Crave: Where everybody knows your name

I was conducting an interview recently with a couple of guys I think the world of. But it wasn't going so well. In fact, it was going horribly. Ten minutes into the conversation, they started to argue. Not with me but with each other. I realised later, listening back to the tape, that I had …

Rachel Held Evans: A voice crying in my wilderness

As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, "in an age of information overload ... the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust ... Rachel Held Evans, Searching For SundayFor …

An open letter: Why this theologian has nothing to say about Christian education

I have four daughters, two of whom went to Christian primary schools and then to a Christian high school, in both country Western Australia and Perth. Our experience of Christian primary schooling in the country was terrific. The school communities were supportive through difficult years for us and many of the teachers became our friends. …

Easter Sunday: We don’t want no resurrection

My favourite resurrection scene is the one in Scorsese’s movie The Last Temptation of Christ, when Jesus calls Lazarus from the grave. I like to think that if this story actually happened, it happened as Scorsese pictures it. First off, Jesus is late. Because Jesus is always late. Like when Notre Dame almost burnt down. …

Losing my religion: Why I am NOT a Christian writer

The first time I was told I wasn't a Christian because of something I'd written was after the publication of my first book, This Little Piggy Stayed Home: Barlow, Chambers and the Mafia. As the title suggests, it was about the Mafia, which I'd been investigating for my employer, The West Australian Newspaper, for more …

Immerse your soul in love: a manifesto

Immerse your soul in love, sings Thom Yorke at the end of the song Street Spirit (Fade Out). The line emerged from nowhere during a brainstorming session at Laidlaw College with Jaime Taylor 10 years ago, and subsequently adorned the brick wall of the college foyer, as the institution grappled with the idea that love …

Separation anxiety: the darkest of times

When I left home to get married at the age of 20 turning 21, my Dad sat in the lounge room playing his guitar and shouted, 'Seeya David,' as I lugged the last of my bags to the car. I have no idea how he felt about it because we never spoke about it. But …

What’s love got to do with it: Theology and its defences against the dark arts

Towards the end of my very brief career as a theologian in a conservative, fundamentalist, NZ theological college, I had come to the sad realisation that theology, as an academic discipline, is unable — incapable rather than unwilling — to say things about love that art, even in its most popular forms, is more naturally …

Three words: Faith. Hope. Love.

  Faith is about the story in which our understanding of self and others is embedded. It’s about the implicit beliefs that guide our actions, our self talk, our narrative, our engagement with others, and the contribution we make to this world of things, and possibilities, and new journeys.   Love is the outworking of …