Christendom is Australia is dying the death of a thousand cuts. With a receding influence exemplified by increasing calls for the removal of The Lord’s Prayer from Parliament, the church has the opportunity not to get angry, or to get even, but to witness to the world what the prayer might look like when truly lived out in alternate polis.

Some notes for Christians to help orient them to the task of engaging with the Australian Government on policy and the treatment of asylum seekers

Many things make me proud to be Australian. Yet all is not good in this country that I love. We have some grievous wounds that need attention.

When we have our investments pulling in the opposite direction to our giving, some benefits of generosity can be cancelled out. However, when they are aligned, the synergies can be nothing short of beautiful.

Lewis’s storytelling style is built, importantly, on the idea that within stories we will find secrets. It seems appropriate to speak about his love of stories, especially children’s stories, as we mark 50 years since his death.

Through literature we are schooled in empathy, poignantly reminded of the depth and pain of human longing, shown again the crucial need for belonging, purpose and salvation.

What is family? And most importantly, how can we define family according to a Kingdom of God paradigm as opposed to simply imitating the definitions and expressions of the middle class?

The Son of Man came eating and drinking (Luke 7:34). Jesus’ mission of salvation was so often pursued through the practice of the meal: enacted grace, enacted community, enacted hope, enacted salvation, and enacted promise. By eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus challenged the Pharisees’ understanding of salvation, law, inclusion and grace (Luke 5) without saying a word.

For the last few years in particular under Tony Abbott, the topic of climate change has become highly polarised in Australia. Yet conservation of the natural world used to be a more central conservative ideal.

With soft coercion—cultural power—being so complete and so successful in shifting the baseline culture narrative, in which the freedom of the autonomous individual is paramount, what, if anything, can put the brakes on hard coercion following in its wake?