Thoughts on faith, culture, and public life.
By Rod Benson Using a smartphone to scroll through social media is one of the characteristic practices of contemporary life for billions of people. We reach for our phones while waiting for a train, sitting in a café, watching television, lying in bed or during pauses in conversation. The practice satisfies several popular human appetites: curiosity, …
Continue reading "From marketplace to infinite scroll: A short history of human distraction"
Murray River mouth and Coorong lagoon system near Goolwa, South Australia. By Rod Benson One of the most significant principles in Catholic social teaching is the doctrine of subsidiarity. In broad terms, subsidiarity holds that responsibilities should be exercised by persons and smaller communities when they are capable of doing so, while larger institutions should …
Continue reading "Subsidiarity and Uniting Church ecclesiology"
By Rod Benson The Uniting Church in Australia has undertaken many reviews and reorganisations since its inauguration in 1977, but few have matched the breadth or potential significance of the Act2 Project. Act2 is arguably the most consequential attempt in recent decades to reconsider the structures, governance, theological formation and mission of the national Church. …
Continue reading "Rethinking the future of the Uniting Church"
Vittore Carpaccio, "Saint Augustine in His Study," 1507. A biblical reconsideration of the views of Augustine and Calvin By Rod Benson I’ve been reading Rutger Bregman’s 2019 New York Times bestseller, Humankind: A Hopeful History, and it has me questioning my views about human nature and Christian anthropology. Of course, this is a good thing because engagement …
Lake Parramatta and Hunts Creek, just a few hundred metres from North Rocks Community Church, Sydney. At first glance, the Book of Ezekiel can seem a baffling piece of literature. Ezekiel is a young priest caught up in the historic exile of around 10,000 people of Judah after a failed rebellion against the Babylonian superpower …
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