In the great reformer’s eyes, if you didn’t love a rousing tune you deserved only “the music of the pigs”.
Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther, a professor and preacher, published the 95 Theses, a list of debating points on the Christian religion which sparked the Reformation movement.
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Historical accounts of Martin Luther skew or ignore debates about religion and make him hardly recognizable as a pastor and preacher. But his theology changed Europe.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is first and foremost, a spiritual leader, a man of deep prayer. This motivated his participation in supporting South Africa’s liberation struggle.
Their quest to find ‘something bigger’ to devote our lives to is only a superficial change from religion – and it ignores the psychological reality of our ever-changing self.
Religious organisations have freedom under Australian law to practise their own doctrines and marriage rituals.
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Even if secular law changes to allow same-sex couples to marry, churches are protected by religious freedom to choose who they will - or will not - marry.
The Ecstasy of St Theresa, by Gianlorenzo Bernini in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome.
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Logic, science and critical thinking are working miracles for non-believers.
The Virgin Mary may not be able to pull Brazil out of a deep recession, but her church-sponsored house calls do wonders to ease economic malaise among participating Catholic families.
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For a century, Brazil’s Catholic Church has sent holy statues out to parishioners’ homes. A new study finds that these visits create a local subeconomy, benefitting families and the church.
What are the implications of the ‘instant divorce’ ban in India? Will it provoke a wider re-evaluation of India’s Muslim family laws, that affect millions of women?
A detail from William Blake’s God answers Job (c. 1804). The Gods of Moses in the Old Testament, Jesus in the New Testament and Muhammad in the Quran have a similarly complex and ambivalent character.
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The founder of Islam, Muhammad, saw himself as the last in a line of prophets that reached back through Jesus to Moses, Abraham and Noah. But while the three religions worship the same God, he divides as much as he unites.
Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity