Christians around the world are preparing to remember the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran theologian executed for his opposition to the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. "He is a saint – in the Protestant meaning of the word," said Germany’s top Protestant bishop, Wolfgang Huber, one of the editors of the complete works of ...

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the 23rd president of Liberia, pledged to work for economic stability, create a brighter future for youth and children and empower women in her inauguration speech 16 January. "We will work to change," she said. The first woman elected head of state in Africa, Johnson-Sirleaf acknowledged many challenges lie ahead for her country. "I understand what you ordinary citizens ...

Queensland Liberal Senator Santo Santoro attacked the Uniting Church for publicly opposing the Howard Government’s industrial relations reforms. Senator Santoro said Uniting Church president Dean Drayton had run "the Labor line" when appearing before a recent Senate committee hearing into the Work Choices Bill, which encourages greater use of contracts and dilutes unfair dismissal laws. His attack was made during ...

[M (15+)-rated] I don’t find horror films easy to watch, even ‘art-house’ ones like "The Exorcism of Emily Rose".  But this film did find its way under my skin; which, I gather, was one of the aims of the Christian director, Scott Derrickson.  "Emily Rose" is based on the story of Anneliese Michel, a German woman who submitted to her ...

Moderator of the Queensland Synod Rev Allan Kuchler unveiled a shield representing the Uniting Church during Forest Lake College’s twelfth birthday celebrations. The College was a landmark development both for the Forest Lake community and the Uniting and Anglican Churches, the first time the two churches had formed a partnership to operate a school. A set of shields, each rep-resenting ...

Caught with a bad case of the jitters after the July 7th bomb blasts in London and the not forgotten September 11th, Australian authorities are contemplating the use of racial profiling as a strategy to deal with terrorism. Racism has its foundations in the belief  human beings belong to different races which can be differentiated by culture, ethnicity, skin-colour, national ...

Hinduism , Buddhism , Judaism , Christianity and Islam are compared, in the winning title for the Australian Christian Book Awards. “A spectator’s guide to world religions: an introduction to the big five” by John Dickson (Blue Bottle Books) is the 2005 Australian Christian Book of the Year. Presenting a clear, accessible, and unbiased presentation of the major faiths, the ...