Features

A PAPER by the School of Nursing at Queensland University of Technology in 2000, titled The encultured body: Policy implications for healthy body image and distorted eating behaviours, said Anorexia nervosa is the third most common chronic illness for adolescent girls in Australia (after obesity and asthma). A 1998 Newspoll Study said 1 in 20 Australian women admitted to having ...

THERE WAS a Sunday afternoon joke among hungry college students attending the North Rockhampton congregation in the late 1970s and early 80s: “I hope there’s as much tea as fellowship at the fellowship tea.” Food and the gathering of believers have gone together since time immemorial. Killing a goat isn’t so common in Queensland these days, although it remains the ...

EACH WEEK the volunteers who run the Wesley Wednesday Night Community Meal in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley see first hand the value of food. Providing a three-course meal for 40 to 90 homeless people or those at risk of homelessness each week will do that to you. Cook, Jeni Parker, said theirs is the only sit-down meal of this type on ...

I LIKE food. I like it a lot. I am from a family of good eaters. I am from a family full of people with that wonderful gift called hospitality … people who want to feed the world and love the world. The older I get, the more I find these two ideas inextricably linked. The older I get, the ...

WHEN JESUS was being tempted by the devil to turn stones to bread the Scriptures record Jesus’ response: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” In John’s gospel Jesus calls himself the bread of life, whilst at the last supper Jesus offers bread to the disciples as a sign ...

A TOOWOOMBA resident has challenged the federal funding of Scripture Union Queensland’s (SU QLD) School Chaplaincy in the High Court of Australia. Atheist, Ron Williams, is supported by the Australian Secular Lobby and other Queensland groups including the Sunshine Coast Atheists. While Mr Williams claims to have received overwhelming and heart-warming moral and monetary support from appalled parents and concerned ...

FOR AROUND ten years Rev Louise Edwards has been helping young people celebrate finishing high school by experiencing a faith and culture exchange in a remote island in Fiji. Consequently, the island of Taveuni has become somewhat of a second home to Ms Edwards, who is a Deacon at Broadwater Road Uniting Church in Brisbane. From 20 November to 2 ...

WITH OBESITY and eating disorders on the rise and the apparent abundance of food in Australia it is hard to think that the lack of food (and its production and distribution) in years to come is already shaping the policies of the world’s most powerful governments. And it’s hard to imagine that something as simple as what we eat can ...

The Uniting Church in Australia has launched an emergency appeal in response to the devastating impact of the Japan earthquake and tsunami. UnitingWorld, the relief and development agency of the church, will facilitate the appeal. UnitingWorld is in contact with the leadership of the United Church of Christ in Japan (UCCJ), assuring them of the Uniting Church’s prayers and concern. ...

WHO CARES for those who care for others? This is a question answered, at least in part, by the chaplains who express the idea of church to those who work in circumstances that would test anyone’s faith. Police, hospital staff and paramedics find themselves caring for people in ways that stretch and stress them beyond what most professionals will ever ...