A short piece that I wrote today for our church weekly newsletter: It’s hard not to be moved by the terrible situation currently unfolding between Israel and the Hamas government of the Gaza Strip. I have no doubt that in a large and diverse church family such as St John’s that there will be a […]
Call it “Cultural Marxism”, call it something else, there can surely be no doubting that there is a particular wave of Marxist-influenced leftism that is coursing through much of Western society today. While it may not be on the lips of everyone who is currently holding a protest banner, it’s proponents are obviously working away […]
So Australia has yet another new Prime Minister. It seems that no sooner have we settled into getting used to one leader of the country then we get a new one. Here’s the BBC’s attempt to set out the timeline… What’s driving all this turnover? If you work your way through the narratives and accounts […]
Yes, you read that headline correctly. I don’t believe in Freedom of Religion laws. I think they’re unhelpful and they actually undermine what we’re trying to achieve. However, before you get anxious that I’m somehow giving the game away let me explain… First, a video. Here’s one of my absolute favourite sequences from The West […]
One of the central mantras of the campaign to redefine marriage is that it’s all about “equality”. We hear the language of “equal marriage”, “marriage equality” and even the claim that homosexuals are, somehow, “second-class citizens”. What are we to make of this claim? I think the key is to establish quite what proponents have […]
So I guess I have to write something about what is quite possibly one of the most monumentally enormous political events that many of us have lived through. When I arrived home on Wednesday afternoon I insisted that my older children stopped what they were doing and watched a bit of the TV coverage with […]
See, I can do alliteration like the best of them. Buckle yourself in, this may be a slightly longer ride. This weekend has seen a remarkable exchange in the media between the two main political parties here in Australia over the question of the upcoming plebiscite on redefining marriage. In a fascinating turnaround Labor party […]
published in an edited form at The Gospel Coalition, Australia Like me you have more than likely been staggered by the tragedy of the nightclub murders in Orlando, Florida. It seems inconceivable that someone could go to such lengths, sink to such depths of depravity, as to plan and then so callously execute his scheme to […]
Yesterday we heard the sad news that boxing legend Muhammad Ali had passed away. Ali was famous for his quick one-liners and arrogant attitude. It made him compulsively watchable. I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and got into bed before the room was dark. But […]
In 1942, at the parsonage of the Lutheran church he shepherded in central Austria, my grandfather received the following slip of paper; his call-up for active service in the Wehrmacht. Although his status as clergy might normally have led to his exclusion from conscription, being a member of the Confessing Church (that movement that opposed […]
