Life & Faith

An exploration of the discomfort, disagreements and disasters of Christmases past and present. --- "When you’ve spent three months researching and preparing the perfect Christmas lunch, something on trend with rustic table ornaments made from old jars, salad with kale, some socially responsible bonbons, and perfectly placed jugs filled with Christmas cheer … and Aunty Vera arrives with her three-d...

The story of Arthur Stace and the message of hope he wrote on the footpaths of Sydney. --- "As a child, I played in the streets a lot and I did see him quite occasionally, walking around in a steady way, always dressed in a navy blue suit, always very neat, but I have no memory of seeing his face smiling," Joan Riley recalls. "So I try not to be sad about that. But he did certainly make an impress...

Scott Stephens, editor of ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, has his own fascinating backstory. --- “You want to be able to stand before God with as clear a conscience and as pure a soul as one can.” As editor of the ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, Scott Stephens spends his days trawling through the best of contemporary theological and ethical thinking. But the story of his life proves just as intr...

One man’s commitment to free vulnerable people from oppression and restore their dignity. --- They asked us to bring education with a different worldview - one that tells them that we’re all created equal, and we’re all created in the image of God - and bring worth to the child.” The Dignity Freedom Network, as their name suggests, is an organisation in India that works with local communities to f...

Film and TV critic Alissa Wilkinson on the end of the world - as pop culture imagines it. --- "Dystopia is like the more woke version of utopia. It’s where we’re working out our biggest anxieties as a culture. For instance, does the human race deserve to continue? Or would it be better if we just went away?" Alissa Wilkinson fell into film and television criticism after completing a degree in comp...

The world’s best-selling book has its own museum - of biblical proportions - in Washington. --- "One of the items that we’re especially proud of is a slab of the Gilgamesh-Epos, among the oldest literature of humankind that is known - about 5,000 years old. It’s a story of Gilgamesh, and that includes the story of the ark and a big flood." The Bible is the best-selling book of all time: today, ove...

A dangerous personality. The printing press. Social reform. What made the Reformation so successful? --- "His personality, the combination of being a good communicator, passionate, stubborn, belligerent, extraordinarily intelligent, all played a role. If any of those weren’t there, he probably would not have been able to succeed as well as he did." What was the X factor that gave Martin Luther an...

A Martin Luther impersonator, a pastor, and an artist on an event that changed the world. --- "Martin Luther’s idea of the freedom of the Christian set up a certain understanding of freedom of the people. We are individuals, we have the right for freedom, and we are equal children of God like our prince, or like the emperor - they are not better at all than we are." When Martin Luther nailed his 9...

  Physicist Tom McLeish thinks of science as a way of healing our relationship with the natural world. --- "I’ve become really upset that science is something for most people so distant, something they feel they can’t enjoy, it was difficult when they were at school, they didn’t get the hang of it. I think it’s like music, art, dancing, drama or painting - it’s one of those sorts of things that ev...

An alcoholic describes her long, complicated, and ongoing journey to recovery. --- "I came out of church one Sunday morning with a really bad hangover." Penny Wilkinson started drinking when she was in high school. But it wasn’t until she was well into her 30s, living in the Eastern suburbs with her husband and three kids – she was living a seemingly perfect life – that it occurred to her that her...

  Love exceeds "tolerance" and "diversity" when it comes to living with others, says David Smith. --- "There’s a risk that this tips over into naiveté. There are bad things in the world. Cultures are not benign. There are things in all cultures that need to be resisted. But that doesn’t give me license to approach the world as if my culture is basically, in most things, right, and the other cultur...

Peter Hughes shares his experience of mental illness, and explains why it doesn’t define him. --- "When I was a teenager, I’d go through different bouts of being in a fog, so to speak. I just thought it was part of adolescence, I thought that’s what everyone went through. It wasn’t until university that somebody said, 'hey that’s not normal and you should go and see someone.'" Peter Hughes is a mi...

  To be irreligious is to live as a stranger in this world, says Dutch philosopher Evert-Jan Ouweneel. --- It may feel like we’re living in an increasingly secular world, but the numbers tell a different story. According to a recent study, by the year 2050, the number of people in the world without any religious affiliation will decline as a share of the global population. At the same time, Muslim...

Andy Bannister on how life’s biggest questions are not just abstract, but deeply personal. --- "I think the gospel has something to say in every area of life. Christianity is a public truth. One of the mistakes Christians make is answering yesterday’s truth. One way to address this is to do a lot more listening and a lot less talking." In the West, it’s safe to say that there are many obstacles th...

Bioethicist Margaret Somerville talks about rights, choices, and why she’s against euthanasia. --- Do we - or should we - have the right to choose when and how we die? "A physician intervening with the intention to kill is a radical change in the law, it’s a radical change in medicine, and it’s a radical change in the most fundamental of society’s values, namely, respect for life." Margaret Somerv...

Personal stories of terror, forgiveness, and faith from around the Middle East. --- "I have nothing against them. I really forgive them. What do I get if they were killed or anything? The only thing I would ask for them is to be enlightened. If they are enlightened, the whole world would be a much better place." These remarkable words were spoken by a woman whose son had just been killed in a terr...

  Religious freedom expert Brian Grim explains why religious restrictions are bad news for everybody. --- "Where faith is restricted for people, it makes them start to question: Does this society even want me? Do they value me?" Religious adherence is growing around the world - and so are restrictions on religion. Dr Brian Grim is President of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, and has...

Professor Sarah Williams on the importance of language and history when it comes to gender. --- "We have lost the language for talking about any form of biological determinism. Gender has replaced the word sex, which is ironic given the fact that it was introduced to create the possibility of nuance." Questions about gender are a big part of the zeitgeist - they’re incredibly important for us at t...

Exploring the beauty of maths, we may just find that faith and proof are not mutually exclusive. --- "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God." - Srinivasa Ramanujan. Ramanujan was a self-taught mathematical genius from India, who moved to Cambridge University in 1914 to work with the eminent mathematician, G. H. Hardy. His story, as told in the movie The Man Who Kne...

Dr Luke Barnes talks science, rationality, and the wonders of the night sky. --- "We’ve described the way the world works. We haven’t in any way explained why it’s there in the first place." In this episode, we celebrate National Science Week with Dr Luke Barnes, an astrophysicist with the Sydney Institute of Astronomy. Join us as we unravel the mysteries of the universe (sort of); find out if sta...

For actor Anna McGahan, Christianity flipped the logic of life and of the entertainment industry. --- "It’s weird because I was the kid that put on plays – and I was aggressive, I would make everyone do a play if we were hanging out with family, friends … However, I was much more interested in science, and I was interested in dance, and I wanted to be an author and an astronomer and a journalist....

  How a music professor uses playlists and sing-a-longs to engage people living with dementia. --- Ivy is 105 years old and she loves music. She sings along to "old-timers" in the car when she’s traveling around Australia, and listens to "sad" songs before she goes to bed. "I usually have the music playing softly," she says, "I go to sleep that way." The truth is, Ivy hasn’t done that for a while....

How a spinal cord injury revealed to Shane Clifton both the wonder and fragility of life. --- "I landed upside down in the pit and I knew immediately I had broken my neck. I couldn’t move anything. I yelled out to my wife, and she thought I was joking at first. I remember just apologising to my wife. There was this sense that I’d done something I knew was going to impact our whole family drastical...

A songwriter and a philosopher contemplate death, loss and what it means to grieve well. --- Nothing in life is certain but death and taxes. But if death is something we all face at some point, and grief is part of the human experience, we talk about them surprisingly little. In fact, it’s something we don’t necessarily do all that well as a culture. "The word death is not pronounced in New York,...

An historian, a poet, and a former lawyer discuss the Bible in Australian history and culture. --- "I think [the Bible] is a good book," says poet Lachlan Brown, "but I do think it’s been used in terrible ways." Lachlan Brown, historian Meredith Lake and former lawyer Roy Williams were panellists at a 2017 Sydney Writers’ Festival event titled "The Good Book? The Bible in Australian Culture Today"...