J4a. Trinity John 3.33-36
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- Category: John's Gospel
{podcast id=320}
The Trinity John 3.33-36
Sermon preached at Church of the Ascension Midland on Trinity Sunday 22 May 2016
Bible Readings: John 3.31-36
This passage tells us about God; about the Father; about the Son; about the Spirit; about the hearers
J17a. What Jesus Left John 14.21-27
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- Category: John's Gospel
{podcast id=319}
What Jesus Left John 14.21-27
Sermon preached at St Matthew's Guildford on 1 May 2016
Bible Readings: John 14.21-27
Jesus left his words to those who love him and are loved by the Father; his Spirit; his Peace
Doubting Thomas? John 20.19-31
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- Category: Easter
{podcast id=318}
Doubting Thomas? John 20.19-31
Sermon preached at St Matthew's Guildford on 13 April 2016
Bible Readings: John 20.19-31
Seeing the Lord, believing in the Lord, saving the world by forgiving sins, and what about sins not forgiven?
Trapped in the Gap: Doing Good in Indigenous Australia. Emma Kowal.
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Trapped in the Gap: Doing Good in Indigenous Australia. Emma Kowal. Berghahn 2015. ISBN 9781782386049
This Review was first published in Essentials Autumn 2016
Emma Kowal describes herself as a 'native ethnographer', by which she means an anthropologist studying her own kind. Her own kind in this book are “White anti-racists”, a term she defines carefully. By 'White' she doesn't necessarily refer to skin colour, rather it applies to those who “willingly and unwillingly, knowingly and unknowingly, participate in the racialised societal structure that positions them as 'White' and accordingly grants them privileges associated with the dominant Australian culture.” (11). 'Anti-racist' is defined from an anthropological perspective as “a culture, discourse and identity”.
Kowal is studying a group of health workers like herself (she worked in the Northern Territory as a doctor and is now Associate Professor of Anthropology at Deakin University). These are 'White anti-racists' who are trying to do good in Indigenous communities, and who want to be distinguished from past attempts by colonial settlers such as missionaries and the Assimilationists. Her own experience of working in the field led her to see that there was deep questioning as to whether they were actually doing anything to 'close the gap'. Was it just another colonial enterprise? One of the workers she tells about critiques herself by saying, “nearly every health promotion message she advocates conflicts with the social practices of the Aboriginal people she works with.” (7).
There is a gap between the promises of liberal multiculturalism and the experiences of Whites who seek to help the Indigenous minorities. That is where many of those most committed to do good are trapped. Why are they trapped? Partly because of the way they understand themselves.
Read more: Trapped in the Gap: Doing Good in Indigenous Australia. Emma Kowal.
Alister McGrath: Inventing the Universe: Why we can't stop talking about science, faith and God
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Inventing the Universe: Why we can't stop talking about science, faith and God. Alister McGrath. Hodder and Stoughton. 2015. ISBN 9781444798463
This Review was first published in Essentials Autumn 2016
The “war” between science and religion has moved on, and this book is an attempt to move it further on, into a discussion that can be mutually respectful and enriching. McGrath traces his own transition from a fully assured teenage atheist to a convinced Christian. Part of this testimony involves a recurring and unflattering comparison between the Anti-theist group and his teenage over-simplified atheism. McGrath engages respectfully with a number of dialogue partners on various sides of the debate, including Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Mary Midgley and Roger Scruton. One of his aims is to correct outdated perceptions of the conflict between science and religion (it is a recently invented myth), although his chief opponent is the New Atheism which he claims is not traditional atheism, but actually Anti-theism.
The main idea is that science has limitations, as does religion.
Bob Davey: The Power to Save: A History of the Gospel in China; Daniel Bays: A New History of Christianity in China; Samuel Moffett: A History of Christianity in Asia Volume II 1500-1900.
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The Power to Save: A History of the Gospel in China. Bob Davey. EP Books, 2011. ISBN 9780852347430
A New History of Christianity in China. Daniel H Bays. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. ISBN 9781405159555
A History of Christianity in Asia Volume II 1500-1900. Samuel Hugh Moffett. Orbis Books 2005. ISBN 9781570757013
This Review was first published in Essentials Spring 2015
China continues to be in the news for many reasons. Not least because of the growth of the Christian church there. A growth symbolised perhaps by Amity Press which, by the time of the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury in June 2015, had printed 135,602,476 copies of the Bible.
The existence of Amity Press is a remarkable political, religious and spiritual reality. The story of The Heavenly Man is perhaps better known to modern western Christians. Some will also know of the work of Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission. And of other famous names such as Watchman Nee and Gladys Aylward. Beyond that not much is known.
Unfortunately. The story of the gospel in China goes back to Nestorian times. Around 1625, in the west of Xi'an a three metre high marble stele was unearthed. In Chinese characters and Syriac a Christian monk named Jingjing, writing in 781, tells of the history of Nestorian Christianity in China which started back in 635. It seems the gospel came via the Old Silk Road.
Noel Pearson: A Rightful Place. Race, recognition and a more complete commonwealth; Tom Lawson: The Last Man. A British Genocide in Tasmania; Bain Attwood: Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History.
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A Rightful Place. Race, recognition and a more complete commonwealth. Noel Pearson. Quarterly Essay 55, 2104. ISBN 9781863956819
The Last Man. A British Genocide in Tasmania. Tom Lawson. IB Taurus. 2014. ISBN 9781780766263
Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History. Bain Attwood. Allen & Unwin 2005. ISBN 9781741145779
This Review was first published in Essentials Autumn 2015
As far back as 2007 there has been bipartisan support for changes to the Australian Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to remove clauses to do with racial discrimination. This support was affirmed at the 2010 election. Recent reports suggest a referendum might finally happen in 2017. In the meantime Noel Pearson has written a Quarterly Essay outlining his arguments for Constitutional Reform.
The general question posed by Pearson is: “how do 10,000 distinct peoples [in the world] live well and prosper – and get along with each other – within 200 nation-states?” (6) The immediate question that affects Australians is that the Constitution of 1901 did not recognise the peoples who were here prior to the settlers arriving, but did provide powers to the Commonwealth to make laws based on race. Even the reform of 1967 still included indigenous peoples on the basis of race (more on this later).
Pearson takes some time to review the difficult issues of history-writing, and the differences of perspective that have plagued the debates. He thinks Bain Attwood's Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History is a fine circuit breaker to the “History Wars”, but wants to affirm a stronger view to what happened on the frontiers: the fate of the Tasmanians was genocide; and “the profoundest moral problem of this history: the heavy discounting of the humanity of the Aborigines” (20).
- Gary Haugen & Victor Boutros: The Locust Effect. Why the end of poverty requires the end of violence.
- Simon Chan: Grassroots Asian Theology. Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up.
- Grant Lock: Shoot Me First. A cattleman in Taliban Country. Twenty-four years in the hotspots of Pakistan and Afghanistan
- Janet Soskice: Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found The Hidden Gospels.
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