Publications List

Remembering Our Future

20 Dec 2018  |  Author: Douglas Hynd  | Theme: Public theology and ethics; Religions and dialogue

While the Christian churches in Australia failed dismally in their handling of child sexual abuse, the response to refugees is one area of public policy in which, as Erin Wilson (now Director of the Centre for Religion, Conflict and the Public Domain, University of Groningen) noted in her survey in the Journal of Refugee Studies in 2011, there was “[m]uch to be proud of, much to be done.”
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Theology, anthropology, and the invocation to be otherwise

14 Dec 2018  |  Author: Philip Fountain, Doug Hynd and Tobias Tan  | Theme: Religions and dialogue; Public theology and ethics

One area of tension between the disciplines of anthropology and theology is the question of normativity—an invocation to be otherwise.
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How free-range playscapes across Canberra help our children to grow

13 Dec 2018  |  Author: Toni Hassan  | Theme: Civil society and politics; The Arts, Sciences and Culture

Suddenly, Canberra appears awash with adventure playgrounds. One's just opened at my local primary school complete with tunnels, a dry creek bed and undulations that children clamber around, and play games that they create rather than have created for them.
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The Important and humbling work of doing diversity

04 Sep 2018  |  Author: Toni Hassan  | Theme: Civil society and politics; Public theology and ethics

Growing up in suburban Sydney, I broke bread with all kinds. The dismantling of the White Australia policy in the 1960s and 1970s had allowed my parents to bring me from South Africa, aspire to belong and buy a house on a quarter acre block. My father started a business. Schooled in Islam, he ensured we never ate pork. I went to a public school alongside Aboriginal, Slavic, Italian, Greek and Malay students, as well as Anglos. Embracing the Jesus story, I found mentors in a diverse and welcoming community in Anglican and Baptist churches while still connected to my Muslim family.
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Evangelical Christians weaved a sturdy thread in our history

07 Jun 2018  |  Author: Douglas Hynd  | Theme: Public theology and ethics; Civil society and politics

Douglas Hynd reviews The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740-1914 by Stuart Piggin and Robert D. Linder. The authors of this book bring to it a lifetime of scholarly research on religion in Australian history. Piggin is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Religious History Association of Australia. Linder is the Distinguished Professor of History at Kansas State University. His long interest in Australian religious history began with his visit here in 1987 as a Fulbright Scholar.
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