In-Depth Articles

A.W. Tozer and François Fénelon lived centuries apart. Yet both writers came to similar conclusions about challenges facing believers and showed a way through. What can we learn from them today?

The Trump presidency illustrates what happens when ideology abolishes reality, when there is an absence of any fixed rules and when there is no such thing as success or failure. President Trump can do no wrong by his followers because whatever he does or says is never subject to any test of real performance - thus any kind of criticism, positive or negative, is effectively forestalled.

The Black Lives Matter protestors have mobilised around a sense of moral outrage over the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. However an understanding of the distinction between politics and justice, law and ethics, while seemingly a subtle one, is crucial if anything beneficial is to come out of these events.

As the world grapples with the impact of CoVid-19, the Church too has wrestled with its current practices and underlying theological framework. The pandemic is an opportunity for us to re-embrace our dual identity as alien residents, following the radical way of Christ himself and his call to agape love.

What does the latest lockdown in Victoria say about our conception of human life and society? Apart from being a medical response to the virus, the lockdown reflects a regulatory philosophy of government and presupposes a biological conception of the human being as a self-preserving living animal - a far cry from the Monotheist vision of humanity.

In 2019, the Centre for Religion and Social Policy at the University of Divinity (now the Religion and Social Policy Network) hosted a Religious Perspectives on Human Rights roundtable. Here we are publishing the papers from that conversation. These papers will also appear in the Spring 2020 issue of Zadok.

In the midst of the ‘Israel Folau controversy’, there is a much larger and much more dangerous issue going unnoticed: the extent to which corporate and institutional prerogatives have invaded and occupied the whole sphere of human life. This danger is being disguised under the trappings of ‘corporate social responsibility’, but in reality exploits social tensions for commercial self-interest.

In the debate around same-sex marriage and religious freedom, it’s easy to become defensive in this environment and to try to place protections around ourselves. Three widely publicised cases raise the question: are we prepared to grant others the rights we seek for ourselves? And how do our words and actions impact on others?

Nick Cave, the great Australian gothic rock artist, writes songs that are God-bothering and bothered. But his line ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’ - along with REM’s ‘Losing my Religion’ - has been misunderstood by Christians and atheists alike.

Nietzsche argued that, if God was dead, then our morals and value system would require a rigorous reordering. Nietzsche’s thinking was shaped, among other things, by the early death of his father, a Christian minister. But what finally tipped Nietzsche over the edge, leading him to assail Christianity in such contemptuous terms?