Category Archives: Other Forums

Other Forums: UCA Assembly establishes a new platform for opinion sharing

From the launch statement:

“The Uniting Church Assembly is excited to soon be launching The Way UC It, a new ongoing series for Uniting Church opinion and analysis. In this series we’re passing the mic to you, inviting diverse perspectives on a range of contemporary issues in our Church and world. 

What are we seeing around us? What are the issues involved? How can we think theologically about this? What should the Church’s response be? Share your take in your own words. 

Through an ongoing series of thoughtful, respectful and relevant reflections, we hope to think deeply about the world around us, hear diverse perspectives on faith and life and foster dialogue. 

We are now calling for submissions from around the Uniting ChurchBelow are some examples of issues you might explore – but you can pitch us any idea.”

Go to The Way UC It for more information on how to participate.

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Other Forums: AUSTRALASIAN CATHOLIC COALITION FOR CHURCH REFORM

We are pleased to be associated with the ACCCR which has much in common with our UCFORUM and look forward to joint sharing of ideas and discourse.

ABOUT US – ACCCR

We have common goals of encouraging greater participation in decision making, reform and social action by the people most affected by these events…in the body of the Church. We both have global links to like-minded people.

ACCR, with more than 5000 members, is called in response to a key Canon:

“Canon 212?§3) 

 According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they (The Christian Faithful) have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.” 

Code of Canon Law. Book II. The People of God. Part 1 The Christian Faithful. The Obligations and Rights of all the Christian Faithful (Canon 208 – 223)   

The goals of ACCR include the following:

  • A Catholic Church in which all people are directed by their consciences and assume their responsibility for the mission of the Church.
  • A Catholic Church where all people, men and women, single and married minister in a spirit of co-responsibility for the Church. 
  • A Catholic Church that influences Australasian society to be ever more just, compassionate and egalitarian. 

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Spirituality for an Eco-human Future

Thanks to Rex Hunt for drawing our attention to this paper from Ian Harris and SOFiA New Zealand.

From SOFiA, Sea of Faith in Aotearoa (New Zealand) Newsletter, November 2022.

The Inaugural Sir Lloyd Geering Lecture (slightly shortened)

[Ian Harris’s career straddles the worlds of journalism and the church. Born in Christchurch, he grew up in a Methodist parsonage and gained an honours degree in English at Auckland University. Since then he has headed the English Department at Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Indonesia, edited the New Zealand Methodist, been assistant editor of the Auckland Star, served as Director of Communication for the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand, and been editorial writer on Wellington’s the Dominion.

In 1990 Harris was instrumental in founding the Ephesus Group in Wellington, which explores new ways of understanding and expressing Christian faith in this millennium. In 1993 he became the first chairman of the New Zealand Sea of Faith Network’s steering committee. Harris’s prime interest is in reimagining the Christian way in a secular society, as reflected in his newspaper columns, his books Creating God, Re-creating Christ and New World New God, and in The Ephesus Liturgies series written with his late wife, Jill. He lives in Days Bay, Wellington.]

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…And now here I am with the Sir Lloyd Geering Lecture, conscious of standing proudly on his shoulders, and hoping to do justice to him and his legacy.

“Spirituality”

My topic is Spirituality for an Eco-human Future. “Spirituality” can carry a range of meanings. When the word was first used in the 1400s it had none of the connotations it has today. It referred to the upper echelon of the church – the cardinals, bishops and abbots, a power collective sitting alongside the king and the nobles who together lorded it over the common people. There was royalty, there was the nobility, and there was the spirituality.

Today, spirituality refers to a person’s interior experience. It’s totally subjective. It’s an aspect of our awareness that we can’t readily explain or pin down, but has to do with our feelings, our yearning for “something more” beyond our work-a-day routine. It’s an experience that gives meaning and direction to our lives. It’s life-enhancing. At best it carries a sense of oneness with the totality of the life around us. There’s a touch of sacredness about it. Bring all these together – the inward, the life-enhancing, the reaching beyond, the connectedness, the sacred – and you’re getting close to a spirituality for our time.

To make my position clear, I shall be tackling the subject from the standpoint of a secular Christian – that is, one who accepts that our understanding of the world is vastly different from that in which Christianity evolved, and therefore requires a fundamental rethinking of old assumptions and doctrines about God, the world, and our place in the magnificent – and sometimes scary – adventure of life.

And don’t be put off by that word “secular”. I don’t mean “secularist”, which implies a wholesale rejection of spirituality and religion. I use the word in the true sense of the Latin saecularis, meaning “belonging to a generation or age, of this time and place, relating to the here and now, not a world beyond”. A religious way of life should always be grounded in the secular here and now.

Creation?

The only setting we have for an eco-human future is the planet we inhabit, often referred to as “creation”. A word of caution here: “creation” is a religious word that implies a creator, a grand designer with a grander purpose. In the modern world, however, there’s another explanation of our origins that’s much more promising for thinking theologically about the world as we know it today.

So let’s begin by seeing if we can arrive at a perspective on “creation” which grows out of the Judaeo-Christian heritage that’s shaped life in the western world, yet which also does justice to the huge explosion of knowledge that has occurred over the past 400 years. Because, let’s be clear, those years have radically changed just about everything under the sun – from home life, health care, education, work, to technology, agriculture, travel, religion, you name it. Wherever we turn, we experience the world very differently from the way our grandparents did. Few of us would want to turn the clock back on this knowledge explosion and what it offers.

Yet cumulatively, it’s those very changes, along with a rapidly expanding population, that have brought our world to the brink. Humanity, long thought of as the pinnacle of creation, does seem to be slowly, blindly, defiantly, destroying the earth’s ability to sustain us. Industry as we’ve come to know it carries massive risk for the future of the human species.

A growing number of prophets have warned of the pressures that human activity is putting on the planet’s systems and resources. Among them are Rachel Carson, Arnold Toynbee, Martin Rees, Thomas Berry,Brian Swimme, locally Lloyd Geering and Dave Lowe, climate scientists, United Nations panels, ngo’s – there’s a host of them, all calling passionately for humanity to turn away from destructive technologies, life-styles and values. Turn away: the biblical word for that is “repent”.

Sketching the scene all too briefly, homo sapiens has taken the biblical advice to be fruitful and multiply so much to heart that the world’s population has mushroomed from around 1.6 billion in 1900 to 8 billion today. We’ve added 2 billion since 1998 and are set to add another 2 billion by 2050. Each 2 billion is equivalent to another one-and-a-half Indias. India’s population is growing much faster than China’s, Africa’s faster still.

More and more people need more and more of Earth’s resources not only of food and water, but oil, iron, coal, copper, rare earths, and when the market’s booming they’re extracted as if there were no limits. Well, there are limits. No one’s making any more of them. The question is how long we’ve got before they start running out.

Meanwhile advances in farming and industry have produced not only the standard of living we enjoy in the West, but also technologies that pollute air, water and soil on a grand scale, deplete the ozone layer, warm the oceans and make them more acidic, and generate climate change. In the name of progress and economic growth, developers raze rainforests, destroy long-established communities, and wipe out whole species of life.

A multitude of organisations campaign to reverse the process, but governments seem readier to listen to economists arguing for growth at all costs ahead of ecologists pleading for sustainability. Remember the Rio+20 sustainability summit in 2012? One observer commented: “Rarely has such a large elephant laboured so long to give birth to such a small mouse.” The Paris summit in 2019 did only a little better, the 2021 Glasgow summit likewise, and still emissions are rising steadily, outpacing all the efficiency gains we’ve notched so far.

Governments promise much but continue to dither. A Guardian investigation revealed in May this year that the world’s biggest fossil fuel corporations have 195 projects on their books, most of them already under way. Each would detonate carbon bombs of at least a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. “Unchecked greed,” says the Guardian, “is driving us ever closer to the abyss.” And it is undermining life on Earth.

Thomas Berry, an American monk and eco-theologian, dismally sums up: “Our ultimate failure as human beings is to become not a crowning glory of the earth, but the instrument of its degradation” [The Dream of the Earth, p50] A new word has come into the language to describe what’s happening here: “ecocide”.

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Christian University Students – faith, fun, scholarship

 

Christian Students Uniting is an inter-denominational Christian group on campus at the University of New South Wales (UNSW)University of Technology Sydney (UTS)University of Sydney (USYD)Conservatorium of Music (CON) and Macquarie University (MQ). We are disciples committed to following Jesus as Lord and sharing God’s Word with the world.

Our time together is about faith, fun, biblical scholarship, Radical Discipleship, justice and community.

?Feel free to drop in to one of or Bibles Studies or social events or check us out on Facebook.

Visit the website for all the resources of CSU. Some samples:

LGBTIQA+ Resources

Poetry Blog

Climate Core Charter and Vision Statement

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Project Launch: So That We Remember

We are pleased to join with our friends who are launching a great new project that focuses on the theme of dispossession entailed in the colonisation of this continent and its islands, and the cost to Indigenous lives that was so dearly paid for in that violent change of possession.

A story that began 233 years ago.

We offer So That We Remember as a verbal and visual guide to a particularly focused journey into the history of this country.

So That We Remember

This Website is offered as a verbal and visual path on a journey that began 233 years ago. It aims to expand awareness of the cost to Indigenous lives of the process of colonial dispossession.

This awareness is enhanced by Indigenous artist Glenn Loughrey’s artwork (glennloughrey.com). The visual has the capacity, beyond the verbal, to take the viewer into the primal feel of a landscape, an event, an encounter.

This collection of extracts from primary historical sources, and from historians seeking to gather as accurately as possible the memories of Australian history since 1788, is prompted by the felt need to expand the reach of memory into the wider Australian public.

What comes into view is a miscellany of testimonies, eye-witness accounts, secondary stories, justifications and obfuscations in regard to the nation-wide violence entailed in the imperial colonisation of this continent and its islands.

This collection takes the viewer into a day-to-day remembering.

Whether we are an individual, a family, a clan or a nation, we remember selectively. Both what we remember (and what we allow to be forgotten) shape the memories that shape us.

So That We Remember is being launched in the hope that in Australia it will bring to public awareness the cost in losing lives and in losing country, that has affected Australia’s Indigenous people to this present day. That awareness can find expression in remembrance.

Ray Barraclough

It all begins with a vision, a goal, a purpose.

An explanation for the contents and their presentation on So That We Remember.

Every day of the year people watch new telecasts, listen to news bulletins. These news programs share a common feature. There will be items side by side that have no inter-relationship. An item on economics, followed by a report of a car crash, then a politician is quoted, followed by sports results and the weather forecast.

In one sense this daily journal of historical remembrance, entitled So That We Remember is a collection of historical news bulletins. However it has a particular focus, a particular theme, a particular purpose. The contents will vary as regards the timelines of Australian history, and the locations of historical events.

“A Portrait of Australia With Important Bits Missing” by Glenn Loughrey

But the purpose is to focus on the theme of dispossession entailed in the colonisation of this continent and its islands, and the cost to Indigenous lives that was so dearly paid for that violent change of possession.

Professor Henry Reynolds has asked the question of Australia: “How, then, do we deal with the Aboriginal dead?[1] While Professor Mark McKenna observes that, “there is no state-sanctioned memorial to the frontier wars in Australia. This absence is one of the most telling silences that continues to reign over our official historical imagination.”[2]

In compiling So That We Remember, we offer it as a daily memorial to the cost to Indigenous lives in the emergence of contemporary Australia. Those lives deserve to be remembered. The consequences of that colonisation process are still with us. There are no exits from the realities of this history.

In a good number of the daily texts particular dates are highlighted. This is done to encourage reflection along the lines of: ‘On this very day in our past, this happened.’

“This absence is one of the most telling silences that continues to reign over our official historical imagination.”

— Professor Mark McKenna

Many of the pages contain a selection of quotations. Whether the excerpt is of page length or more succinct in expression, the intention is to provide varied food for thought, for remembrance, for contemplation. Each day’s entries are an invitation to ponder more deeply the history of Australia’s Indigenous people. And to reflect more deeply on the tide of consequences that colonialism brought in its wake – a wake that still permeates this county’s life.

We have decided to use the terms Indigenous and Aboriginal as general designations. Some of the historical sources cited contain abusive and derogatory terms that no longer have public currency. Where they are retained in the excerpts, they are reminders of the dehumanising attitudes that fuelled the violence against Indigenous people (men, women and children) in Australia’s internal history.

Where quotes are drawn from primary sources, whether paragraphs, phrases or single words, they are italicised in the daily entries.

This production is both a literal and a visual aid to remembrance.

  1. Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, p.165.

  2. Mark McKenna, Moment of Truth – History and Australia’s Future, p.68.

  3. See more: Acknowledgments.

Are you an educator?

If you’re a teacher or educator and are considering incorporating any of our content into your lesson planning, we invite you to explore our Education Resources page first to learn more about how to do so and our terms of use.

Go to: So That We Remember and regularly visit the site for a visual and verbal journey that will help you to understand and be sensitive to our history.

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Welcoming another group of explorers

St Lucia Spirituality Group

We are a small group in St Lucia, Brisbane that seeks to support spiritual seekers, particularly those who are nearby. Below is our recent newsletter for your information. We have a mailing list of nearly 70 and a private Facebook page with 23 members to aid sharing of information.

Greetings
As a consequence of the final Conspire conference organised by the Center for Contemplation & Action in New Mexico, we held two successful zoom meetings in October.

Our first meeting discussed the question “How do you live in the real world and take your faith
tradition seriously?” We recognised that the fastest growing denomination in Christianity today is the ‘Alumni Association’, yet the challenge before us is to live our lives with integrity if we are to remain within our tradition.

We considered Jesus’s instruction in his Sermon on the Mount: “Seek first the kingdom of God”.
However, before we can seek the “kingdom” we must first understand what Jesus meant when he used that expression – and recognise that Christian attitudes over time have not always been faithful to fulfilling that ambition for everyone. The Spanish biblical scholar, Jose Pagola, writes that the kingdom of God represents an abundant life filled with mercy and justice for everyone, now, and not just attainable after one dies.

Our second meeting looked at suffering and loss as a pathway to spiritual growth, again with
discussion in small groups. A fuller report on each of these meetings is available on our Facebook Page.

Butterfly Series – Streams of Spiritual Development

At our next meeting we shall be introduced to four different aspects of spiritual development, in
particular:
• Waking up
• Growing up
• Cleaning up and
• Showing up
John introduces these concepts in this brief video. You can also gain some insight into this model by reading Richard Rohr’s introduction here.

We shall hold our introductory meeting on Zoom at 7-8pm on Tuesday 16 November. To register, email John at jscoble@hradvantage.com.au so that he can send you the zoom link for the meeting, and remember to ensure your zoom software is up-to-date.

Our Facebook Page

The primary purpose of our newsletter is to keep you
informed about our activities, particularly through our
new and private Facebook group. The purpose of this FB
group is to provide a forum for members to share
information and promote discussion online.
We invite you to find our group by clicking on this link, it
will take you to our page where you will be able to apply
to join our private group. We shall be interested in your
comments.
If you are not a Facebook user, we can help you set up
your account with maximum privacy, you can be
anonymous and even use a nick name or an alias if you
wish, you can create a fake identity! Consult Robert or
John if you want help.

You can also contact us by email slsg4067@gmail.com.
Go well…
Robert van Mourik

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Update PCNet South Australia – Seminary of the Third Age

We have received the following information from the PCNetSA:

Seminary of the Third Age sessions are always videoed, and people can view these videos on the Effective Living Centre website:

https://effectiveliving.ucasa.org.au/podcasts/

Great to have this link included on UCFORUM as well – people can watch from interstate at their leisure.

The Effective Living Centre is the “parent” organization of PCNetSA, and the other links you have included – EAG, Social Issues, Sacred Creative, Poets Corner – are other “Task Groups” within the ELC.

Cheers,

Fergus McGinley , Chair ELC Management Committee and member of PCNeTSA Task Group

and further from PCNetSA

Please visit our website at www.pcnetsa.org for up to date information with regard to PCNetSA events, including Seminary of the 3rd Age. You can email us at contactpcnetsa@gmail.com.

Shalom

Maureen Howland, for PCNetSA committee

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Theos – Understanding Faith. Enriching Society.

Theos stimulates the debate about the place of religion in society, challenging and changing ideas through research, commentary and events.

For the latest thoughts from the Theos team and guest contributors on current issues around religion and society go to Theos.

Based in the United Kingdom, Theos researches and investigates the intersection of religion, politics and society in the contemporary world.

Examples:

Bridging the Gap: Economic Inequality and Church Responses in the UK

Simon Perfect

Science and religion: mapping the landscape

Nick Spencer
Nick Spencer

I personally find it reassuring to know that debates about the future of our country in a rapidly changing world are informed by the thoughtful and rigorous work coming out of Theos.

Joy Carter, Professor and Vice–Chancellor of the University of Winchester

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About Sea of Faith in Australia

SOFiA is a network of Australians interested in openly exploring issues of life and meaning through reason, philosophy, ethics, religion, science and the arts. We want to explore for ourselves what we can believe and how we can find meaning in our lives.

SOFiA has no philosophical or religious position beyond a desire to ‘openly explore’: it is a forum for discussing ideas, experiences and possibilities.

Any who find themselves in sympathy with our purpose – exploring life and meaning in an open and non-dogmatic manner – are most welcome to join us.

14 Richardson St
Lane Cove NSW 2066
AUSTRALIA

Email: sofnetwork@gmail.com

Website: www.sof-in-australia.org

For enquiries about local events/groups please see the local group details.

Join SoFiA

SoFiA members receive 6 editions of the SoFiA Bulletin annually. Subscription fees are $20 for 10 years’ membership.

The Bulletin is available either as an email attachment or in paper form.

The preferred method for payment is direct bank transfer. Please email sofnetwork@gmail.com to request our bank account details. You’ll need to use your own bank’s online banking facility to make the payment. Please use your surname in describing the payment.

Payment through the post by cheque or money order is also possible.

Please note: for overseas members, the SoFiA Bulletin is available only as an email attachment.

If you’d like to join SoFiA please complete and send the membership application together with either direct debit payment or a cheque/money order to:

The Membership Secretary
14 Richardson St
Lane Cove
NSW 2066

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Living the Change

Background 

Living the Change: faithful choices for a flourishing world” is a globally-connected community of religious and spiritual institutions working together with sustainable consumption experts to champion sustainable ways of life. The website is: https://livingthechange.net/

Living the Change was initiated at the UN Climate Conference in 2017 by the US-based multi-faith organization, GreenFaith, an interfaith organization whose mission is to educate, organize and mobilise people of diverse faiths to become environmental leaders. Serving to coordinate Living the Change, GreenFaith now has Implementing Partners who collaborate to shape a vision for a worldwide community of practice which drives lifestyle-related emission reductions.

They are:

Can lifestyle change make a difference?

The campaign emerged, in part, from a study which showed that “if the world’s top 10 percent of carbon dioxide emitters were to cut their emissions to the level of the average European Union citizen, global emissions would decline by 33 percent. If the top 20 percent were to do so, the reduction would be about 40 percent.”[1]  In other words, while structural change is legitimately pursued as being potentially most effective in creating change, individual behaviour change within a targeted demographic can indeed make a meaningful contribution to stabilizing the climate. 

Given that close to six billion people identify with a religion (Pew Research Center, 2017), the opportunity for these groups to create meaningful change through collective action cannot be ignored. In Australia, the 2016 census showed 60% of the population identified with a faith tradition.

There’s also the difference it creates in me, the individual. The more we act in ways congruent with science which tells us that climate disruption is a major threat, the more our determination to make climate action a priority can grow. By acting in line with my values, my integrity grows and, hey, fewer greenhouse gases actually go into the atmosphere! The various faith traditions value individual responsibility, and each person is intrinsically important.

What are people being asked to do?

Living the Change invites individuals to fortify healthy, balanced relationships that help sustain the earth. The three areas where religious leaders and people of faith will be asked to take steps are:

  1. reduced use of transportation based on fossil fuels, ie, air and road transport
  2. shifting towards plant-based diets, away from meat-based protein
  3. energy efficiency and sourcing energy from renewables

Leaders in faith communities are encouraged to make their pledges to lifestyle changes publicly and promote these changes in their communities. We are seeking faith leaders who will help us promote the campaign.

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