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 Christ Superstar (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

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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.

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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.

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

“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.

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EXPLORE:

Check out Colin’s music (past and forthcoming), and upcoming performances, here

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

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

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.

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Explore: The Red Frogs website

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.

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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 

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.” 

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EXPLORE

Check out Emily Korir’s memoir Against All Odds 

Learn more about the work of BET Group Global

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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 

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 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

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. 

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EXPOLRE

Friendship Lab

Sheridan Voysey's website

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 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

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

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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

[Note: This content references The Quiet Revival report published by Bible Society UK. Since publication, flaws have been identified in the underlying survey data, and the report’s headline findings have been withdrawn while new analysis is undertaken. You can read more here.]

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

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

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/

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.

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.

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Explore

Alexandra Lloyd's book, Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets

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.   

“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. 

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Explore:

Rod’s book Living in Wonder 

Rod’s Substack 

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.

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 

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 

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

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 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 novel Juice 

Ningaloo Nyinggulu

Simon Smart’s review of Juice at ABC Religion & Ethics

Tell us what you think of Life & Faith in this 5-minute survey

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 

Tell us what you think of Life & Faith in this 5-minute survey

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. 

Tell us what you think of Life & Faith in this 5-minute survey

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, Sarah urges 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

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

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.   

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Explore:  

Shankari’s website

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!

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.

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Explore: 

• Brightlight website 
• CPX Podcast Episode: The Ethics of What We Eat  
• Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’

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.

1. 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.
2. How Christianity explains our world, featuring cold case detective Jim Warner Wallace, author Marilynne Robinson, author Francis Spufford, and historian Tom Holland.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Changing one’s mind about faith, featuring ABC Religion & Ethics editor Scott Stephens and author Susannah McFarlane.
6. 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.

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Get tickets to this year’s Richard Johnson Lecture with Tim Winton.

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.

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 

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.

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”.  

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Get the Book: The End of Men? 

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.  

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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 

Dr Amanda B Vernon is a 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’

Neda Ulaby's NPR article on "protopias"

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 

“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 

“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. 

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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

“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

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 

“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. 

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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 companion and It’s About Time: A call to the Camino de Santiago 

Check out CPX's new podcast, The Week @ CPX

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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.

Check out CPX's new podcast, The Week At CPX, to keep up-to-date with everything that’s happening at CPX, plus a bit of commentary on the side.

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 

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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Sign up for the CPX newsletter here 

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“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.” 

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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 

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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.  

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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 

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“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. 

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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.

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? 

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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.

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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.

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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.” 

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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 

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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? 

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Explore 

Simon Smart’s Ash Wednesday article  

Life & Faith episode with Matt Tan on the metaphysics of pornography 

Follow Awkward Asian Theologian on Instagram 

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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.  

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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 

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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.  

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Christ church Jerusalem is the oldest protestant church in the Middle East 

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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 

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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 

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“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. 

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Buy Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity 

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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.

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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?

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“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 

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“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.” 

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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

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“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?

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“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.  

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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 

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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.  

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“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/

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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.  

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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.

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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  

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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 

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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 

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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.

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“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. 

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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 

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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 

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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. 

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Explore:

A Rocha

Books by Jo Swinney

• A Place at The Table: Faith, hope and hospitality
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• Home: The quest to belong 
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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.”  

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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 

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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?”  

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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.” 

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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.  

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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 

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“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 

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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. 

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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 

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“… 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. 

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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 

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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/ 

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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. 

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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. 

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“If all we think of when we hear the term critical theory is 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. 

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EXPLORE: 

Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory 

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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 

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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 

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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 … spirited discussion about the film’s preoccupation with redemption. Are people naughty or nice? Can they change? And how might Christmas come to the rescue? 

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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  

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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 

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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 

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“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.  

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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 

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“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 

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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. 

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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 

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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 

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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.   

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Explore: 

Suzanne McCourt The Tulip Tree (Text Publishing) 2021. 

Max Jeganathan The Cost of Living and The Cost of Principles  Eureka Street, 2022. 

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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.

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Explore:

John Stackhouse's new book with Oxford University Press, Evangelicalism: A very short introduction

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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 

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Explore some of Andy’s other books

• The Tech-Wise family  
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• My Tech-Wise life 
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• Culture making 
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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.”  

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Explore some of John Swinton’s books: 

 Dementia: Living in the Memories of God. 

• A Graceful Embrace: Theological Reflections on Adopting Children 
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• Finding Jesus in the Storm: The Spiritual Lives of Christians with Mental Health Challenges 
• 
  

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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)
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• Call the National Domestic Violence line (1800 656 463) to be connected to a support service
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• 
  
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• 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  
• 
  

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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 

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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 

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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.”

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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 

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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.”

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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 

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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.

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Explore: 

A short article giving us a further glimpse into Alex’s daily life on Antarctica

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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? 

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Explore: 

Some of Darrell’s books 

• Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse, Pluralistic World 
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• Studying the Historical Jesus 
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• How would Jesus vote? 
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The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary

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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”.  

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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

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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.

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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

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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. 

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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 

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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.

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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 

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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.”

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Explore: One Hundred Days of Dante