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Keywords: Christian History

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • RELIGION

    Raising women’s voices

    • Tracy McEwan, Patricia Gemmell
    • 06 October 2021
    15 Comments

    Annabel Crabb’s ABC TV documentary series Ms Represented had us gasping, laughing and raging all at once. The series struck an achingly familiar chord as women from different political parties and generations voiced their common experience of sexism and misogyny in Australia’s parliament, elucidating just how hard it is for women to have a voice at the table in Australian institutions of power.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 September 2021
    7 Comments

    In the Catholic calendar the Feast of St Francis of Assisi falls on next Tuesday. Although he gave up on wealth, power and influence Francis probably had a bigger effect on his world than any of his contemporaries. He continues to attract people to challenge the values of our society and to spark renewal in Christian institutions at the risk of going stale.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Unmarked graves in Canada raise questions about Australia’s stolen children

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 12 August 2021
    9 Comments

    Across the Pacific Ocean, in Canada or ‘Turtle Island’ as it is also known by many of its Indigenous inhabitants, a horror has been unfolding. It started at a the former residential school in Kamloops, British Colombia where, via the use of ground penetrating radar technology, the remains of at least 215 Native Canadian children were found buried in mass unmarked gravesites. This school ran for 85 years, was part of compulsory government programs to forcibly assimilate these children, and was administered by the Catholic Church.

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  • RELIGION

    The challenge of Church leadership

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 August 2021
    67 Comments

    Among Australian Catholics the Plenary Council and the preparations for the Synod in Rome on Synodality have aroused hope and stirred scepticism. It is clear that a Church diminishing in numbers of participants in its public life and in its financial resources, and discouraged by the extent of child abuse by its officers, must find new ways. But that the processes of the Council and the Synod will spark fresh energy for change is not a given.

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  • RELIGION

    Atheists and God cancellers

    • Michael McGirr
    • 10 August 2021
    28 Comments

    I must have time on my hands. I have been thinking about the difference between atheists and God cancellers. I love my atheist friends, of whom I am blessed with many. I relish the existential grist of our talks, the deep sense of substance and mutual respect. I also love the constant jokes. We keep each other honest. I enjoy a rich engagement with the history of thought and I believe we ennoble each other through the kind of trust that is prepared to talk about things that are off limits to others.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    ‘You just don’t get it’: listening and responding to First Nations peoples

    • Brian McCoy
    • 07 July 2021
    3 Comments

    But it is possible the members of the Plenary could begin to hear a deeper voice speaking in their hearts. There may arise a new courage to start a process of truth and reconciliation, reporting the process of this journey to the second Plenary Council planned for Sydney, July 2022. We can only begin that journey if members of the Plenary Council come and are open to listening to that deep inner voice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The uncomfortable legacy: colonisation and the church

    • Brian McCoy
    • 07 July 2021
    17 Comments

    Reading the paper, Instrumentum Laboris, written in preparation for the coming Plenary Council, I found myself quite disappointed by the lack of depth, awareness and any sense of the need for an apology. Much less an openness to any serious conversion that is needed within the Church.

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  • RELIGION

    Synods on synods

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 June 2021
    58 Comments

    At first sight the recent Vatican announcement that a forthcoming synod would be delayed was non-news. All synods are considered boring, and a synod on synodality sounds entirely self-referential. Yet the announcement was significant. The synod will take up much time and energy of Catholics at the local, diocesan, national and international level for almost three years.

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  • RELIGION

    Why thinking Indigenously is important for Australian theology

    • Garry Deverell
    • 18 May 2021
    19 Comments

    It is no coincidence that white ‘settler’ theology in this country has barely begun to engage with Indigenous people. Arguably, it has only begun to do so because the Indigenous citizens of the churches have begun to cast off the imaginative shackles made for us by our white gubbas and find our own voice.

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  • RELIGION

    Hands-on faith

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 May 2021
    17 Comments

     The laying on of hands has been associated with controverted change in Western religious societies. Central in religious societies, it became neuralgic in cultures seeking to mark out clear boundaries between religion and such domains as politics, science and medicine and demography. To appreciate the significance of the action, it is worth reflecting on its history.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Does identity politics commodify us?

    • Justin Glyn
    • 04 May 2021
    32 Comments

    The Prime Minister has recently denounced ‘the growing tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics‘. In doing so, he raises a number of important questions. The claim of ‘commodification’ of human beings and their relations is a powerful one.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    The hollow meritocracy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 April 2021
    19 Comments

    The debate about quotas based on gender has been well canvassed. The wider issues raised about merit and meritocracy, however, merit further reflection. Far in the background to both conversations lies a sophisticated body of reflection on merit among Christian theologians. 

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