Encounter, the ABC Radio National program, this week explores the paradoxes of postmodernism in a post-September 11 world. Are irony and relativism sapping the moral strength of the West - with potentially dangerous consequences? Or is uncertainty fundamental to ethics, and to religious faith?
David Rutledge talks with guests James Franklin, associate professor, School of Mathematics, University of NSW, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, senior editor of Tikkun magazine, Carl Raschke, professor of Religious Studies, University of Denver, Colorado, and Mark Taylor, Cluett Professor of Humanities, Williams College, Massachussetts. Also featured are the voices of postgraduate students Gail Hastings, Pol McCann, Demelza Marlin, Chris Mayes, Annette Pierdziwol and Shane Waugh.
The program aired on Sunday 12 March at 7 am but will be repeated on Wednesday March 15, 7.10 pm and Thursday March 16 at 4 am. If you miss those, the program can be listened to online in Real Audio format. The full transcript is online at ABC Radio National.
Tomorrow’s Religion Report on ABC Radio (Wednesday November 16, 8.30 am and 8 pm) will be featuring the Uniting Church in a couple of ways.
Industrial Relations
1. The President of the Uniting Church in Australia appeared this week before a Senate Inquiry into the government’s industrial relations legislation - and spent a good deal of time justifying to the Committee why he was there.
I heard Dean Drayton on the radio talking about the danger of protecting only preferential options for the rich. Good stuff Dean. There’s more on Dean’s presentation at Journey Online.
Church Property
2. Disaffected Uniting Church members are campaigning to change state laws so they can keep church property if they split from the denomination. This is precisely the reason state laws were written for the Uniting Church - to protect it from such raids.
A transcript of this week’s Religion Report, with links and references, will be available by 5pm Wednesday.
Some of my interview with Jenny Swan from ABC Central Queensland, is online in an article by Kim Lester: Church for those who don’t like church. I was in at ABC Coast FM when the producer Anita suggested I do a phone hook up with Rockhampton next. Jenny was keen to explore alternatives to spending lot of money on cathedrals and other purpose-built worship spaces.
Part of my thinking on this was stimulated by an experience I had when training for ministry. We had a Taize service in the park - in a rotunda much like the one pictured here. The atmosphere was great. But afterwards we realised that the content of the service had made no reference at all to the environment we were in. We’d just translated an inside experience to the park.
So what would an ‘in-the-park’ experience be like if it was designed for that environment? There might be more awareness of the sounds of silence for a start. And perhaps more use of the metaphors of the greenery.
