Conversation

News, Synod Speeches, Reflections and Articles

Reflections

Religious Freedoms: Faith Invites, Not Excludes

It is estimated that more than 70,000 students in non-government schools are LGBTIQA+, and there is a convincing body of evidence that discriminatory policies and practices in schools impact the well-being of these students. A survey of over one thousand LGBTIQA+ students in Australia found that those who attended religious schools were more likely to feel shunned, unaccepted, unsupported, and punished compared to students attending government schools. These feelings have long-term impacts on a young person’s mental health and sense of self-worth.

By Daniel Vujcich , Chris Bedding / 10 July 2024
featured Reflections

We are beautiful ideas, not ideology

People who understand themselves to be transexual, asexual, non-binary, bisexual, gay or lesbian are not making an ideological statement but seeking simply to express who they understand themselves to be. They have not made a choice driven by an ideological principle. They are simply honoring the fact that they are part of the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God…

By Peter Catt / 7 July 2024
Podcast

On the Way: Power and God

How do we talk about God when that word conjures a big other, looking down from a throne in the sky directing the traffic on earth? The language instead of a God who offers power “with” rather than power “over”, draws us into sacred relationship with one another and all creation.

By Suzanne Grimmett , Dom Fay , Peter Catt / 6 July 2024
News

To Tend, To Transform, To Treasure: Sustainability and the Communion Forest

I have received and planted two trees: one has been planted in the garden at St Anne’s, Highfields, and one in the clergy house garden at Highfields. My plan is to treat them like Pokémon and “collect them all!”

However, that’s not really the intent. To use a local example, Highfields an area of high growth, and that means trees coming down for development at rate that seems unsustainable and damaging to our local wildlife, particularly koalas and native birds.

So, this motion calls us to be givers as well as receivers. In supporting this motion, we hope that all parishes, schools and agencies will find ways that we can use our collective strength to make a real difference towards conservation, re-foresting and re-wilding.

By Melissa Conway / 1 July 2024
News

Negative media reporting and young people

“We are witnessing a disturbing attempt to scapegoat, stigmatise and socially exclude young people through negative reporting. This messaging in the media is damaging. It does not reflect the truth of young people in our society and in many cases seems to deliberately present a false message not supported by the data. This is particularly the case regarding youth offending.”

By Stephen Harrison / 26 June 2024
featured Reflections

Death of Peace – Standing at the Crossroads

Paul talks about the body of Christ as a communion of different gifts. But it is also a communion of differing politics, strong options and perceptions for things about which people care deeply, and diverse cultural backgrounds and assumptions about race, sexualities and genders, about faiths and nationalities. Rabbi Johathan Sacks reminds us God has gifted us with the dignity of difference.

By Lucy Morris / 25 June 2024
featured News

What Makes An Apology?

.. a meaningful, genuine and effective apology starts with saying sorry. Period. It is very tempting to want to explain why, or to indicate that one didn’t mean it to cause harm, or to refer to social mores at the time and so on. This undermines the effectiveness of the apology. Anything that sounds like self-justification doesn’t help those to whom the apology is directed. This is one of the costs of being prepared to make an apology. And reminds us to remember that the apology is for those who have been hurt, not those who are doing the apologising. The words of the apology therefore need to be clear and unequivocal; free of any desire to save face, to qualify or justify.

By Deborah Bird , Peter Catt / 23 June 2024
featured News

People on the move: Archbishop’s address

We are not called to conform and to sit still, the people of God have always been a people on the move. As Dom Hélder Câmara said, “Pilgrim, when your ship long moored in harbor gives you the illusion of being a house; when your ship begins to put down roots in the stagnant water by the quay: put out to sea! Save your boat’s journeying soul and your own pilgrim soul, cost what it may.”

By Jeremy Greaves / 22 June 2024
Reflections

The Joyful Being of God’s Love: A sermon by the Rev’d Kaye Pitman for the consecration of Sarah Plowman

I hope the Church that will benefit from the work of our new bishop will be more like the Australian River Red Gums. Sometimes their life-giving water cannot even be seen – only a track of rough, gnarled shady sentinels indicating secret channels winding across our outback landscapes. Their roots delve to the depths for the huge created sea below. Their foliage has supplied shelter, material, food, and medicine for many thousands of years for our first inhabitants. Those ‘red gum churches’ shared God’s love, long before the ‘God boxes’ arrived!

By Kaye Pitman / 21 June 2024
News

In all things, charity

“The truth is that, as I said at my welcome, I do not want this diocese to be labelled either a High Church diocese or a Low Church diocese. It is neither. It is a Church diocese. And if there be some, as I know there are, who reflect sadly that services are in several churches different from what they were thirty or forty years ago, I would ask them to remember that certain changes such as have occurred rather generally in England were bound to come here….Room must be found in our Church and in this diocese of our Church for those who are Anglo-Catholics and for those who would not like to call themselves so. There must be in essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity.”

Archbishop Sharp, Brisbane Synod 1924

By Jeremy Greaves / 20 June 2024
featured Reflections

Being a Disturber of the Peace: On female power and powerlessness

“.. the liberating goal of all the woman theologies is not reached by simply integrating women into a society and a church where patriarchal structures, androcentric theory and privileging prevail as the norm.  This ‘add woman and stir’ recipe isn’t working, it has never worked and will not work while women are taught to disregard their gifts to try to fit into the male defined world.”

By Lucy Morris / 16 June 2024