US president Barack Obama has confirmed that the US military made targeted airstrikes and carried out a humanitarian operation in Iraq, marking the deepest US engagement in the country since US troops…
Iraq previously had one of the most multicultural societies in the Middle East. A broad diversity of religions, races and cultures flourished in Iraq, united by common heritage, culture and traditions…
A blog in The Economist recently accused Pope Francis of following the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, in adopting an “ultra-radical line” on capitalism. The blog, “Francis, capitalism and…
The tan-tastic trailer for Ridley Scott’s new epic Exodus: Gods and Kings was recently released, to lukewarm response. What I find most striking about the trailer is not, as you might expect, Christian…
The Australian Anglican Church has put the interests of children and victims of crime ahead of tradition and doctrine. Priests who hear confessions about serious criminal offences, including child abuse…
The High Court of Australia, for the second time, recently found that the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program (NSCSWP) is funded unconstitutionally, and so is invalid in its current…
Matthew Wade, Australian National University dan Maria Hynes, Australian National University
The Sydney-based Hillsong Church will today wrap up its annual conference, an enormous production of spectacle and a heady mix of the sacred and the secular. In Australia, where religious expression tends…
Each age has its visionaries, and the 21st century is no exception. Prophets do not belong to the past, but indeed to the present and invariably to the future. They are timeless because their lives and…
Today the High Court struck down the funding for the national school chaplaincy funding program for a second time. Today’s decision throws into question a whole range of federally-funded programs. The…
The probability of a frog turning into a prince is small. So small, in fact, that Richard Dawkins recently spoke out against the story and others like it, asserting that we promote supernaturalism by telling…
Pope Francis’ discussion of the devil (or Satan) has been greeted with surprise by many. Why would a “progressive” Pope speak about an “old-school”, passé topic like the devil? Has not the Catholic Church…
Pope Francis’s visit to the Middle East has been hugely significant, for both religious and political reasons. Francis hopes to encourage ongoing peaceful dialogue and co-operation between both Israelis…
For a biologist like me, the interesting questions about religion have always been where did it come from and why did it evolve? I taught evolutionary biology in a Catholic University in the most Catholic…
Notions of gods arise in all human societies, from all powerful and all-knowing deities to simple forest spirits. A recent method of examining religious thought and behaviour links their ubiquity and the…
Yesterday around 20 Christian activists staged sit-ins in Sydney at the office of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and in Melbourne at that of Federal Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten. The protesters included…
Popes John Paul II and John XXIII were declared saints by Pope Francis last Sunday. So what were the “miracles” necessary for John Paul’s sainthood, and how likely was it they really occurred? Almost 40…
The week after Easter, Pope Francis presided over the canonisation ceremony which declared his two most famous contemporary predecessors, John Paul II and John XXIII, were now “saints”. This is an important…
Easter is here, and while some might reflect on the resurrection of Christ, I’m wondering at another miracle of sorts that we’re witnessing – the renaissance of the Bible in popular culture. The run up…
Former foreign minister Bob Carr’s recently released memoir, Diary of a Foreign Minister, discussed in-depth the influence of Melbourne branches of the so-called “Zionist lobby” over policymaking. Late…
The long-anticipated biblical epic, Noah, has been released to a tidal wave of reviews, comments and criticisms on the film’s “accuracy” in its adaptation of the flood narrative in Genesis. And granted…
Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity