Culture

Noted for his austere formal style and unique approach to performance, French filmmaker Robert Bresson is globally celebrated as a master of the cinematic arts. He has inspired generations of filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, the Dardenne brothers and Lars von Trier, and renowned screenwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) stated he was the “most important spiritual artist living—a spiritual ...

Sometimes it takes an outsider to notice something everyone else doesn’t want to see. It’s one of the curiosities of human behaviour; different people, given the same information, in the same context, will interpret that information completely differently. Setting aside one’s preconceptions and reporting a story with fairness and accuracy is the core challenge of journalism. Done right, it’s a ...

When Michelle and Yusef chose to embark on life together as a married couple, some things were sure to become a little complicated. For Michelle, an Australian-born Christian, and Yusef, a Muslim, one of their first experiences of balancing two different religious traditions was deciding how they would get married. And more specifically, who would conduct the service. Uniting Church ...

Leadership, it seems, is the new black. Whether in politics, sport, culture or the church, one need not scratch very deep to find a view that leadership is either the cause or the solution to whatever challenge faces the particular organisation. There are many writers on the topic, and many theories about how leadership works, what it looks like, and ...

The Star Wars juggernaut is back, crushing all other box office contenders in its path, and much to the relief of fans, this one is pretty good. From the very beginning The Force Awakens echoes the original trilogy in tone, theme, and even plot. That’s not a bad thing; as one generation of devotees overdoses on nostalgia, another discovers the ...

Alan Austin is a Uniting Church member and former Crosslight journalist who lives in Nîmes in the south of France. He shares his reflections on the impact of terror in his adopted homeland. The message was rapidly shared among neighbours in our small village near Nîmes: we will place a candle—une bougie—in our window tonight to show notre solidarité. At ...

Bruce Mullan attended the Global Leadership Summit and came away surprised and impressed. From the moment you were greeted in the car park of Newlife Robina Uniting Church it was clear that this event was going to be something special. A team of over 40 volunteers welcomed 250 people to hear video presentations from experts in leadership training and church ...

Stanley Hauerwas talks about himself a lot, and this may confirm for some that he has bought into the hype that has him labelled as “America’s best theologian”. Quite the opposite! Because he is a prominent theologian, he has attracted his share of criticism and comment, and therefore much of Hauerwas’s writing is defensive. He requalifies, elaborates, apologises, restates, argues ...

War Room is terrible. There’s no getting around it. It’s a turgid, artless film with an unusually simplistic approach to prayer and a staggeringly problematic slant on abusive relationships. It’s also wildly popular. War Room is the latest in a string of films by the Kendrick brothers, who have a talent for making movies panned by critics but lauded by ...

Rebecca, an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church and a seminary president and Rita, a theologian and researcher, explore through their own individual experiences, deep and difficult theological perspectives and teachings of Western Christianity in relation to issues of family violence, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, racism, addiction, homophobia and post-traumatic disorders. The detailed analysis of their life experiences ...