Balancing Act– Australia Between Recession and Renewal | Quarterly Essay 61 | George Megalogenis
Review by GARTH JONES
Expanding on themes briefly explored in 2015’s Australia’s Second Chance, journalist George Megalogenis returns with his second Quarterly Essay, Balancing Act- Australia Between Recession and Renewal.
On the heels of yet another myopic Federal Budget, Megalogenis’ new article looks ...
Book | The Heart of It All: Sermons from St Stephen’s | David Gill
Review by BOB FASER
Since retiring from parish ministry, I’ve been culling my library. One area I’ve culled dramatically is my books of sermons. Examining my shelves today, I found only four volumes of sermons remaining.
One was John Wesley’s classic collection of forty-four sermons. Two ...
Review by ROS MARSDEN
Keen to “forget your worries and your strife”? Then treat yourself to a night at the cinema to see the 2016 version of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
It’s a risk turning up to watch a movie remake that formed part of your childhood and an even greater risk ...
Book | Out of the Ordinary: Twelve Australian Methodist Biographies | editors: Patricia Curthoys and William W. Emilsen.
Review by BOB FASER
While a reasonable amount of material has been written since Union by historians in the UCA on the history of Congregationalism and Presbyterianism in Australia, comparatively little has been written from a Methodist perspective.
Book | Opening the Doors: A Prison Chaplain’s Life On The Inside | Paul Gill
Review by GARY DAVIDSON
Author Paul Gill served as senior prison chaplain and coordinating chaplain at Western Australia’s Casuarina Prison for 10 years before his retirement. This book emanates from his vast experience working in a prison environment in WA. It is raw and ...
Book | Seeing – Remembering – Connecting: subversive practices of being Church | Karen L. Bloomquist
Review by BOB FASER
How can churches engage with our society so as to resist injustice and to transform the culture? This is the question Karen Bloomquist addresses in Seeing – Remembering – Connecting.
Bloomquist, a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church ...
Play | Miss Julie | Melbourne Theatre Company
By PENNY MULVEY
The clapping started tenuously, slowly. It was as though the audience released a collective breath in acknowledgement that the emotional, physical and verbal maelstrom they had witnessed had concluded.
August Strindberg’s Miss Julie demands total commitment of its cast, as they repeatedly collide over values, class, sexual ...
Book | The Road to Ruin: how Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin destroyed their own government | Niki Savva
Review by DEB BENNETT
Part memoir, part political reportage, The Road to Ruin is above all else an insightful glimpse into the deliberately opaque world of national politics. The story of the rise and spectacular fall of Tony Abbott ...
Book | Moral Injury – unseen wounds in an age of barbarism | Edited by Tom Frame
By Penny Mulvey
What happens to those who, due to particular circumstances, are faced with having to make unacceptable decisions; choices which in normal life are not just illegal, but shocking, deeply offensive, and from which most of us would revile?
...
Book | The Anonymous Leader: An Unambitious Pursuit of Influence | Ralph Mayhew
Review by Scott Guyatt
Leadership, it seems, is the new buzzword. Whether in politics, sport, culture or the church, one need not scratch very deep to find a view that leadership is either the cause or the solution to whatever challenges face a particular organisation.
...
Book | Bystanders | Valerie Volk
Review by Alan Ray
The Bible contains a library of dramas. Similar to a festival of plays we have, in the one book, historical, romantic, morality and mystical plots.
Valerie Volk invites us to become immersed in 15 of these stories through the eyes of bystanders to the main action. Just as ...
Review by Deb Bennett
Nominated for six Academy Awards, Spotlight is a true-life movie that can be appreciated on many levels.
It tells the story of four investigative journalists (the Spotlight team) from the Boston Globe who, in the early 2000s, uncovered widespread child abuse, corruption and deceit within the Catholic Church in Boston.
...
