By David Southwell
The stunning decision by Pope Benedict XVI to resign in 2013 led to the incredible situation, unseen for at least 700 years, of having two men who could compare notes on being the head of the Catholic church.
That’s what happens in this highly acclaimed Netflix movie, which gives us an imagined and often fairly ...
Review by Bradon French, Youth Ministry Coordinator.
Tonight SBS screens the first episode of Christians Like Us at 8:30pm. Over two episodes, the second one is broadcast next Wednesday, we catch a glimpse of how 10 Australian Christians co-exist in a Bella Vista home in northwest Sydney, and we ask ourselves, are they Christians Like Us? Or even, are we ...
The River in the Sky
by Clive James
RRP $25
Clive James made a late career of dying, though modern medicine gave him a reprieve, enough to resume his critique of modern culture and to give unexpected time to indulge more in his first love, poetry. The River in the Sky takes its title from the Japanese term for ...
The Prodigal Prophet, Timothy Keller, RRP $30.99
The book of Jonah is obviously more than a child’s fairy tale. It is a mysterious book, a highly structured and challenging yet open-ended story, written to explain God’s universalism to the Israelites, in a time when they thought God was exclusively their God, and it has the same implication for us ...
Regular Crosslight reviewer Nick Mattiske chooses five of his best reads of 2018.
In Paul: A Biography (SPCK) Tom Wright shows how Paul’s letters were not just abstract theology, but were part of how Paul individually, and the newly sprouting church collectively, worked out the implications of preaching that an executed, vagabond teacher and healer is the Messiah who ...
Book | Blue Lake: Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp | David Sornig
Dudley Flats was a Depression-era shanty town in West Melbourne, on the site of today’s vast container terminal. Originally a bountiful wetland, as the city grew it became a marginal area of reviled swamp and a tip, ...
Book | But what if she’d said ‘No’? | Catherine E. Laufer
Are you looking for a Christmas present for a slightly religious relative that they could read without embarrassment on the tram?
The coquettish cover photo and tantalising title give no hint that this is a collection of creative ...
Book | A faith to live by (Volume 2) | Roland Ashby
Is Christianity a quaint, harmless hobby like quilting or trainspotting? Or should it permeate all aspects of our life? This volume provides a smorgasbord of topical theological and social justice issues from leading thinkers. It follows the highly acclaimed first ...
Book | And He Talks with Me | Al Mewett
What an unusual publication. The title gives us a clue. Readers of a certain age, including this reviewer, may recognise the lyrics crooned by Elvis Presley: “And he walks with me and he talks with me/and he tells me I am his own/and ...
Book | Royal Books and Holy Bones: Essays in Medieval Christianity | Eamon Duffy
Eamon Duffy writes that Christianity is a material religion, and it’s this theme that connects this collection of assorted essays and reviews.
Christ was made man, and Christians believe in the resurrection of the body. In ...
Book | To be a Pilgrim: a reflective guide to the Holy Land | Bradly Billings
The stony plateau of Bethlehem, the calm expanse of Galilee and the smells and bustle of Jerusalem are all evoked in this book.
Reading it we can either be an armchair pilgrim or use it ...
Book | Rattling Spears: A History of Indigenous Australian Art | Ian McLean
Contemporary Indigenous art is one of the great modern art movements. Central and northern Australian Indigenous art in particular has mesmerised art buyers and gallery goers with its colour, rhythm, freshness and closeness to country.
