(August 6, 2012)
Mike has questioned the point of my last post (Christians and Chick-fil-a), about when and how christians should speak out in the public arena, and when and how we shouldn’t. So I thought I would clarify in a new post.
(August 4, 2012)
Chick-fil-a is apparently a chain of about 1600 chicken fast food stores in the US. Being an Aussie, I wouldn’t know. But apparently the chain has been in the news recently because of an allegedly anti-gay stance, mainly, as far as I can tell, seen through large donations to christian anti-gay causes. Recently protests by […]
(July 27, 2012)
With the London Olympic Games about to begin, now is a good time to remember one of my ‘heroes’. He was probably Australia’s greatest male sprint athlete, a silver medallist at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. This is the best an Australian male sprinter has ever finished, and in a time that, amazingly, is […]
(July 18, 2012)
There has been a long campaign for chocolate companies to only source their cocoa from farms that don’t use trafficked child labour, and who pay the workers a fair wage. And progress has been slow. I have previously reported how I have joined many others in writing to chocolate companies here in Australia asking them […]
(July 2, 2012)
“Make your life extraordinary” is the advice school teacher John Keating gives his class in Dead Poets Society. Otis Clark seemed to achieve this without really trying. Otis died recently at the age of 109. He had a long and eventful life.
(June 27, 2012)
What is the future of the church as we know it in the western world? I have written about this many times (see The future for the church), believing that much needs to change. It is like the tide is coming in, the island the churches are sitting on is shrinking, our feet are wet, […]
(June 26, 2012)
Almost one billion people, an eighth of the world’s population, are hungry as you read this. Why?
(June 12, 2012)
Alice Cooper used to be considered as evil personified, but now he is a christian believer, some don’t know how to take him. So I enjoyed this interview with him, especially these comments by the reporter: “In the same week, it’s possible that Cooper may be on stage fake-executing himself with a guillotine and helping […]
(May 16, 2012)
I have previously reported on the ethical dilemmas posed by eating chocolate, due to the trafficking and exploitation of children in growing cocoa in West Africa (see My pleasure, their misery? and Easter eggs and slavery), and on the responses to my letters to chocolate manufacturers (see Fair Trade chocolate – report 1). I have […]
(April 14, 2012)
We can read the statistics which show that, in most western countries, church attendance has fallen in the last century. In some cases it is still falling, though in others it has levelled out. The ‘leavers’ are not necessarily giving up all belief in God – many list themselves as ‘not committed’ – but some […]