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Keywords: Anzac Day

  • AUSTRALIA

    Is peace worth fighting for?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 September 2024

    Though little known in Australia, Abraham Johannes (A.J.) Muste spent his life commending pacifism and leading movements to make the world more just. His commitments to pacifism may still seem extreme to many. But will anything more mild address the threats facing the world from violence, inequality and apathy?

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  • RELIGION

    I am pilgrim

    • Ann Rennie
    • 13 September 2024

    People visit graves and castles, libraries and mansions, battlefields and places of historical significance to feel a little of the lives of others, to pay homage, to make that human connection. We make secular pilgrimages to places that we have dreamt about or read in books or seen on screen. Wherever we go, these are ultimately visits to places within.  

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Olympic ceremonies as liturgies

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 07 August 2024

    You have to admit, the French have form for mocking religion. But with their peculiar take on the Lord's Supper with all its Dionysian excess, the colourfully irreverent opening ceremony left many asking: has Paris 2024 turned the Olympics into a ritual of performative ethics? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Requiem in a dawn light

    • Peter Craven
    • 24 April 2024

    For those born in the wake of World War II, war stories seemed the greatest fun on earth. But the pity of it is monumental and we come to take it – if not for granted – then at least as part of the fabric of minds that had met with all that was terrible in human experience and all that called out for reverence.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The inheritance of Anzac Day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 April 2024

    Anzac Day draws us away from the geopolitical chess board to consider the price that so many persons have paid for the wars in which their leaders join. It reminds us of the need for diplomacy based on respect for the humanity of persons on all sides of conflict. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gratitude needs ambivalence on the costs of war

    • Jim Curtain
    • 24 April 2023
    4 Comments

    Amidst gratitude and remembrance to those who have served, we would do well to look with ambivalence on the toll beyond the battlefield; on families, soldiers' mental health, and questions about government transparency. Anzac day serves as a poignant reminder to acknowledge sacrifices and damages of war.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Anzac Day stories, old and new

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 April 2023
    3 Comments

    With every Anzac Day, the stories told reflect changing attitudes. Past celebrations focused on patriotism and romance of war, but this year's tone is more serious due to global events. Anzac Day now emphasises remembering, compassion, honouring victims of war, and advocating for peace.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A Peloponnesian Anzac

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 21 April 2022
    9 Comments

    The lives of migrants often consist of divisions and collisions at the border between the old life and the new. But sometimes both lives come together in unexpected ways, and one such conjunction is about to happen to me. On Anzac Day my granddaughter will join the great flow of Orthodoxy, but I hope one day she will know about her little trickle of Australian blood. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Untangling the cords of Anzac Day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 April 2022
    34 Comments

    This year Anzac Day promises to be a subdued celebration with local events in which people who have fought in wars and their relatives can take part. Few will be able to travel to Gallipoli to remember the invasion. The focus of the day will remain rightly on the sorrow of war and not on the heroic achievements of soldiers or on deemed distinctive Australian qualities displayed at Gallipoli. The association of soldiers at Gallipoli with footballers playing their games on Anzac Day will seem not only crass but ridiculous.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A modest and muted Anzac day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 April 2020
    18 Comments

    This year the celebration of Anzac Day will be muted. No marches, no large reunions, few speeches at war memorials. The soldiers and others who lost their lives in war will be remembered, however, as they should be. Indeed, the celebration will perhaps speak more eloquently because of its simplicity.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Anzac discomfort after Christchurch

    • Daniel Kleinsman
    • 18 April 2019
    27 Comments

    As I wait to be reunited with my fiancée from Afghanistan, my discomfort is heightened by New Zealand's involvement in her country, and by an awareness of her sense of persecution, as a Muslim, after the Christchurch massacres. I do not feel able to partake in any traditional ANZAC service, as if nothing has changed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    This Anzac Day embrace NZ values

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 April 2019
    10 Comments

    The nationalist values purported to be Australian and to have flowed like blood from Anzac Cove will not do. Australians celebrating Anzac Day this year cannot assume that New Zealanders share all the values that are deemed Australian. Indeed, this Anzac Day New Zealanders might recall Australians to its more authentic meanings.

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