Refugee Week 2020: academics and activism

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From 14 to 20 June we celebrate Refugee Week, welcoming those who have come into Australia and celebrating the valuable contribution refugees and people seeking asylum make to our society. The Uniting Church has always been a strong advocate for the rights of people fleeing persecution – but we are not alone in our calls for justice.

Wherever possible the Uniting Church seeks to collaborate with service providers to ensure we are reflecting the needs of people most in need. In the complex field of immigration issues it is also handy to have assistance from academic friends – like Dr Caroline Fleay. Continue Reading

Review: Saint Judy

Directed by Sean Hanish, 2020, Cannonball Productions

Saint Judy is a film based  on real life events of lawyer, Judy Wood, who’s thrown in the deep end in her  first immigration law case. Her belief that the truth and doing what’s right can overcome almost  insurmountable obstacles to forever change asylum law in the United States of America, as well as the lives of those around her.

Judy represents an Afghani woman, Asefa Ashwari who’s betrayed by her Tribal Leader father,  persecuted by the Taliban for ‘Crimes against God.’ She faces the certainty of being murdered by her  own brothers in an honour killing if her fight for asylum in the United States is unsuccessful, because she encouraged girls to think for themselves and to get an education by opening a school for girls in her  village. Continue Reading

Review: Climate Church Climate World

How people of faith must work for change, by Rev Jim Antal, 2018, Rowman and Littlefield

The national synod of the United Church of Christ, USA, passed a motion in 2017 that: “The climate crisis is the opportunity for which the Church was born.”

Jim Antal’s book opens with historian Lynn White’s words from 1967: “More science and technology are  not going to get us out of the present ecological crisis until we find a new religion or rethink our old  one.” Continue Reading

Moderator’s column: The cross at the core

Many years ago I was invited to speak to a group of students at an art college.

The meeting was arranged by one of the art lecturers who thought art students should be aware of some of the ways Christianity had influenced the arts over many centuries. Most of the students were Marxists, materialists or agnostics. I gave a short address and then engaged in a ‘question time.’ After some vigorous debate I was asked what was core or central to Christian belief and practice. All I could think of was two words “the cross”. Continue Reading