Life & Faith

Joel McKerrow is a Melbourne-based performance poet, writer, speaker, educator, and community arts worker. He’s the Artist Ambassador for TEAR Australia and co-founder of the Centre for Poetics and Justice. He speaks to CPX about how his art relates to his faith and to questions of social justice, and suggests how poetry can have an impact on real life issues. Visit  joelmckerrow.com  for more on...

Rob Banks met his grand-aunt Sophie Newton once as a young man; when she died, she left him all of her personal papers, detailing her fascinating life as a pioneer woman missionary in China for more than thirty years. Rob and his wife Linda have turned the documents to good account in their book View from the Faraway Pagoda , which tells the story of Sophie’s work in empowering women, opposing the...

Theories about the historical Jesus - whether revolutionary Jesus, Jesus being elevated into God by his followers, or Jesus’ wife - abound, and seem to hold an endless fascination for us. Darrell Bock is Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, and has written more than thirty books on biblical topics, including the popular Breaking the Da Vinci Code . He talks to CPX abo...

We all want to be free - but freedom proves a difficult concept to pin down. Simon Smart and Natasha Moore consider competing visions for genuine freedom, and review a new film, Freedom , which tells the parallel stories of 18th-century slave trader John Newton and an escaped slave a century later.

Our cuture is fascinated by food as evidenced by the vast range of food programming on our screens. On Life and Faith , Simon Smart and Natasha Moore discuss the cultural, social and spiritual elements of eating, feasting and fasting.

John Beckett is the national co-ordinator of Micah Challenge Australia, which is a coalition of Christian development agencies, churches and individuals that aims to deepen people's engagement with the poor and to help reduce poverty. He joined Life and Faith to discuss the Millennium Development Goals and the fight against global poverty.

This week marks 100 years since the start of World War I. Life and Faith discusses the process of remembering and interpreting an event on such a grand scale. 

Nick Spencer is the author of Atheists: The Origin of the Species . The book is a history of atheism, which examines what has driven its growth and why it is a myth that atheism emerged because the rise of science made religion obsolete. He spoke to Simon Smart about the book and the implications of belief and non-belief.

Richard Shumack recently completed a PhD in Islamic Studies and has just released a book entitled The Wisdom of Islam and the Foolishness of Christianity . He joined Life and Faith to discuss the differences between Islam and Christianity.

Miroslav Volf is Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and Director of the Yale Centre for Faith and Culture. He is also the author of a number of books including A Public Faith: How followers of Christ should serve the common good . He joined Simon Smart on Life and Faith to discuss why religion cannot just be a private affair and what Christianity has to offer society generally.

Between 1940 and 1944 an isolated plateau in France became the scene of a remarkable rescue mission. The village of Le Chambon Sur Lignon and surrounding communities, sheltered refugees from all across Europe. Their local pastor, Andre Trocme, led a secret campaign to defy the Nazis, which ultimately protected the lives of around 3,500 Jewish people. Peter Grose has written a book about Le Chambon...

Post-apocalyptic fiction is all the rage in young adult fiction at the moment from Divergent  to The Hunger Games . Claire Zorn is the author of The Sky so Heavy  an Australian novel about living in a nuclear winter. She joined Simon Smart and Natasha Moore on Life and Faith  to discuss her book.

Simon Smart and Natasha Moore reflected on what two recent films - a Hollywood blockbuster and a new Australian film - have to say about the human condition and what it is we think we need most.

Prof. Miroslav Volf, Director of the Yale Centre for Faith and Culture, delivered four lectures at the  ReThinking: A Public Faith  conference held in Sydney, Australia, in March 2014. The conference was a joint project of the  Centre for Public Christianity ,  Arrow Leadership , and  World Vision Australia . This is the Q and A session that followed the fourth, and final, lecture of Prof. Volf's...

Prof. Miroslav Volf, Director of the Yale Centre for Faith and Culture, delivered four lectures at the  ReThinking: A Public Faith  conference held in Sydney, Australia, in March 2014. The conference was a joint project of the  Centre for Public Christianity ,  Arrow Leadership , and  World Vision Australia This is the Q and A session that followed third lecture from Prof. Volf. It was a Public Le...

Prof. Miroslav Volf, Director of the Yale Centre for Faith and Culture, delivered four lectures at the  ReThinking: A Public Faith  conference held in Sydney, Australia, in March 2014. The conference was a joint project of the  Centre for Public Christianity ,  Arrow Leadership , and  World Vision Australia The third lecture from Prof. Volf was a Public Lecture delivered at the Sydney Conservatori...

Prof. Miroslav Volf, Director of the Yale Centre for Faith and Culture, delivered four lectures at the  ReThinking: A Public Faith  conference held in Sydney, Australia, in March 2014. The conference was a joint project of the  Centre for Public Christianity ,  Arrow Leadership , and  World Vision Australia . This is the second lecture, in which Prof. Volf looks at how a faith with exclusive truth...

Prof. Miroslav Volf, Director of the Yale Centre for Faith and Culture, delivered four lectures at the ReThinking: A Public Faith conference held in Sydney, Australia, in March 2014. The conference was a joint project of the  Centre for Public Christianity ,  Arrow Leadership , and  World Vision Australia . In this, his opening lecture, Prof. Volf addressed the issue of whether or not faith inevit...

British writer Francis Spufford surprised many when he outed himself as a Christian in his latest book Unapologetic: why, despite everything, Christianity makes surprising emotional sense . He joined Life and Faith to discuss his book and why he is a Christian.

Katherine Leary Alsdorf is the Founder & Executive Director of Redeemer's Center for Faith & Work. She came to Redeemer in 2002, after 20 years in the hi-tech industry, to establish the Center and help nurture a meaningful integration between people's faith and their professional work. She is the co-author of  Every Good Endeavour: Connecting your work to God's work . She joined Life and Faith to...

Pastor Ray Minniecon is a descendant of the Kabi Kabi nation and the Gurang Gurang nation of South East Queensland, the South Sea Islander people, with connections to the people of Ambrym Island, Vanuatu. Ray has worked with World Vision Australia, the Sydney Anglican Diocese, survivors of the Stolen Generations who were institutionalised at Kinchela Boys home as we as other Aboriginal ministries....

In 1945 Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis. He is the subject of a recent play called Lies, Love and Hitler . The playwright Elizabeth Avery Scott joined Simon Smart and Natasha Moore on Life and Faith to discuss the life of Bonhoeffer and her play.

The latest science-fiction blockbuster to hit cinemas is Divergent . Larissa Aldridge, who has read the books and seen the film, joins Simon Smart and Natasha Moore on Life and Faith to discuss the film and its themes.

The blockbuster film Noah is one that people may find both familiar and unfamiliar when they compare it to the Bible story. Justine Toh saw the film and sat down with Simon Smart to discuss it.

Greg Lake is a former Immigration Department leader who managed a number of immigration detention centres, including Nauru, Christmas Island and Curtin. He also worked in policy and management roles in Canberra under the Rudd/Gillard governments. Greg resigned from Immigration in April 2013 after examining whether his role in managing detention centres was something that aligned with his Christian...