Facing new challenges in our multi-faith community

 

Uniting Through Faiths seeks to develop closer ties between all faiths, increasing participants’ understanding of each other’s faith and cultural practices. Larry Marshall, Uniting Through Faiths project manager, discusses the belief that through knowledge comes understanding. He says that only once there is understandings can there be peace.

Australia, and Melbourne in particular, is often celebrated ...

White man’s burden

While browsing at a market on the weekend, I stopped at a stall selling classic film photo-books. These promotional collectibles were similar to lobby cards, but feature pictures of the movie stars, or fawning interviews with the director, organised by the studio.

The first one I found on top of the pile was of Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten ...

Support for ISP regulations

By MARK ZIRNSAK

Police throughout the world face a substantial challenge in stopping online child sexual abuse.

This abuse involves everything from grooming children for actual physical offences to the production of and trading in images of children being sexually abused.

The commercial trade in such images involves hundreds of sites. An estimated 50,000 new child sexual abuse images ...

Good Godwin! – Reactions to the Migration and Maritime Powers Bill

Anyone who attempts to strengthen an argument by evoking images of Nazi atrocities risks repudiation via Godwin’s law. Yet not to acknowledge the similarities is becoming harder by the day.
“… a wave of immigration coming in would have been frightening to some people, concerned for the few jobs that were available.”

“It means letting thousands of uninvited ...

The Grinch who stole Christmas

Just after the Melbourne Cup weekend we’ll start to see decorations for Christmas appear in shopping centres, followed not too long after by playing of Christmas carols. All designed to massage the general public into the mood for that great big cultural event we call Christmas.

In Australia, we associate that magical term  – Christmas – with events like ...

Reflections from my first Synod

Towards the beginning of the five-day Synod meeting we were invited to consider our hopes for the meeting and the Church. I had many, many hopes and this was probably partly as I was rather daunted by the whole ‘Synod thing’.

I was concerned that things discussed might feel irrelevant; that it would be too ‘business-focussed’.

Synod wasn’t perfect, but ...

Desperately seeking a tax dodge

If you ask most Christians what they want for their future, no one replies: more hand-outs for big business and please cut spending on health and education to fund them. Yet that is what some big businesses in Australia are seeking.

Ever heard of ‘patent box’ rules? Not many of us have, but this is a way of dodging taxes ...

John Corben Lavender (Jock) 6 July 1919 – 23 June 2014

Jock (pictured) was born in Ivanhoe, but spent most of his youth in Northcote where his father was a bank manager, and where he attended primary school, high school and the Methodist church in High Street. He took his first job in the dispatch office at McPhersons nut and bolt factory in North Richmond in 1935. After a short ...

Borrowing God come election time

The recent #LoveMakesAWay protests in Melbourne and Sydney, involving church leaders and activists from the major Christian denominations, shone a light on the contradiction of religion in Australian politics. Politicians like to be associated with the traditional values of Christianity, but being held accountable to them is less convenient.

The wording of Section 116 of the Constitution seems clear ...

Yes or No-ah

Below are two responses to Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah, by Megan Graham and Emmet O’Cuana.

Noah blockbuster makes questionable choices
by Megan Graham

The International Movie Database website describes the plot of Noah this way: “A man is chosen by his world’s creator to undertake a momentous mission to rescue the innocent before an ...

What is money for?

What if I told you you could buy the right to shoot an endangered black rhino in South Africa for $150,000; or rent out space on your forehead to display commercial advertising for $777 in New Zealand; or stand in line to hold a place for a US congressional lobbyist for $15-$20 per hour?

Would you think this was market ...

Why I broke the law

On Monday 11 church leaders and members – from Uniting, Anglican, Baptist and other denominations – staged a sit-in at the WA electoral office of Julie Bishop to protest the cruel treatment of children in immigration detention centres. All were charged with trespassing and held temporarily in custody at the Perth police station. Below is a reflection from one of ...