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The one thing lacking in much of the debate about the travails of the Essendon Football Club and the brief tenure of its CEO was a proper respect. That lack of respect may merit reflection. Respect begins with persons, not with principles and opinions.
Freedom of religion, a matter of national interest still to be resolved successfully in the Federal Parliament, has yet again become a focus for the nation’s football codes. The Essendon controversy has demonstrated how it is issues with a religious-cultural component, not economic issues, which most polarize our society and are the most difficult for politics to resolve harmoniously.
Last week, in a pluralistic and diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-faith society, a person was considered ill-fitting for employment, not because of their track record, but because of their outward association with a mainstream religion.
It is highly doubtful that the Essendon Football Club appreciated the reaction that would occur when it presented its new CEO, Andrew Thorburn, with the option of giving up his role as a lay leader in the City on a Hill Anglican Church or resigning from his role with the Club. Even if many were uneasy about how the issue was caught up in the culture wars, it caused widespread concerns amongst people of faith.
In the last few weeks, we have been drowned, smothered or mired in words that have striven for solemnity. Such occasions as the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the various Grand Finals are held to transcend the everyday and so to demand elegiac or epic words. It is easy to laugh at the manifest failures to reach those heights, whether by Poets Laureate who should have known better, or by excitable journalists. There is, however, something endearingly human in the attempt.
Too often our society’s approach, and our Church’s approach, to First Nations people is to judge, to destroy, and to impose. But there’s a different logic that sees any encounter between cultures as a gift. That logic seeks understanding rather than offering judgement; it looks for mutual growth rather than destruction; and it gives each person autonomy in choosing their own path forward.
There’s a modern narrative around fatherhood being about sacrifice and loss that deserves some scrutiny. New fathers are frequently heard vocalising hardships, grieving the loss of former pasttimes. But there’s something else there that’s harder to articulate and appreciate.
In most circles poetry doesn’t matter. It doesn’t put bread on the table, nor raise people to revolt nor even make news unless a grizzled footballer is outed for secretly writing poems. Even in churches poems and hymns are altered to improve their orthodoxy in matters of faith, gender, race or modernity, but rarely their poetic quality.
Is ruthlessness an essential part of sporting success? Or are players better off remembering how lucky they are, have fun, and allow good things to happen to them by treating people with compassion and playing with joy?
Journalist and author Elle Hardy spent 15 months researching and writing her 2021 work Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World. She notes the estimation that by 2050, one billion people around the world (one in 10 humans) will be a Pentecostal follower of Jesus (and their pastor).
It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes interested and supportive people to encourage athletic talent. A recent documentary on the world's most successful male distance runner Sir Mo Farah raises questions around how host countries know about waste of talent and opportunity when they routinely deport asylum seekers or lock them up?
There has been much said in recent days about the refusal of a group of Manly Sea Eagles footballers to wear a special Pride jersey. The boycotting players have been labelled as hypocrites (for taking a stand on this issue and not, for example, gambling or domestic violence) and even hateful for their actions. Many say they would be happy to see them sacked from the club entirely. It seems to me, though, that the attitudes of the Manly players deserve more consideration than this.
25-36 out of 200 results.