The government has some explaining to do about trade, aid and poverty.

Sometimes the reason we might not be heard could be the offence of the gospel. Yet negativity and nit-picking arguments can also cause offence. Poor behaviour of Sydney Anglicans can result in lost votes.

A highly awarded British musician will be trading the sites of Bristol for the Bridge as he heads Down Under to take up the Cathedral's top musical position.

Devotion to the mother of Jesus and the dogmas and practices that have arisen to support such piety have been the cause of division in the Church for centuries, especially between Catholics and Protestants.

Many people, viewing the tiny, frail, elderly deaconess speaking often in the Sydney Synod may not have realised that they were listening to one of the most extraordinary female ministers in the history of the Diocese of Sydney. It may be some time before her like is seen again.

Many people don’t bother with locks. Recently I spoke to a friend who, with his wife was travelling next day to Indonesia on behalf of a missionary society. When I said, “Lock your case,” he answered, “I won’t bother, I never do.” That is the confidence of someone who has made the same trip many times before, as well as perhaps a certainty that no one will find anything to steal in the average clergyman’s suitcase.

Evangelicals can’t welcome all of the new Pope’s ‘conservative’ agenda says Margaret Rodgers.

The Queen may well disapprove, but how should we respond to Charles’ marriage to his long-term partner?

Are the demands lay people place on clergy too high?

Acorn Press is providing a valuable service to Australian Anglicans with publications of memoirs of well known evangelical leaders. They include Bishop John Reid’s biography of Marcus Loane, Marjorie Stanway’s memoir of Alfred Stanway and Leon Morris’s Bush Parson. Now we have Canon Stuart Barton Babbage’s charming chronicle Memoirs of a Loose Canon.

The response to the appeals for victims of the Boxing Day tsunami has been overwhelming. Many people usually donate generously after disasters but the response on this occasion has covered the length and breadth of the community. Now the question is going to be, ‘Are we in it for the long haul?’

Just how much influence did the voting choices of committed evangelical Christian and Roman Catholic voters have upon the final results in the recent Australian and US elections?

An unrepentant gay man became a bishop and plunged the Church into crisis. But is Windsor the answer?

Just how much influence did the voting choices of committed evangelical Christian and Roman Catholic voters have upon the final results in the recent Australian and US elections?

Darfur, the world’s ‘worst humanitarian crisis’ has been in the media for weeks. Every day seems to bring new twists to the narratives of despair, violence and inhumanity.

Lay Presidency, called Lay Administration in Sydney Diocese in recent years, has been a matter of debate in the diocese for some thirty years at least. The Synod seems to be moving towards some finality on whether or not – and no seems highly unlikely – it will become legislated practice in the Diocese.

The Diocese of Sydney gives journalists plenty to write about, not all of it helpful.

Under Anglican polity you cannot choose your own bishop. Of course we choose ours when Synod elects our archbishop, but when he is in place he is the diocesan of this diocese, Sydney, and all Anglicans in the diocese come under his jurisdiction and pastoral care. That is the pattern all over the Anglican Communion.

Anti-semitic? Anti-Roman? Too violent? Perhaps, but The Passion is also an opportunity too good to waste.

Slavery is one of the curses of our century, and Christians should be better informed about its evils.

Evangelicals are often accused of proselytising, but ex-Sydney missionaries are debunking the myth.

Anglican ecumenical relationships are severely damaged following the New Hampshire consecration.

A friend of mine lives in an inner-city suburb where varieties of ‘family’ are to be found. A lesbian couple live not far from her. Through IVF processes they have a son, a dear little boy. He has two Mummys. It causes some confusion for older-aged neighbours who don’t know which woman to call Mummy when they are talking to him. This may be confusing to those neighbours now, but what about the child when he goes to school? While other children talk of Mummy and Daddy, he will have to talk about Mummy and Mummy. Who ever considered his rights as a young boy? For there’s no doubt, children do have rights.

What has led the Foreign Minister to offer such stringent criticisms of clergy and theologians? It’s clear he has been stung by statements by Church leaders, among them Anglican Primate Peter Carnley, ‘the head of my own church’ as Downer called him, and the then President of the Uniting Church, the Rev Professor James Haire. Professor Haire said, “egged on by both political groupings in the country, we as a nation had reached new depths of political depravity”. Downer said he found the accusation of political depravity “profoundly personally offensive as well as foolish”. He called a media release Archbishop Carnley circulated ‘erroneous posturing’.

The sentencing of the smiling Bali killer Amrozi to execution has raised an intense debate in Australia. Some victims’ family members expressed their pleasure when they heard the verdict. Others gave a different response, saying things like ‘execution is too quick, he should be made to rot in hell’, or words to that effect.