Like many countries colonised by European nations, Australia has a sorry two century history of poor treatment of our indigenous peoples, resulting in a significant reduction in their numbers and the quality of their lives. But they have survived, their numbers are building again, and many indigenous leaders are become more forthright in their pleas […]
Last week Fariborz Karami committed suicide. And I don’t think many Australians noticed. He was just 26 years old, and he had been held behind bars for 5 years without any hope of safe release. His mental health had been deteriorating for years. But I don’t think many Australians cared. Worse still, I don’t think […]
It hasn’t always been comfortable being a man during these #metoo days. Men we might have thought could be trusted have been accused, and often admitted to, all manner of unacceptable, sexually predatory and abusive behaviour, mostly against women. For me, it became most pointed when this last weekend I read a long article in […]
I went on a political demonstration today. Well, it was called a vigil, and it was quiet, peaceful and non-confrontational, but it was a protest. It was expressing concern about Australia’s treatment of asylum-seekers, specifically several hundred man on an island in Papua New Guinea, Australia’s northern neighbour. Realistically, there is very little prospect, right […]
We all know that the world is a very unequal place. Anyone reading this is probably not doing too badly, but billions struggle to make a living. But you may not be aware that, by some measures at least, inequality is increasing.
Photo: Slaves Waiting to be sold in Richmond, Virginia, painted in 1861 from an 1853 sketch. Wikipedia. The world has changed enormously in my lifetime. One thing that I never knew as a child but which seems to characterise the present age, is international terrorism. Terrorism, via car bomb, motor vehicle driven into crowds, gun […]
Guest post by Shane Claiborne (taken from his Facebook page – see note below) Last month, I was arrested, along with 17 other people, as we held a banner on the steps of the Supreme Court that said: “STOP EXECUTIONS.” We were not blocking doors or disturbing the peace. We were not unruly or disruptive. […]
These three emails dropped into my Inbox within an hour today, in the order I show them.
Do you ever lose hope, perhaps just for a moment? There are plenty of things we may feel hopeless about – ourselves or our circumstances, the world, politics. One of the things I often lose hope about is the church – it just seems to be drifting, a long way from the teachings of Jesus, […]
The combination of religion and politics can be explosive. It is very easy to hold our political views with religious zeal, and I am not always an exception. And so we often think that God is on our side of politics. (Or else we think God stands in the middle between the two polarised views.) […]