Painting Fakes

John Shelby Spong retired as Episcopalian (Anglican, for us Aussies) Bishop of Newark in 2001 after 24 years in the role, and has since worked as a freelance author and speaker.  Over the past three decades he has become the most outspoken and controversial advocate for progressive Christianity, reviled by conservative Christians and admired by fellow progressives.  He has taken unorthodox stands on a range of issues, including human sexuality, the status of the Bible and the role of women.  His stance is summed up in the title of another of his books - Why Christianity Must Change or Die. He has written a lot about Jesus over the years but Jesus for the Non-Religious: Recovering the Divine at the Heart of the Human, published in 2007, is his most comprehensive treatment of the historical person at the heart of the Christian faith.  After leading off with his devotion to Jesus, he follows with this. The other (motivation) driving me into this study is ...

Back in the late 70's and early 80's, when Bruce Springsteen was busy becoming one of the biggest rock'n'roll acts on the planet, I didn't really get it.  The biggest problem for me was that the music was such a mess - a noisy, loose band, chaotic arrangements and not a single sign of a prog-rock inspired solo.  I heard the occasional song I liked - like The River with its lovely harmonica and earthy story-telling.  But when I listened to the whole album, the mess got to me again and I gave up. The first hint I got that maybe I was missing something was when someone I respect arrived at a meeting in 2002 full of excitement at just having bought a copy of his new album, The Rising .  Then I read an article about how in each city he visited, he would meet a local community organisation, then promote their work during his show.  Finally I gave myself another listen and bought a cheap copy of The Essential Bruce Springsteen . I was right, there was a lot of...

It being Grand Final week, it's a good time to write that post about football morality that's been going around in my head for months. I'm a regular watcher of Rugby League.  It's a good way to switch the brain off on Friday evenings.  Yet footballers often get bad press.  Whether it's off field incidents involving drugs, alcohol and violence towards women, or onfield violence towards each other, you would be forgiven for thinking sometimes that footballers are a bunch of amoral thugs.  This however, is a long way from the truth, at least for most.  Our story begins in August 2011 and the notorious Round 25 clash between Melbourne and Manly.  This match is infamous for a vicious all-in brawl that erupted in the second half. A bit too much aggression in a tackle led to a few punches and a lot of pushing and shoving near the tryline.  The referees decided to cool things down by sending two of the main offenders, Manly's Glenn...

Speaking of love, a while ago I waxed lyrical about Richard and Linda Thompson at the height of their musical and life partnership, and their beautiful song A Heart Needs a Home.   Well lately I've been listening in a similar slightly obsessive fashion to the last album they made together, Shoot Out The Lights , released in 1982. Their marriage was pretty much over by the time it was released, as the cover tells you plainly, yet they were contractually obliged to tour in support of it.  Audiences (not to mention the band) got to see the painful last rites live on stage as the couple struggled and bickered their way across Europe and North America before departing for what must have seemed by comparison the blessed relief of divorce.  Shoot Out The Lights tells the death of their love in seven songs.  Gone are the wide open spaces, tranquil rythms and deep yearning of Dimming of the Day or A Heart Needs a Home.   In their place are insistent b...

Anyhow, onto something really important - Love.  If you've never heard the story of Tristan and Isolde, you've really missed out on something.  You could start by reading it in a children's version, perhaps one of the ones I read as a child.  Following Thomas Malory's 15th century lead, they wove it in between that more famous love triangle involving Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.  You could attempt to listen to Wagner's operatic treatment of it, if you understand German and can stand opera.  Or you could read this most beautiful version, written in the 13th century by the German poet Gottfried von Strassburg and translated into English prose by AT Hatto. The heart of the story is simple and well-known.  Yes, there is a love potion, a dragon, a giant, a fairy dog and a magic lovers' cave, but these are just entertaining diversions from the all too recognisable humanity of the tale.  Tristan is commissioned by his uncle, King M...

I have noticed that most, if not all, of my fundamentalist Christian acquaintances are also climate change deniers.  I've been wondering whether there is a connection and I've concluded that there is, and that it's young earth creationism. Young earth creationism often goes under the name of Creation Science, but it's not science, it's apologetics.  Science is an open pursuit of knowledge - it seeks explanations for observed phenomena, and tests these against the evidence.  Its hypotheses may be proved or disproved - both proof and disproof are valid scientific outcomes. Apologetics, on the other hand, is the task of defending a particular view or idea.  The truth is already known and the task of the apologist is to bolster belief in that truth by marshalling evidence in its defence.  In this case the faith position is the literal inerrancy of the Bible, and in particular the literal truth of the early chapters of Genesis which are understood to...

If you wanted an insight into the other side of the World Series Cricket saga,  it would be hard to go past Christian Ryan's 2009 biography of Kim Hughes, Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the bad old days of Australian cricket.   Unlike many of his famous contemporaries, Hughes never wrote his own memoirs, and he didn't cooperate with this bio either.  Nonetheless it's a highly sympathetic account of his career. In 1977 Hughes was a promising young player on the fringes of the Australian test team.  Hughes claims that he turned down an offer to join WSC, while key WSC figures claim no offer was ever made.  Either way, he ended up on the Australian Cricket Board side of the war and with the top players missing he moved instantly from fringe player to mainstay of the batting order.  By 1979, in his 11th test, he found himself captain of the struggling young Board team. What happened from there on shows that the peace between the combatants in the dispute w...