Does religious belief impact on attitudes toward climate change? While there is research that suggests Australians who identify with Christianity are less likely to believe in anthropogenically induced climate change, this does not appear to be the...
There has been a lot of commentary over the past 2 weeks on the faith of our new PM, Scott Morrison. Here is my two bobs worth: Politicians and prophets have very different callings. Prophets, or in their secular version, social activists, point us...
Family and domestic violence is a horrific reality, frequently hidden behind the four walls of our homes. The Australian Institute for Health & Welfare, recently released the latest data on family & domestic violence (FDV). Three things...
There was a great article about Tim Winton in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend magazine recently. Winton was just 5 years old when his father was badly injured in a motor vehicle accident. After he came home from hospital...
We are sitting side by side on a flight to Brisbane. Ours was the first flight out this morning, which meant we were up at 4am. Sandy dozes beside me and I once more find myself incredibly thankful that this woman has shared her life with me...
One of the things I’d been looking forward to this year was taking up invitations to speak at conferences in Vienna and Jakarta. A couple of weeks back I wrote to the organisers of those conferences to notify them I would need...
One of the most thrilling moments I have ever witnessed occurred during the Live8 concert in 2005. A giant screen displayed footage from the 1980s famine in Ethiopia. It was distressing. Mothers with eyes evacuated of hope cradling emaciated babies;...
I recently spent time with a friend who is a pastor. He was in the middle of a sermon series on contemporary issues and the topic for the following week was same-sex marriage. He held to a fairly stock-standard conservative evangelical approach and...
Rising energy prices have become a cause of widespread complaint and are cited as a reason we need to cling coal-powered electricity. As far as I can tell all the anxiety around rising electricity prices is way out of proportion to reality. First...
I am holidaying with my family on The Gold Coast. We are staying in an apartment with spectacular views over the ocean. We have swum in the surf, laid on golden beaches, screamed with a mixture of fear and thrill on roller coasters at Movieworld...