Strangely, this quote is my blog’s most popular post: J.R.R. Tolkien on anarchism
Knowledge of the past
“Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems …
The moral case for sustainability
Broadcast on 2CH, Sunday 27 Jan 2013. A recent study has found that encouraging people to adopt ecologically sustainable behaviours based on the moral rather than economic case may be more effective. The Guardian newspaper reports that in an experiment conducted at a Dutch petrol station, researchers compared two messages aimed at persuading people to get …
What it takes to act with justice
A sermon on Ephesians 5:1-2 I have a problem. I’d like to believe in God, and do what is right, but I’m uneasy. What if we can be good without God? And how do we know what is good and what is bad? Fortunately, I’m not the first to ask such questions. The New Atheist …
T E Ruth and The Common Weal
In 1918 the Australian Baptist Publishing House (ABPH) released a book by the Rev. Thomas Elias Ruth (1875-1956) titled The Common Weal: Eighteen Studies in Social Subjects.[1] The book included a foreword by Professor Meredith Atkinson of the University of Melbourne,[2] and was dedicated by the author to Arthur Black, “in token of friendship and …
