Christian students at the University of Sydney’s Cumberland campus have been forced to contact new students at bus stops because of new restrictions placed on the Evangelical Christian Union (ECU).

February 2005 letters to the editor

Australia is very different to the USA. Apart from the fauna and the football, our access to the state school system for ministry is without parallel.

Not satisfied winding down church in January? Neither were these churches who expanded outreach over summer.

In 2005 Stuart Robinson will uncover some of the best ideas for mission and outreach. In this issue St Stephen’s, Willoughby has found great success with organising wide-ranging community events.

Chris Wenden thought he was just going on holiday to China... but the trip turned out to be life-changing.

Two Melbourne Christians found guilty of inciting hatred and severe ridicule against Muslims have vowed to fight the ruling.

The keynote speaker at last month’s CMS Summer School at Katoomba, American pastor Dr Mark Dever, has challenged Sydney Anglicans to think again about their attitudes to church growth.

High profile Christian and Muslim leaders have criticised the Federal Government over calls to tighten control of religious activity following September 11.

Imagine sitting in church on Sunday morning when a wall of water roars towards you, washing everyone away. This is what happened to a number of southern Indian congregations on Boxing Day.

The Sydney Anglican experience in the two world wars may have lessons for today’s battle with secularism.

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?’

Within almost every visionary there’s something of the eccentric or the obsessive. The drive to invent, create or to succeed at whatever the cost seems most fertile in those who are single-minded or even a little unhinged. Think Lawrence of Arabia, Alexander the Great, Alfred Hitchcock. Such people make compelling subjects for biographies and very long movies. Howard Hughes (1905 – 1976) was such a person. His life gets the big screen treatment in Martin Scorsese’s biopic The Aviator.

There is an art to spectating cricket. Channel 9 has been developing this art on TV for many seasons. The best new segment this year has to be the ‘Crackin’ Cricket Heroes’ competition. I love the amateur video footage of great moments in backyard cricket, under 10s finals on concrete pitches and Uncle Ken taking a blinder in the slips.

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.

John Carroll, professor of sociology at La Trobe University, Melbourne, is not afraid of big ideas. His 2004 book The Wreck of Western Culture – a substantial reworking of a 1993 effort – is a passionate, daring and sustained attack on the bloodlines of what we call “the West.” He calls his book “a spiritual history of the West.” He writes with a refreshing polemical zeal and with none of the hedging and over-qualifying so characteristic of academic prose.

Detective stories are a popular and well-established genre that rarely cross into the territory of capital ‘L’ Literature. There are a few exceptions where the quality of the writing matches the interest of the story. Mark Haddon’s award winner, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is unusual in its literary merit. But this is not the only quality that distinguishes it from others in the genre – the victim in Haddon’s tale is not a person but a large poodle who has been killed with a pitchfork.

Can she be liked again? This is the question that springs to mind as Britney has emerged after a tumultuous journey into adulthood with her Greatest Hits in tow. What are we to make of her now? Is Britney still, shall we say, fit for consumption?