatic beginnings of the church-and-state relationship in the West with Emperor Constantine, make a brief stop among the medieval heights of Christendom, and consider some wisdom for all of us living in a post-Christendom world.
All brought to you from some of our favourite and most eminent voices on the topic: Miroslav Volf (Yale), Teresa Morgan (Oxford), Nick Spencer (Theos), David Bentley Hart, and more. Along with cameo appearances from the perennial classic Yes Prime Minister.
“So the ideal candidate from the Church of England’s point of view would be a cross between and socialite and a socialist?”
Explore:
Sir Humphrey explains about The Church of England | Yes Prime Minister
Miroslav Volf, On private Christianity [NEEDS LINK]
Teresa Morgan, On the Emperor’s new religion
Teresa Morgan, On the conversion of the Empire
Teresa Morgan, On the double-edged sword, power
Sarah Coakley, On lament
Nick Spencer, On popes and power
David Bentley Hart, On minority Christianity
Joel Edwards, On speaking up
Craig Calhoun, On doubt and certainty
Browse For the Love of God: The Interviews
Feel exhausted, cynical, and utterly ineffective at work? There’s a cure for what ails you.
Jonathan Malesic had always dreamed of being a college professor. The reality, however, didn’t match up to his expectations. It got to the point where he found it difficult to drag himself out of bed to teach a class. Nothing seemed to help: therapy, medication, even extended leave.
So he quit.
Obviously, that’s not the solution for everyone. But in his new book The End of Burnout: Why work drains us and how to build better lives, Malesic reflects on his own experience as well as our “burnout culture” that primes us for exhaustion.
In this interview on Life & Faith, Malesic describes that culture as a toxic combination of deteriorating working conditions – think stagnant wages, the gig economy, the decline of union membership – as well as our overinvestment in work as a source of meaning and purpose (“do what you love”). Then there’s the “badge of honour” in being a “work martyr” – someone so committed to work they’re prepared to sacrifice themselves to the cause.
To plot a path out of burnout, Malesic turns to unlikely sources – like the ora et labora (prayer and work) rhythms of Benedictine monks at Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico. There, the monks tame the “demon of work” by subordinating it to their higher callings.
If you’ve ever felt demoralised about your job, this is an interview that will name your spiritual ills and convince you that there is more to life than work.
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Explore:
Buy Jonathan Malesic’s book The End of Burnout: Why work drains us and how to build better lives
Follow him on Twitter
Sign up for his newsletter
Interested in the Maslach Burnout Inventory? Find more info here.
Buildings and public spaces tell a story about what our culture values and who belongs.
This week, Life & Faith channels popular TV program Grand Designs through its focus on the built environment and how our public spaces express ideals and aspirations for our life together.
Our guest is Kamila Soh, who is pursuing a Masters in architectural history at the University of New South Wales.
Kamila recently contributed a column to The Catholic Weekly about 111 Castlereagh, a luxury apartment development in Sydney boasting pristine views of Sydney Harbour, Hyde Park, and St Mary’s Cathedral. She contrasts the cathedral with the glamorous high-rise – where an off the plan penthouse sold for A$35 million in 2021 – and suggests that the church is a genuinely public space while the exclusive development is not.
We also discuss the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, which revealed the emotional and spiritual connections people feel to place.
Then there’s the growing recognition that we navigate public space via our phones, like posting photos to social media. But what if we need less – not more – stimulation, especially after two years of lockdown and Zoom fatigue? Kamila suggests what we need from public space are spaces for contemplation and opportunities to genuinely connect with each other.
Explore:
Kamila Soh’s column in The Catholic Weekly
A glimpse of the lifestyle promises of 111 Castlereagh - hit “play film”
Kamila’s article on the way architecture frames our relationships with each other – explored through working from home during lockdown and people’s responses to the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral
Simon’s article on Easter and the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral
The story of the Hilton Bombing, Evan Pederick, and the Ananda Marga.
On Feb 13 1978 a bomb exploded at the front of the Hilton Hotel in Sydney. It had been planted in a garbage bin and as a truck emptied the bin it exploded, killing two garbage collectors and a police officer guarding the entrance to the hotel lounge.
Ten years later, Evan Pederick turned up to a Brisbane Police station and confessed to the bombing. What followed was an incredible tale of conspiracy theories, trials, appeals, re-trials, claims of false convictions and the extraordinary situation of Pederick having to try to prove his guilt!
Evan Pederick’s journey to prison and beyond involved an attempt to come to terms with his crimes and culminated in him becoming an Anglican Priest.
Imre Salusinszky's book: The Hilton Bombing: Evan Pederick and the Ananda Marga
Young, married, and living in community housing with 28 men.
When the pandemic hit, plenty of us reassessed our lives: changing jobs, leaving relationships, taking up a new hobby.
Jayden and Mikyla Battey, a married couple in their 20s, did their own soul-searching and, as a result, decided to move into community housing with 28 men who are at risk of homelessness and face mental health issues and challenging life circumstances.
They were looking for a deeper way of living alongside others. They’ve found that as House Managers at Hamer Court, an affordable housing initiative run by the group Servants.
In this Life & Faith episode, Jayden and Mikyla talk about the joys and the difficulties of living with vulnerable people, and what it’s like for those on the margins to find a home with each other. We also get a glimpse of what extended lockdowns meant for the residents of Hamer Court who were already socially isolated to begin with.
For Jayden, this way of life is a calling. “My understanding of the way that Jesus has called us to live our life is one where we dig deep and lean into the messy relationships. If I always kept difficult people at arm’s length, then I never have to face the reality of my own impatience and the brokenness in my own heart,” he said.
“When you live with a group of people who test you and call out your BS and tell you when you’re not loving them – well, then you realise that you have to actually rely on God to be the patient, kind, and loving person that everyone likes to think they are.”
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Explore:
The article Jayden wrote for the ABC
Servants
New York Times Australian Bureau Chief Damien Cave on learning to live like an Australian.
Damien Cave has been the New York Times Australian Bureau chief in Australia since 2017. In that time he has thrown himself into life here, embracing (and being embraced by) the Surf Life Saving community and all the vulnerability and humility required to do that. He says he has learnt extremely important life lessons he didn’t know he needed and has come to love and appreciate his adopted home.
With a journalist’s sharp eye, Cave analyses Australia's attitude to risk, community and identity and finds some insights that he says have made his life immeasurably better. This is not the voice of an idealistic tourist, but someone who, by immersing himself in the Australian way of life, has come to recognise its strengths and shortcomings and ultimately, what makes it special.
Here Cave speaks to Life & Faith about risk, community, vulnerability and humility.
Book: Into the Rip: How the Australian way of risk made my family stronger, happier … and less American
Leila and Danny Abdallah explain how they found a way to forgive the driver who killed their three children.
For i4give week, we bring you a conversation with Danny and Leila Abdallah. On Feb 1st 2020 the Abdullahs experienced an unspeakable tragedy when three of their children, Antony (13), Angelina (12), and Sienna (8), along with their cousin Veronique Sakr (11), were killed when a drunk and drug-affected driver lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the group of children.
The Abdallahs shocked the world when they declared their forgiveness for the driver and refusal to hate him.
The i4give initiative, taking place each year on the anniversary of the tragedy, encourages people to search their hearts and find someone to forgive.
For Life & Faith Simon Smart talks to Leila and Danny about where they found the strength to forgive, the power of forgiveness and what they hope to achieve by urging us all to forgive.
“Forgiveness has allowed us to heal and to grow together as a family. Forgiveness has given us the freedom from anger and resentment and bitterness.” (Leila Abdallah)
https://www.i4give.com/
People have very different ideas of what Christmas is “really about”. Life & Faith weighs the options.
“This is pure joy … but this is infused with truffle.”
What makes this time of year so magical for so many?
In this final episode of Life & Faith for 2021, the team talk about the food, the gifts, the traditions, the family time … and what any of it has to do with the original story. Tim Costello joins Simon, Justine, and Natasha to tell a remarkable story of the most memorable Christmas present he ever received, and Rev Bill Crews talks about the 50+ years he’s been hosting a Christmas lunch for those who don’t have anyone to spend this time of year with.
“Out of the sadness and the destructiveness of this world, new hope is being born every second. Every second. All you have to do is look and listen, and you’ll see it. Over and over and over again, I’ve found that.”
Explore:
2021 Waitrose Christmas ad
Exodus Foundation Christmas lunch for the needy
Theologian Sarah Coakley interrogates our relationship to sex, food, money, the body, and God.
“I see desire as a central human phenomenon … We see desire in the newborn baby, for physical and psychological needs. We see desire in the dying person, even if they’ve lost the capacity for speech. We see desire in people who are very severely brain damaged or physically damaged. Desire is always there, from the moment of birth to the last gasp of our breath.”
Where do our desires come from? How do we adjudicate between competing desires? And what are our lives really about, what do we most long for?
Professor Sarah Coakley brings a keen and compassionate eye to our difficulties as a culture with sex, eating and drinking, wealth, and more. Her short but profound book The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender, and the Quest for God invites us into a lifelong sorting of desire that might allow us to prioritise what truly matters.
“If you join a religious community within Christianity, there is one question that's asked of you as you join and it's Quid petis, what are you seeking? What are you seeking? What is your life for? And I'm trying to get this question back into the heart of our spiritual and theological reflection, whether or not you believe in God.”
Explore:
The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender, and the Quest for God
Tim Costello on the spiritual hold gambling exerts over Australian politics, culture, and identity.
Tim Costello knows a thing or two about how to fight social justice battles on multiple fronts simultaneously.
The ex-World Vision CEO, lawyer, Baptist preacher, spokesperson for the End Covid For All campaign, and Senior Fellow of CPX has also campaigned against gambling and the pervasiveness of pokies in our pubs and clubs for 25 years.
In October, the Victorian Royal Commission into Crown Casinos found that Crown’s illegal, unethical, and exploitative conduct made it “unfit” to operate a casino. And yet the organisation was still given two years to clean up its act.
Tim has been a strident critic of Crown since its inception. In this Life & Faith, he reflects on why and how Crown became “too big to fail”, the impact of gambling addiction on people’s lives, and the national myth Australia tells about itself – that it’s a nation of gamblers.
Explore:
Tim’s article in The Saturday Paper
Tim’s July 2021 op-ed in The Sydney Morning Herald
Life & Faith Survey: We love making this podcast and would value your thoughts about what we do and how we could do it better. Please consider taking 5 minutes to do this short survey – https://bit.ly/3082yW9. Thanks.
We talk Ted Lasso, Sally Rooney’s latest novel, and get sentimental about our stuff with Unpacking.
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Simon, Natasha, and Justine download on Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, celebrating the infectious kindness of its hero, the power of pastoral care in general, and the ways the hit show brightened the days of many Australian viewers in lockdown this year.
Justine introduces the team to the surprisingly emotional experience of playing Unpacking, an award-winning video game in which you put away your character’s belongings and, in the process, reflect on how our material possessions connect us to immaterial realities like memory and emotions.
Lastly, what happens when the twenty-something characters populating Sally Rooney’s fiction turn 30? Natasha meditates on their angst, disappointments, relationships, and conflicted spiritual longings in Rooney’s latest book Beautiful World, Where Are You.
Explore:
Seen & Heard: Simon, Natasha, and Justine talk about Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen’s podcast Renegades: Born in the USA, Patricia Lockwood’s memoir Priest Daddy, and the latest TV adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand
Millennial Malaise: Life & Faith interview with Guardian journalist Bridie Jabour, author of Trivial Grievances: On the myths, miseries, and contradictions of your 30s
Miroslav Volf’s CPX lecture Pleasure, Meaning and the Death of God
Sandra Newman’s article: "Every house is a haunted house"
Life & Faith Survey: We love making this podcast and would value your thoughts about what we do and how we could do it better. Please consider taking 5 minutes to do this short survey – https://bit.ly/3082yW9. Thanks.
Christine Caine explores how her own challenges ignited a passion for justice for the voiceless and exploited.
Author, speaker, and advocate Christine Cain tells Life & Faith about her personal journey that led her to co-found anti-slavery organisation--A21. She explains her shock when she discovered not only the scale of human trafficking in the world today, but that it existed at all.
Christine’s personal story is inextricably linked to the reason she took this challenge on, and her faith explains why she thinks audacious goals are achievable in the fight to end slavery today.
“We have a statement Um at A:21, it says let's abolish slavery everywhere forever. Some people roll their eyes, but I'm like, ‘This is not rocket science, there's 7.8 billion people and 40 million slaves do the math!’ If we awaken enough people to this and then we are prepared to change our lives a little bit, I think we can actually get this job done.”
“I looked and I went in that moment from looking at someone else's missing child to seeing what could have been my own daughter.”
https://www.a21.org/
https://christinecaine.com/content/books/gk14sg
Life & Faith Survey: We love making this podcast and would value your thoughts about what we do and how we could do it better. Please consider taking 5 minutes to do this short survey – https://bit.ly/3082yW9. Thanks.
Clinical psychologist Jonathan Andrews explains how, in the right circumstances, relationships can heal our broken hearts, and salve our growing loneliness.
Jonathan Andrews’ book The Reconnected Heart: How Relationships Can Help Us Heal is born out of his experience as a clinical psychologist where he has witnessed the powerful healing potential in connection with ourselves, other people and with God.
Andrews believes that there are significant benefits from cultivating healthy relationships that can help us overcome even significant trauma and loss.
“And this is a thing I think to remember about loneliness, loneliness isn't just about the quantity of connection, it's about the quality of connection. To put it succinctly would say something like it's about the lack of understanding. So you can be lonely in a crowd, you can be lonely at a party. So there's lots of people around, but really if you want to overcome loneliness, you have to be properly understood.”
“... we underestimate the positive impact that we can bring to other people's lives. And we also … w entertain this idea that I'm the only one who's suffering like this and that's simply not true. One in four Australians are suffering from significant amounts of loneliness. So the lonely people aren't alone, Lonely people are experiencing things that many, many Australians are experiencing.”
The Reconnected Heart: How Relationships Can Help Us Heal by Jonathan Andrews
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The award-winning novelist talks about navigating cultural diversity, representation, and Buddhism.
“Books don’t change people. I think people change people.”
Alice Pung’s novels are beloved by readers, but she has a bone to pick with those who mostly encounter people with various backgrounds through fiction. “Why don’t you have any Asian friends or black friends or poor friends or friends from the other side of the river in the western suburbs? Why do you need me to open up your eyes?”
“My biggest readers are woke people and I would think it would be a wonderful thing if they brought less of my books. And you know, catch the bus across to Footscray and play basketball with some of the kids atnd the commission flats or something. It’s my biggest gripe that some people think you can become a good person just by reading books,” she said.
Pung’s latest novel One Hundred Days tells the story of Karuna, a half Chinese-Filipino, half white-Australian teenager. After she falls pregnant, a battle of wills ensues between Karuna and her mother, who confines Karuna to their apartment to protect her.
The novel depicts a claustrophobic and controlling relationship between mother and daughter and, as with much of Pung’s work, offers a glimpse into the challenges of living between cultures in modern Australia.
Pung also opens up about up her experience of Buddhism, and the challenge of depicting the lived religious experience of her characters without reinforcing crude stereotypes of race or religion.
If nothing else, this conversation will invite you to consider what life looks like from the perspective of people you may never meet, but with whom you share multicultural Australia.
Explore:
One Hundred Days by Alice Pung
Tony Rinaudo has uncovered some surprising sources of hope for a warming planet.
“In that moment, for me, everything changed. I wasn't fighting the Sahara desert … Everything that I needed was literally at my feet. And the real battle was, if people had reduced the environment to this point – it's on its knees, it’s struggling to provide for anybody, nature or humankind – if it was people’s beliefs and actions about trees and nature that destroyed it, then that’s where the battle was. And if I can convince people to work with nature instead of destroying it, then the rest would be relatively easy. So that was the big turning point, the big revelation.”
In a world of rising temperatures, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, where can we find hope for the earth?
Tony Rinaudo is Principal Climate Action Adviser for World Vision, and he has spent more than four decades on reforestation – initially as a missionary and agronomist in desertified Niger, and since then in more and more countries around the world. The practice he has helped spread is called FMNR: Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration. According to one observer who’s worked closely with him, “It is no exaggeration to say that Tony Rinaudo may save the planet.”
Climate anxiety is on the rise for young people in particular. In this episode, Tony tells his own story of wanting to make a difference, explains what FMNR is and does, describes a hidden underground forest, and shares his sources of hope for the future.
“I like to encourage them and say it’s never too late. Do what you can within your means, within your circle of influence. And then, when you get to that level, you’ll always be able to see further and do more. And what’s more, what’s amazing is when you take a step in the right direction, others will come to your aid, others will join you.”
Benjamin Gilmour reflects on 26 years as a paramedic, a poet, and a filmmaker - including in Afghanistan.
Benjamin Gilmour’s book The Gap recounts a very intense summer working as a paramedic out of Bondi Ambulance station in Sydney. He comes face to face with violence, drugs, domestic disputes, brawls, heart attacks, emergency births. There’s even a kidnapping!
The trauma, death and distress inevitably take their toll on Benjamin and his colleagues. The gallows humour can only take you so far.
Benjamin describes his love for the job, his patients, and his deep empathy for humans and their fallibility.
That same empathy has taken him to far away places of danger, conflict and also searing beauty, where Ben’s compassionate eye as a poet and filmmaker have provided him with extraordinary stories and experiences.
His film Jirga, filmed in Afghanistan, explores the complexities of war, guilt and the pursuit of forgiveness. The film reflects Benjamin’s own spiritual journey and search for the best of humanity in all its messiness and glory.
Scott Stephens, editor of ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, shares his own fascinating backstory.
As editor of the ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, Scott Stephens spends his days trawling through the best of contemporary theological and ethical thinking. But the story of his life proves just as intriguing as the material he daily immerses himself in.
In this episode of Life & Faith, Scott talks about being the son of a staunchly Republican father and a peacenik mother who instilled in him a love of art and literature, and an upbringing that set Scott on his current course in life.
Scott will be delivering the 2021 Richard Johnson Lecture. Tickets for this livestreamed event are available here: https://bit.ly/3lqkNwg
ABC’s Religion & Ethics website: www.abc.net.au/religion
Dr Jenny Brown explains wellbeing and maturity in the context of your “family system”.
“One of the distinctives about Bowen family systems theory is, it isn't about people who have mental illness and people who don't. It's about all of us humans struggling with very similar issues. … There's not really this distinction between the expert who's got her life together and the client who is seeking help.”
Dr Jenny Brown is the founder of the Family Systems Institute and the author of several books, including Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships. She is an enthusiastic proponent of Bowen family systems theory - a theory of human behaviour that focuses on how our identity and wellbeing as individuals is a function of the relationship webs we are embedded within.
Drawing on her clinical experience, research, family background, and personal faith, Jenny joins Simon Smart and Natasha Moore for a conversation about adulting, birth order, responsibility, dysfunction, intensity, and the process of change.
“We grow our resilience and our responsibility and our coping mechanisms within the laboratory of our important relationships - even the difficult relationships. But if we avoid difficulty, if we avoid learning to hold our boundaries, manage our reactivity, our emotions getting stirred up … if we can do that in our original family, then we can do it anywhere. That's the real place of a good workout for growing the capacity to be a flourishing human in the world.”
Explore:
2021 New College Lectures, “Nurture: Confronting a Crisis”
Family Systems Institute
Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships
Confident Parenting: Restoring Your Confidence as a Parent By Making Yourself the Project and Not Trying to Change Your Child
Bowen Family Systems Theory in Christian Ministry
The Parent Hope Project
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Sociologist John Carroll unpacks the ongoing appeal of the Harry Potter series.
Nearly a quarter of a century after the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling’s story of the “boy who lived” continues to capture the imaginations of children - and adults.
The Harry Potter effect, it’s claimed, got kids reading again, got kids’ books selling at greater volumes, and made it possible for writers to produce longer novels for younger readers.
John Carroll, Emeritus Professor of sociology at La Trobe University, makes a bigger claim: that Harry Potter makes Rowling the greatest contributor to the public good of the last 20 years.
In this episode, he makes his case to Simon Smart. This conversation is for you if you’re a Harry Potter fan - but also if you’re not! It ranges from the materialism of our age and our death avoidance to the difference between a hero and a saviour, the importance of vocation, and our deep desire to live in an enchanted world.
“That's quite explicit in the Harry Potter books. I mean, the ordinary people, everyone knows, are called Muggles, and they’re mugs. Their lives are boring. Harry’s forced adopted family for the first 11 years of his life is terrified by basically the meaningless of its own existence. And in a sense, I think what's going on here is a warning to children: adulthood is at risk of being just like that, beware! The magic, the enchantment is in danger of going out of life.”
Links:
John Carroll, “Harry Potter & the teller of truth”, The Australian, 10 July 2021
Wizarding World, Kids React to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Unwinnable wars, fear, discrimination: we sift the long-term impact of the September 11 attacks.
It’s been twenty years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, when terrorist group Al-Qaeda flew two passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. Another plane hit the Pentagon in Washington DC, while a fourth plane – headed, it is thought, for the US Capitol – instead crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
The attacks stunned the US and shook the myth of American invincibility. Military strikes on Afghanistan followed in October 2001 as then-US President George W. Bush demanded the Taliban, the country’s de facto ruling power, hand over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks.
The US-led ‘war on terror’ expanded to include Iraq in 2003, in search of its reputed weapons of mass destruction.
In August 2021, the Taliban reasserted control over Afghanistan just as the last American troops withdrew from the region.
As we mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on Life & Faith, we speak to Mark Maclennan, an Australian tourist who found himself at the World Trade Centre right after it had been hit.
David Smith, Associate Professor at the United States Studies Centre and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, summarises the impact of the event and its aftermath on the United States and beyond.
Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, artist Makoto Fujimura, and the work of Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, also feature in this episode.
Explore:
Rowan Williams’ Writing in the Dust: Reflections on 11th September and its Aftermath
Interview with Makoto Fujimura
Interview with David Smith on US Politics and Religion
Andrew McUtchen on the challenge and joy of the most important job he’ll ever have.
Andrew McUtchen is the co-creator of The Father Hood, an online community that supports Dads to take on the challenge of being the best Dad they can be. Father to three girls aged 6,7 and 8, along with an older stepdaughter, Andrew believes this is the best time in history to be a Dad.
Expectations of fathers have radically changed in recent decades. Andrew tells Life & Faith why that change is such a good thing. And why he wouldn’t have it any other way.
In this episode Andrew and Simon share some common threads in their respective upbringings, both being one of three boys with a Dad who was a minister. This leads to a discussion of the spirituality of parenting and the things to be gained by having your life turned upside down. And along the way they touch on wonder, awe and the power of appealing to our better instincts.
"There's an opportunity to reconnect with spirituality through parenthood because ... suddenly your drives are self less instead of selfish and they're giving instead of taking and suddenly you just rediscover all this goodness in yourself."
https://www.the-father-hood.com/
In a world obsessed with success, plenty of us feel a compulsive need to achieve.
We tell ourselves - and our kids - to try hard and never give up, for this is the secret to success. But by the time young people finish school, many students find it hard not to link their efforts and abilities with their identity and their self-worth with their achievements.
CPXer Justine Toh’s book Achievement Addiction calls out our fraught relationship with success. In this episode, we talk about tiger parenting and its fixation on academic accomplishment and how meritocratic ideas associating success with effort imply that our wins and failures are always deserved. We also discuss other social cues showing the value we place on achievement - like the way former Australian Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey once described Australia as a nation of “lifters, not leaners” which distinguishes between those who contribute to the public purse and those who take from it.
We also talk to Julia, a Sydney-based cardiologist, who wouldn’t describe herself as an achievement addict but who found herself striving for significance. She lets us in on what might be found on the other side of achievement.
Explore:
Justine Toh’s Achievement Addiction and other titles in the Re:CONSIDERING series.
Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good
Journalist Greg Sheridan makes a compelling case for reading the Bible book by book and finding within those pages a Jesus as intriguing as he is attractive and compelling.
When journalist Greg Sheridan outed himself as Christian with his book “God is Good for You”, a friend challenged him to follow it up with something that would illuminate the living Jesus of the gospels. That was enough for Greg to commit to a couple of years soaking in the New Testament in search of a way to explain the Christian story to a people largely estranged from it.
The result is Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our world.
Sheridan says of his reading of the Bible, “ ... it's so gripping. It's so immediate, it's so visceral … there's also a tremendous power to it”. Here is his attempt to convey something of that power, and he does so with a disarming honesty and wide-eyed enthusiasm. His aim is to point people to the life-giving words of Jesus and his early followers and the way that message continues to enthrall, challenge and inspire today.
In this episode of Life & Faith Simon Smart speaks with Greg about the book, why he wrote it and the people who come to life within it.
Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in our world by Greg Sheridan
Life & Faith marks a milestone, and gets a bit nostalgic.
This week is the 400th episode of Life & Faith!
In this episode, Simon Smart, Justine Toh, and Natasha Moore get together (remotely) to swap stories of their favourite episodes, tech fails, meeting their heroes, and memorable surprises over the years of making the podcast. They also manage to cajole producer Allan Dowthwaite, the man who makes everything at CPX work, out from his preferred spot behind the scenes to answer a few questions in front of the microphone.
Join the team on a trip down memory lane with the ghost of episodes past, and enjoy Tim Winton making a joke at his own expense, Justine reflecting on spiritual seekers, Simon and Al recalling the least amount of prep time they ever had for an interview, Natasha admitting the most intimidating person she’s ever interviewed, and the novelist Christos Tsiolkas offering a powerful distillation of what Christianity (a faith he does not share) is all about.
Episodes referenced in this episode:
Hope Is Violent
Misadventures in Wellness
Murder Most Popular
An Empty Plate
An Evangelical Election
Out of the Fishbowl
He Had a Dream
Fear Is a Useless Thing
Wrestling Paul
80 years on, Life & Faith charts the ripple effects of a much-loved book.
“I got out a yellow pad, cause I’m a lawyer, and I would have two columns – there is a God, there isn’t a God; Jesus Christ is God, he isn’t God – I went down that, and I went through the whole rational process and I thought to myself wow … I’ve never gone into a courtroom and argued against a mind like this.”
On Wednesday 6 August 1941, a relatively unknown Oxford don fronted up to a microphone at the BBC in London to give the first of a series of talks that would evolve into what is probably one of the most influential books of the 20th century - one which continues to have ripple effects well into the 21st.
C. S. Lewis spoke to his fellow citizens, during a time of crisis and hardship, about the nature of reality, morality, human nature, God, and the meaning of life. Later he referred to his account of what he believed as “mere” Christianity - the faith that has been common to Christians everywhere and at all times, explained in ways that stirred people’s imaginations and satisfied their intellectual curiosity.
Mere Christianity has only grown in popularity, decade after decade, and in this episode of Life & Faith Simon and Natasha hear from a number of people who have loved this book and would even say that it changed their lives.
John Lennox - like Lewis, an Oxford don and Northern Irishman - describes what it was like to hear Lewis speak in the flesh. Nixon’s “hatchet man”, Chuck Colson, who famously became a Christian just before going to prison over his role in Watergate and devoted his life to prison reform and ministry until his death in 2012, tells his story of transformation. And three young Aussies describe their own encounters with this still compelling book, 80 years on from its first incarnation.
“‘A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.’ So yeah, I wasn’t very careful. And let this happen … thank God.”
Explore:
The surviving recording of C. S. Lewis’ original broadcast talks
Chuck Colson, “How God Turned Around Nixon’s Hatchet Man”
George Marsden, C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography
You’re 30 and feeling meh about life. Bridie Jabour, The Guardian’s opinion editor, knows your pain.
On New Year’s Day, 2020, Bridie Jabour, The Guardian’s opinion editor, published a column about millennial malaise: being in your 30s and somewhat dissatisfied with your situation in life.
She’d attended a few dinners where women around her age were facing varied challenges: relationship breakdown, fertility issues, being a parent, starting a new job. Though everyone’s situation was unique, “they all seemed to be kind of melancholy and questioning it all,” Bridie said.
Bridie’s column sampled some of the experiences of her generation. It went viral overnight, racking up 600,000 views in a normally sleepy summer period. She received interview requests from New York, India, South America, as well as country Queensland.
She seemed to have touched a nerve for millennials facing a unique set of economic and social circumstances: precarious work, delay in having children, soaring house prices putting home ownership out of reach for many.
But even aside from the challenges facing this particular generation of young people, Bridie recognises that what she’s describing is a “good old-fashioned existential crisis”.
This interview covers Bridie’s take on work and the endless pressure to be productive, the spiritual lives of millennials, the question of whether or not to have children, why being wry is a millennial thing, and longing for meaning in a world where meaning, like everything else in life, is complicated.
Explore:
Bridie Jabour’s book Trivial Grievances: On the Contradictions, Myths, and Misery of Your 30s
The results of CPX’s Easter 2021 Survey on Australians’ openness to a range of spiritual phenomena
The wrestle with busyness, productivity, balance, and tech easily becomes the story of our lives.
“I don't like work-life balance. I think that it implies that work is a different thing from life. And I think that if we're doing work right, it's a part of life.”
Dr Jenny George cares deeply about people’s well-being at work. She is CEO of Converge International, which provides Employee Assistance Programs among other things.
And Daniel Sih, as a productivity coach, pastor, and former physiotherapist, is all about helping busy people make space in their lives. He’s the author of Spacemaker: How to Unplug, Unwind and Think Clearly in the Digital Age.
Work/life balance, digital Sabbath, tech addiction, time management, working from home, inbox zero … these things have a profound impact on how we experience our lives day-to-day. Join Simon Smart and Natasha Moore for a conversation about what mental and spiritual health looks like in our high-pressure, hyperconnected moment.
“Actually we'll never get everything done, we'll never read everything we can do, we'll never be the perfect mum or perfect dad, or get through every episode of Netflix that we want to watch. It'll never happen in the digital age, and so that pausing allows us to say, ‘I'm enough, and it's enough, and mess is ok. Let's enjoy today.’”
Check out Daniel Sih’s Spacemaker: How to Unplug, Unwind and Think Clearly in the Digital Age
Find out more about Converge International
Michael Wear talks about faith, politics and having Barack Obama as a boss.
Michael Wear worked in the Obama White House for 3 ½ years in the office of Faith Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships before heading out and leading religious outreach on President Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012 and then directed religious affairs for the president’s second inaugural.
He is an expert on the place of faith in public life, and maintains a hopefulness that Christianity still has a deep well of resources to bring to bear on the pressing challenges of contemporary life--even being a unifying force. Michael is an optimist and believes the resources of Christian faith can be, not just a private belief system, but in fact a significant contributor to the common good.
Michael’s book about this period of his life is Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House about the Future of Faith in America.
The plight of the Tamil family from Biloela makes us ask: could we do refugee politics differently?
The story of the medical evacuation of four-year-old Tharnicaa Murugappan to a Perth hospital from detention on Christmas Island has struck a nerve in the Australian community. Tharnicaa, her sister Kopika, and their parents Priya and Nades are facing deportation to Sri Lanka after Priya and Nades were found not to be genuine refugees.
The family’s plight has shone a spotlight on Australia’s deliberately harsh policies of detaining asylum seekers. But their former community in Biloela, central Queensland, is campaigning that the family be allowed to stay in Australia. Politicians and personalities from across the political spectrum have also joined the cause. It seems that this Tamil family are helping Australians reimagine the kind of welcome the nation might offer to vulnerable people.
This Refugee Week, we bring you an interview with Mark and Luke Glanville, two brothers who’ve written a book called Refuge Reimagined: Biblical Kinship in Global Politics.
Mark is an Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, and pastored a church in East Vancouver that welcomed refugees to be part of a community called Kinbrace. Luke is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Australian National University.
Explore:
Refuge Reimagined: Biblical Kinship and Global Politics
The community of Kinbrace
How do you raise kids who see the world’s problems, and believe they can do something about it?
“I guess I'm concerned that kids are becoming depressed and overwhelmed by the big problems that they see in the world. And I think if we just leave it at that, they will grow up with a worldview that says, ‘The world's a wreck. There's nothing I can do in it. I might as well just watch Netflix.’ Whereas I think if we give kids an opportunity to respond to the problems in the world when they're young, they will develop a worldview that says, ‘Oh, there's a problem in the world. There's something I can do about that.’”
Susy Lee has a background in psychology, theology, aid and development, peace and conflict, children’s and family ministry, and … computer science. Across her various jobs and studies, she’s been preoccupied with the question: how do you make the world better?
She’s convinced that how we parent has an awful lot to do with it. In her new book, Raising Kids Who Care: Practical conversations for exploring stuff that matters, together, Susy has built a handbook for family discussions on everything from consumerism to how to listen well, conflict resolution to porn, world poverty and climate change to finding your purpose in life.
In this episode of Life & Faith, she explains how her own family background and experience has shaped her, and offers a model for parents and others to help kids encounter the tricky realities of life in ways that are hopeful, and might just change the world.
Buy a copy of Raising Kids Who Care: Practical conversations for exploring stuff that matters, together https://www.amazon.com.au/Raising-Kids-Who-Care-conversations-ebook/dp/B0971FTPXR/
A former Yale professor on the clever but morally clueless students pursuing an elite education.
In 2014, William Deresiewicz’s book Excellent Sheep: The miseducation of the American elite and the way to a meaningful life became an instant best-seller. The former Yale professor called out the way that elite American universities produced “excellent sheep”: clever, highly credentialled, and conscientious young people who were nonetheless stumped about the meaning of life. Instead, they funnelled themselves into high-paying jobs in law, finance, medicine, consulting, or tech.
In this fascinating discussion, Deresiewicz talks about the way that words like “soul” have a gravity that non-religious language can’t replicate, why a good education is necessarily going to ask existential questions about “love and time and God and everything”, and how he annoyed Canadian psychologist and popular science writer Steven Pinker with talk about university as a time to “build your self”.
As the Australian federal government changes the pricing structure of university degrees to encourage students to pursue courses in areas of expected job growth, it’s clear that we’re also asking: what exactly is the value of an education?
Explore:
Excellent Sheep: The miseducation of the American elite and the way to a meaningful life
(Bill’s most recent book) The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech
Mike and Steve Baird grew up as sons of prominent Australian politician Bruce Baird. Both recently moved from corporate roles into the not-for-profit sector.
Mike Baird had a successful career in banking before going into politics – eventually becoming the 44th Premier of NSW. He returned to banking after ten years in politics but recently moved to become CEO of HammondCare – a large Christian charity that provides dementia and aged care along with palliative care. Their mission – to improve the quality of life for people in need.
Mike’s younger brother Steve was also had a successful career in the corporate world, and has made a significant shift to International Justice Mission Australia - part of the largest anti-slavery organisation in the world.
This week we hear from the brothers, Mike and Steve--what it was like growing up together, the people and experiences that have shaped them most and why they moved from the corporate world into the not-for-profit sector. What motivates them both in leading two organisations seeking to offer assistance to people in great need?
https://www.hammond.com.au/
https://ijm.org.au/
Think “scientific” and “creative” are opposites? Physicist Tom McLeish begs to disagree.
“We forget, in science, that what we call the scientific method is really only the method for a tiny bit of science. It's the only bit of science that there can be a method for, which is testing out and checking our hypotheses when we've got them. The really crucial step in science is to get good ideas going in the first place, to have great new insights, to imagine whole new structures of the world, or fungus on the trees, or black holes, or whatever it might be. Now, there really is no method for having great, innovative, scientific, imaginative, creative ideas. So where do they come from?”
Tom McLeish is a physicist and author, and talks about science more enthusiastically than anyone else you’ll ever meet. His current title is Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of York - and “natural philosophy” is far from the only unusual term he likes to use when talking about science.
His latest book is The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art, and in this conversation he explains what being a scientist and being an artist have in common; why it is that experimental science and the English novel got going at about the same time; and why he thinks the “book of nature” might be written in poetry rather than prose.
And in the spirit of bringing art and science together, the American poet Mary Peelen reads two of her poems, “Chaos Theory” and “Supernova”, from her award-winning collection Quantum Heresies.
Check out The Poetry and Music of Science by Tom McLeish: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-poetry-and-music-of-science-9780198797999
Read or listen to the Mary Peelen poems found in this episode at Radar Poetry, used with permission:
“Chaos Theory”: https://www.radarpoetry.com/chaos-theory
“Supernova”: https://www.radarpoetry.com/supernova
Discover more of Mary’s poems at http://marypeelen.com/
We assume - but rarely name - the elephant in the room when we talk about consent: human dignity.
Grace Tame. Brittany Higgins. Chanel Contos.
These young women have put consent and sexual assault front and centre of the national agenda, raising troubling concerns about the way men treat women.
In this episode, we step back from the immediate headlines generated by the crisis. Instead, we explore what is core to all discussions of consent, but rarely named: the concern that all people - but especially women - are treated with dignity.
Tim Bowden, principal of Trinity Grammar School in Sydney, and Lynda Dunstan, Domestic and Family Violence Advisor at Anglicare, explore the environmental influences shaping the way men and women relate to each other.
Lynda particularly focuses on patterns of gender inequality that drive injustices against women, while Tim reflects on the challenge facing him as principal of an all-boys school: turning boys into men.
Moral philosopher Emma Wood identifies competing visions of sex in contemporary culture that have very different implications for how we treat each other. She joins theologian John Stackhouse in calling for a substantial story promoting human dignity to ground ideas about consent.
As John Stackhouse says, “What we do with our bodies is sometimes trivial and fairly unimportant. But when we get into the zone of relating to other people and touching other people, it’s always important. Touch is never trivial. And sex is really never trivial.”
Emma Wood’s article on ABC Religion & Ethics
1800 Respect or 1800 737 732
Men’s Referral Service or 1300 766 491
Lifeline or 13 11 14
“As a junior doctor I went to Ethiopia to work with my aunt in the desert area, and we were just wandering around the desert with camels, treating people under trees and shrubs and things in 50-degree heat … You’d have to sleep with a guard with a gun because the hyenas get quite close, so every now and then you’d get woken up with a gunshot and this hyena yelping off in the distance. And then a bit later that night a camel was bellowing just a few metres away from my head and gives birth, and I get splattered with all this amniotic fluid.”
Andrew Browning has spent more than 17 years in Africa as a missionary doctor. As a medical student, he spent time working with Rwandan refugees fleeing the genocide; as a junior doctor, he joined Catherine Hamlin at the Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, dedicating his life to helping women who are suffering from debilitating childbirth injuries.
In this episode of Life & Faith, Andrew explains how he could give up a lucrative, comfortable life as a doctor at home in Australia to help thousands of women halfway round the world. He explains the risks of childbirth in rural places, what a fistula is, and his hope for a future where women don’t have to face this kind of suffering.
He also talks about the difference between being a missionary doctor or a secular healthcare worker somewhere like Africa – as well as how African and Western people respond differently to illness, suffering, and death.
“I remember telling people in Australia they’ve got cancer, or ‘You’ve got a life-threatening condition’, and the immediate reaction was ‘No, no, you’re wrong’ or ‘Give me a second opinion; that can’t be true’, or they’re angry. Whereas if you do that in Africa it’s much more ‘Oh, okay, sure. My time is up.’ I mean they’re much more attuned to death and accepting of suffering as part of life, they see it every day … The poor in Africa, the physically poor, people say that they’re spiritually rich, and the materially rich are often spiritually poor – at least in my experience.”
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Content warning: This episode contains explicit medical details, as well as descriptions of violence, that you may find distressing and that probably aren’t appropriate for kids.
Find out more about Andrew’s ongoing work to end obstetric fistula globally through the Barbara May Foundation.
The book inspired by this episode, A Doctor in Africa, is published by Pan Macmillan.
This episode was first broadcast on 23 May 2019
In the latest book from the CPX team, Mark Stephens asks: why is it so hard to think well?
“Pretty much, this book is a recount of all of the ways that I’ve failed at thinking. So it’s really a confession from start to finish, because we’re all susceptible to this.”
Thinking is one of the most basic and obvious things we do - but that doesn’t mean we do it well. Mark Stephens says it’s actually quite hard, and that thinking about thinking is uncomfortable … but that it’s very much worth doing.
His brand new book The End of Thinking? is the latest release in the Re:considering series. In this conversation with Simon and Natasha, Mark helps us navigate the topic of thinking: from terms like the Dunning-Kruger effect, steelmanning, and ultracrepidarianism to why we should care about it in the first place - and what kind of person it will make you.
Get your copy of The End of Thinking? here
Makoto Fujimura and the healing power of art and faith
Acclaimed artist Mako Fujimura talks to about the connection between beauty, art and faith. A particular emphasis is on the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi which repairs broken bowls, reassembling them with lacquer and then covering that in gold. The whole idea is that it takes broken things and not only restores them but makes them more beautiful than the original. Beauty out of brokenness is the idea - which has profound resonance with Fujimura’s understanding of his Christian faith and echoes his own experience in dealing with trauma and loss.
Links:
Makoto Fujimura Art & Faith: A theology of Making.
https://www.waterfall-gallery.com/makoto-fujimura
https://makotofujimura.com/
Why do Austen’s novels inspire an almost religious fervour?
“There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight spot,” declares a character in the Kipling short story “The Janeites”, in which a group of soldiers in the trenches of World War I bond over their shared love of Austen.
Today, Austen fandom approaches levels of devotion unrivalled by almost any other author. At the same time, her six novels are often dismissed as “chick lit”.
In this episode, Simon agrees (with some reluctance) to finally read Pride and Prejudice - and is surprised by what he finds. Natasha speaks with Katrina Clifford, Dean of Academics at Robert Menzies College and a scholar of eighteenth-century literature, about why so many people over the last two centuries have been so obsessed with Austen.
From Mormon or Amish adaptations to the handful of surviving prayers we have from Jane’s pen; from Austen’s male historical mega-fans (Churchill, Tolkien) to the BBC’s famous lake scene; this conversation has something for everyone - whether you’re a diehard Janeite, or need a bit of convincing to give Austen a go.
If Jesus offers wisdom for how to live, how necessary is the “Son of God” stuff?
“I do think Jesus is a much more challenging figure than he is often presented to be. And a lot of the challenges he presents I think Christians find it quite hard to really look square in the eye.”
Julian Baggini is a philosopher, an atheist, and the author most recently of The Godless Gospel: Was Jesus A Great Moral Teacher? It’s the latest contribution to a centuries-long effort to discover what’s left of Jesus of Nazareth if you subtract the miracles and “God talk”.
Jonathan Pennington is a New Testament scholar at Southern Seminary in Kentucky, and his book Jesus the Great Philosopher also places Jesus within a tradition of offering wisdom for life. However, he thinks that ultimately, you can’t separate the moral teaching of Jesus from the Easter story of his crucifixion and resurrection. His argument is that Jesus is more than a philosopher - but not less than one.
“When you study philosophy, you recognise the best philosophers are really asking very important questions - some big ideas, and some really practical questions about what it means to be human. … My suggestion to you all is that when you go to the Bible and when you go to Jesus with that same set of questions, you are going to find remarkably thoughtful, remarkably practical, remarkably beautiful answers.”
Links:
Julian Baggini, The Godless Gospel: Was Jesus A Great Moral Teacher?
Jonathan Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life
Listen to our previous interview with Julian Baggini on Life & Faith, on the topic of free will: Freedom Regained
An aerospace engineer and an astrogeologist discuss the whether and why of space exploration.
"For all these wonderful technologies, for all these incredible achievements that you see – rockets that can be reused, drones that can fly long missions, every discovery by the Hubble or the Kepler – there’s this realisation that when all the really, really good stuff comes along, I’m going to be dead."
When James Garth was a young, budding aerospace engineer, he came across an ad in his copy of Aviation Week that read: "In 200 years, space flight will be routine. You, however, will be dead." It was an existential-angst-inducing moment. But it hasn’t kept him from being constantly excited about the work he gets to do now.
"My main job is to make sure the wings don’t fall off – if the wings fall off, it’s a bad day, and if the wing stays on, it’s a good day," James says. He’s not being flippant – the wings of an aircraft, he explains, are designed to not fall off, of course, but only just.
"Aerospace is a really demanding profession because you’re pushing yourself up against the extremes of what is actually possible," he says. "You’ve got to shave out weight at every opportunity, you’ve got to constantly innovate and use new materials and new technologies … and that’s actually why I love doing aerospace engineering."
In this episode, we’re celebrating National Science Week in Australia with two conversations on space travel, the wonder of the cosmos, the possibility of life on other planets, and – of course – the best science fiction on offer.
Hear from two Australians with very cool jobs: James Garth, an aeronautical engineer, and a man who has travelled to Mars. Twice. Well, sort of.
"In the Canadian Arctic the ground is frozen, there’s permafrost, and we know there’s permafrost on Mars," Jonathan Clarke says about the location of his first Mars simulation experience. "In Utah you’ve got a red, dry desert with rocks that are full of clay, full of sulphates, just like we see on Mars," he says of the second.
An astrogeologist, Jon would love to go to Mars for real one day.
"I love beautiful places. Mars has grandeur. It’s got volcanos with cliffs eight kilometres high and canyons 12 kilometres deep, it’s got blue sunsets and pink skies, and great dust storms - it’s an extraordinarily beautiful landscape and I’d just love to be able to explore that in person."
These interviews were conducted at ISCAST’s Conference on Science and Christianity. Find out more about ISCAST here: www.iscast.org
In light of the chaos surrounding the U.S. presidential election we ask John Stackhouse and Nathan Campbell to reflect on the place of Religion in Public Life
The story of the politicising of faith in the U.S. has a long backstory. Some would say the storming the Capitol building in Washington was the culmination of a complex narrative that has roots in the backlash against 1960s libertarianism and the subsequent alliance between conservative religion and conservative politics. That is a fascinating story in itself. But what is the place of faith in politics and public life? Do national flags and Christian faith go well together? What legitimacy do Christian believers have when engaging in politics? Theologian John Stackhouse Jnr sheds some light on the North American context and CPX Associate and Australian Pastor and blogger, Nathan Campbell, offers his perspective on this complex and fraught discussion.
The CPX team debrief on their latest reads, TV binges, and podcast discoveries.
It may not surprise you to know that the nerds at CPX spend a lot of time inhaling the books, movies, podcasts, and binge-worthy TV series that shape and reflect our particular cultural moment - and debriefing on them around the proverbial office water cooler.
This week on Life & Faith, Simon, Natasha, and Justine hit record on that conversation.
Covered in this episode:
Priestdaddy: the 2017 memoir by Patricia Lockwood, “poet laureate of Twitter”, whose father - a Catholic priest, via a loophole in the usual rules about celibacy - is a larger-than-life figure … like everyone else in her family, it seems. Hilarious and also disturbing, on growing up religious and continuing to love complicated people whose faith you no longer share.
The Stand: a new 9-episode miniseries based on the 1978 Stephen King novel, available to watch on Amazon Prime, this dark fantasy/post-apocalyptic tale rejects the greys in favour of good ol’ black-and-white moral absolutes. Mother Abagail vs The Dark Man represents a traditional battle of good and evil, but sits oddly in the current atmosphere.
Renegades: Born in the USA: the new podcast on Spotify brings together two American icons, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama, to talk about life parallels, race, and the ongoing promise and peril of the “American dream”.
The most famous witch hunt in history – and how it speaks to our moment.
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“There were always personal issues at stake in Salem and, I think, in all witchcraft trials. We can talk about larger-scale issues like economic change or political conflicts, but witchcraft accusations always started out of conflicts between individuals.”
Donald Trump may declare his impeachment(s) “the greatest witch hunt in American history”, but that dubious honour has long been accorded to the panic that took hold of the New England community of Salem, Massachusetts, back in 1692.
Catherine Brekus, who is Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America at Harvard Divinity School, takes us back to that iconic episode to help us understand the perfect storm of historical factors that caused it. She talks about what leads a close-knit community to turn against each other - and draws some uncomfortable parallels with our own moment, from conspiracy theories to the demonisation of opponents, especially women.
"I really can’t think of any woman in modern history who has been more demonised than Clinton. If you do a search on the internet, you will see all kinds of horrible pictures, you can buy T-shirts of her riding a broom. And this might seem funny - but if you recall, back in 2016 there were rumours that Hillary Clinton was running a child trafficking sex ring from a pizza parlour in Washington DC, and there was a man who literally showed up there with an assault rifle to rescue these children."
Most of this material from Catherine Brekus is drawn from an interview for CPX's For the Love of God documentary.
It is available (with much, much more) for free in a series of short videos, for easy use in the classroom or sharing on social media, at www.publicchristianity.org/interviews/
British writer Francis Spufford talks about heartbreak and loss, hope and eternity, in his latest novel, Light Perpetual.
In November 1944, a German V2 missile obliterated a Woolworths store in South London, killing 168 people. Fifteen of that number were children under 11 years old. For 13 years Francis Spufford has, on his way to work each day, walked past a plaque commemorating the event. He says he has been increasingly haunted by the lives those children didn’t get to live.
In Light Perpetual Spufford summons five lives out of the dust and ruin of that 1944 calamity and breathes life into them, giving Jo and Valerie and Alec and Ben and Vernon a future they didn’t get to live. This is a story of paths chosen or not taken, the joys and wounds that time gifts and inflicts. The story is a complex weaving of divergent time periods and characters who live unspectacular but always intriguing lives. There is murder and mental illness, heartbreak and loss of various kinds, as well as a meditation and honouring of the mundane aspects of our lives that Spufford clearly sees as essential and, perhaps, sacred.
All the way along, he leaves open the tantalising possibility of eternity.
Acclaimed author Susannah McFarlane on meeting her birth mother and then, to her great dismay, God.
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The EJ12 Girl Hero series, the EJ Spy School Series, D-Bot Squad, Boy vs Beast, Go Girl!, and Zac Power. For decades, Susannah McFarlane has been the author, publisher, and driving force behind some of Australia’s most popular children’s books.
In her 50s, Susannah met her birth mother for the first time but discovered - to her shock - that she was a Pentecostal Christian. A staunch atheist, Susannah tried to argue her mother out of belief, but in researching the historical claims of Christianity, found herself converted - reluctantly - to the faith instead.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we hear about Susannah’s reunion with her mother, the fallout - and also the joys - of coming to faith, and how this spinner of remarkable tales makes sense of the way her own story fits into the Christian story.
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EXPLORE
Heartlines: The year I met my other mother, co-authored with Robin Leuba
The story of your life, an episode of Life & Faith that also deals with the way people’s lives are story-shaped
Do you have a soul? What is soul/a soul/the soul? We talk as though it’s a real thing: you can sell your soul, search your soul, keep body and soul together, not tell a soul, be the life and soul of the party, find something good for the soul or else soul-destroying. But do people still believe in the soul? And why?
In this episode of Life & Faith, Simon Smart, Natasha Moore, and Justine Toh debrief about the new Pixar movie Soul. A school chaplain describes what happened when she asked her students if they believe in the soul, God, miracles, ghosts, or angels. And J. Richard Middleton, Professor of Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary, argues that the Bible doesn’t say what most people (including Christians) think it says about what it means to have - or be - a soul.
Dom Knight's 2020 Dictionary provides a light-hearted (and at points serious) look back at the most extraordinary of years.
As we come to the end of the year that seemed like it might never end, the CPX team gets together for one last episode. We talk about the year that was - including Megxit, impeachment, Netflix, and zombie minks - as well as the “one story” that Christians keep coming back to, and why we think it’s the right story for this year (and every year!)
Simon Smart, Justine Toh, Natasha Moore, Mark Stephens, and Tim Costello each pick a line from a beloved carol, and join the dots to life in 2020. We reflect on cynicism and division, light and life, hopes and fears, and what joy there might be for a weary world.
What do neuroscience, philosophy, and theology have to say about the mystery of human consciousness?
“Even if we come up with a beautiful elegant neuroscience of consciousness - which I hope we do - that will still leave the question, why are we conscious at all? Why does consciousness exist in the first place?”
Despite everything we know about the universe we live in, the content of our own heads remains a mystery in many ways. Does everything that matter - everything that makes you you - reside in your brain chemistry? What is the relationship between the brain and the “mind”, or even the “soul”? Is there such a thing? And if not, are we simply at the mercy of our neurons? Can we be said to have any kind of free will?
Dr Sharon Dirckx has been wrestling with existential questions like these since childhood, through her PhD in brain imaging at the University of Cambridge, and now as a senior tutor at OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. In this episode, she speaks with Simon Smart about her book Am I Just My Brain?and our quest to comprehend ourselves.
Three stories of ordinary people, and the extraordinary care they take of people in their lives.
For 11 years, Diana Aitken has been part of the soup kitchen at St Matthew’s Anglican Church in Manly, where a community of care has sprung up that goes far beyond the lavish meals served every Monday night.
Issam Khoury cared for his wife Irene during her long struggle with polycystic liver and kidney disease, and throughout her transplant journey.
Carolyn Stedman, 74, has fostered 74 children over 45 years. While she has no intention of stopping, saying goodbye to these children can be gut-wrenching.
The work of care doesn’t tend to grab the headlines, but in this episode of Life & Faith, we shine the spotlight on three ordinary people who take extraordinary care of the people in their lives.
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READ:
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
From who gets an ICU bed to volunteering for a vaccine trial, ethics in the time of COVID is a complicated business.
“Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that life is mostly ethically neutral unless we come across some catastrophe or other, or some really difficult moral choice. But when we look more closely - and this I think is what COVID has done - we realise that our values and our beliefs about the world, and what’s important, and who’s important, are making themselves present all the time.”
Dan Fleming is the head of Ethics and Formation at St Vincent’s Health - so he’s been kept plenty busy this year. He speaks with Natasha about pandemic ethics - pandethics, if you will - including who gets prioritised when health resources are scarce, quality-adjusted life years, and what happens when a vaccine becomes available.
Natasha also speaks with Ed O’Neill, an oncology researcher at Oxford University - who also put his hand up to be one of the first guinea pigs in the world for a COVID-19 vaccine trial. Both Ed and Dan draw on a particular ethical framework for the choices they’ve had to make in this pandemic year - one that conceives of people as made in the image of God, and centres on love of neighbour.
“The neighbour to whom one is called first is the neighbour who's forgotten by everyone else. So today we might talk about priority populations, or poor and vulnerable groups. Different commentators use different language, so they might talk about the forgotten ones, or those who live on the underside … A unique feature of this framework is every person has the same value, objectively speaking. Every human person is enshrined in a special dignity. And that calls on us to think about, okay, well, in the context in which we find ourselves, whose dignity isn't being ensured? Whose dignity is not being served by our current context?”
Krish Kandiah tells us about the joys and challenges of caring for children in great need.
'Well, we got this call late on a Friday afternoon. And you know that the local social services are in trouble, because they're phoning us, and we've already got six kids in the house. So they say, "Well, Krish, and Miriam, we know you've already got a full house, but is there any way you can take another one?" And again, my wife's already saying yes. There's a pattern here, my wife is the yes person. And I'm like, suspicious, or worried, or nervous. So I just say, "Just tell me something about this child, so we can prepare." And they said, "We can't tell you much. All we can tell you is, he's a biter." And that freaked me out.'
In this episode of Life and Faith, we spoke to Dr Krish Kandiah, a speaker, writer, social entrepreneur, and a prolific author of 13 books and counting. He's also the founder and director of Home for Good, a UK charity finding loving, stable homes for children in the care system and for young refugees.
Krish is tuned into the huge need for children in need of a home and speaks with positivity and vision around this formidable challenge. Not only is he an advocate for family reunion, fostering and adoption, but he and his wife Miriam have also extended their own family through adoption and have fostered around 30 children in their home, over 14 years.
Their life is anything but boring and Krish speaks with passion about the incalculable benefit to children of providing them with a safe, loving environment. And it’s impossible to miss the infectious joy that these children have brought into the Kandiah home.
'I don't know of a more joyful experience than watching a child who had a really tough start in life, grow and flourish....I don't know of a greater joy than helping children have great moments in their lives knowing the trauma they've had in their past. So it's a great gift to the children, but weirdly, wonderfully, it's a great gift to you as well.'
Krish Kandiah
Home for Good
Home for Good Book
Jazz, haiku, marriage: do limits hem us in, or make us more free?
“I've heard people say, ‘Oh, jazz must be easy. You can just play anything you want.’ But actually, jazz is very difficult, because you can play anything you want.”
Whoever you are, whatever your life is like, freedom is something you probably want a little (or a lot) more of. But what is it?
“There's this paradoxical irony in which we imagine being free as being without constraint and having as many options as possible, and then that just becomes the recipe for our enslavement, our imprisonment, our addiction, and all of a sudden freedom means being enchained. There's a curious and sad paradox to it all.”
Philosopher James K. A. Smith talks about being born to run, and the grace of finding home. Jazz musician and New Testament scholar Con Campbell explains the paradox of improvisation. Writer Laurel Moffatt talks about the constraints of the haiku form, and what becomes possible creatively within them. And Christine and Greg Olliffe, in their 50th year of marriage, look back on a lifetime of sacrifice and the enrichment that has come from it.
Listen to Transit Jazz, “Just a closer walk with thee”
Read (and look at!) some of Laurel’s haiku at Make Whimsy Not War or her writing in general at laurelmoffatt.com
Check out James K. A. Smith’s book On the Road with St Augustine
John Stackhouse’s new book Can I Believe? is for the curious, and the hesitant.
”And this sad little figure in a remote corner of the Roman Empire becomes the leader of the most popular religion in the history of the world - which means it's the most popular explanation for everything ever in human history. Now, that's just really strange. We're just used to it, but it's a pretty weird story.”
84 percent of the world’s population is affiliated with a religion - but Canadian scholar John G. Stackhouse Jr would say that 100 percent of us are religious. His latest book, Can I Believe? Christianity for the Hesitant, invites us all to consider what we believe and why - and explains how he thinks the weirdness of Christianity fits the weirdness of the world as it really is.
“If you think, for instance, of atomic and sub-atomic physics, think of certain forms of cosmology - there are all sorts of theories that I barely can even articulate, let alone understand, but I'm told by smart people that this is the best way to construe the data even though it's in many cases counter-intuitive. But they've tried the obvious explanations and they don't work as well as this really strange one. And that's what I think is the case with Christianity.”
Tim Costello brings a lifetime of experience to bear on the question: why is compassion so complicated?
“You won’t find anyone who actually says humans shouldn’t be compassionate. It then gets messy because we soon discover that we have different objects of compassion, priorities for compassion. It’s fascinating to me that, whether you’re on the right or left or in between, you will validate your political stand by appealing to compassion. So it is the universal benchmark - and yet, we still divide. And often divide quite bitterly.”
Tim Costello has spent decades trying to understand compassion - what it is, how it works - and also trying to live it out. His new book in CPX’s Re:CONSIDERING series is called The Cost of Compassion, and it sums up the lessons of a lifetime working with and for the vulnerable.
In this conversation, Tim tackles a few of the big questions: why is compassion so complicated? In an age of news overload, what do we do about compassion fatigue? And who is compassion for - who benefits from compassion, and who gets to show it to others?
“The misunderstanding that we often have about poverty and wealth is that people in extreme poverty are only recipients. I’d worked as a Baptist minister in St Kilda, and I’d discovered in an Aboriginal woman called Eva, who was the Mother Teresa of the streets of St Kilda - her giving away her last dollars, even though her pension cheque wouldn’t come for a week and she didn’t know how she was going to eat. And her joy - she had a Christian faith, she suffered from schizophrenia … she was a classic street woman, and she was the model of Jesus. So I actually knew this, in the joy in her life and the utter poverty by Australian standards of her life, even before I joined World Vision.”
Buy The Cost of Compassion: https://www.reconsidering.com.au/
81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Will that be the case this November?
In the second of our two episodes on the upcoming US election, we explore the statistic that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. According to a Pew Research report released in July, as many as 80% of white evangelicals indicated that they would still vote for him in 2020.
We ask what ‘evangelical’ even means, and consider the possibility that Donald Trump acts as a kind of representative - even a strongman - for evangelicals who feel increasingly out of step with the secular mainstream.
We explore how race factors into the mix as well, and questions of power and influence.
Again, we’re joined by experts from the US to weigh in on the discussion: Amy Black, Professor of Political Science at Wheaton College in Illinois; Lisa Sharon Harper, author, activist, and the founder and president of Freedom Road; Andy Crouch, author, speaker, and the former editor of Christianity Today, America’s flagship evangelical magazine.
In this episode, we also hear from Kristin Kobes du Mez, Professor of History at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the author of Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation.
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Explore
Kristin Kobes du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation
Lisa Sharon Harper’s book The Very Good Gospel: How everything wrong can be made right
Amy Black’s book Honoring God in Red or Blue: Approaching politics with humility, grace, and reason
Andy Crouch’s book Playing God: Redeeming the gift of power
Elisabeth Dias’ New York Times article ‘Christianity will have power’
Pew Research’s report indicating as many as 80% of white evangelicals would still vote for Donald Trump