What does the Christmas promise of “peace on earth” mean in the face of human suffering, natural disasters, and other heartbreaks that are part of all our lives?

Twenty years ago, the Indian Ocean tsunami claimed the lives of some 225,000 people, after battering the coastlines of India, Indonesia, Malysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Thailand, and Somalia.

Tim Costello, then CEO of World Vision, was among the first to be on the ground in Sri Lanka, which was among the countries worst affected. He recounts being confronted with the mammoth scale of devastation on the ground and the tragedy of so many lives lost.

Then we hear from former CPX-er Mark Stephens, now Lecturer in New Testament at Sydney Missionary Bible College, about what the Christmas promise of “peace on earth” could possibly mean in the face of untold human suffering – and what are the grounds of hope now and into the future.

This is our last episode of Life & Faith for the year but we will be back in 2025. From the whole team at CPX, we wish you a Merry Christmas.

In 1894, South Australia was the fourth place in the world to grant universal female suffrage. Christian housewives were key to the cause.

History was made on Dec 18, 1894, when a bill passed in the South Australian parliament granting women the right to vote and the right to stand for public office.

This made the South Australian Parliament the first in Australia, and the fourth place in the world, to extend voting rights to women.

In August of that year, a petition of 11,600 signatures had been presented to parliament, supporting women’s right to a voice in the political process. It was the result of long campaigning and legwork by women’s groups: the Women’s Suffrage League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Working Women’s Trades Union, which gathered signatures from all over the state.

In this episode of Life & Faith, Dr Nicole Starling, historian of 19th century Australian religious and political history, explains the role of the WCTU in gaining women the vote, and also how temperance activists, often denounced as stuffy wowsers looking to curb alcohol consumption, were the first to spot connections between alcohol abuse and what we now call family and domestic violence.

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Nicole Starling on X

More info on Nicole Starling’s book Evangelical Belief and Enlightenment Morality in the Australian Temperance Movement, 1832-1930 

Journalist Michael Visontay uncovers intriguing stories from the fragments of a 1450s Gutenberg Bible, including an amazing link to his own family.

In 1921 when rare book collector Gabriel Wells broke up his Gutenberg Bible and began to sell off individual pages, it caused a scandal, and a rush for collectors to get the chance to own and be a part of the Gutenberg mystique.

Was Wells’ action an act of vandalism, or just a smart move from an enterprising rare book dealer? Either way, these fragments became much sought-after, and Wells became a rich man. Decades on, Michael Visontay traces these “noble fragments” as they pass through various collectors' hands and carry with them fascinating stories.

Michael’s own family – holocaust survivors from Hungary who immigrated to Australia in the 1950s – have their own connection to Gabriel Wells and the Gutenberg Bible. Michael Visontay tells this “detective story”/intriguing family history with panache.

Here he tells Life & Faith about that history and how it captured him so completely.

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Noble Fragments: The Maverick Who Broke Up the World’s Greatest Book 

International Justice Mission wants tech companies to step up efforts to protect vulnerable children.

Warning: distressing content. 

The Philippines is the global epicentre of the online sexual exploitation of children, where children are abused by parents and other relatives in their own homes, in front of a video camera, for a fee.

It’s awful and sickening trade in vulnerable human lives, one that’s particularly insidious since it distorts a child’s relationship with their primary caregivers and that transforms a child’s home – the exact place they should be safe – into a predatory environment of abuse. And Australians are the third-highest consumers of this content worldwide, paying for these crimes to be live-streamed, and often through commonly used social media platforms and video conferencing tools.

International Justice Mission (IJM) works to end modern slavery, partnering with NGOs, social workers, child advocates, faith communities, and law enforcement to bring about justice for survivors of trafficking, and to strengthen justice systems to hold offenders accountable. The organisation is now advocating for greater online safety, including pressuring tech companies to be more intentional about child safety from the point of product design.

Life & Faith spoke to Gigi Tupas, head of National Activation and Partnerships at IJM Philippines, and Grace Wong, Chief Advocacy Officer, IJM Australia, to hear about what’s happening on the ground.

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Support the work of International Justice Mission by becoming a Freedom Partner. 

Read the Sydney Morning Herald article: “The children for sale – and the Australians who exploit them”

Read the 2023 UNSW report featuring research cited by Grace in the episode: “Identifying and understanding child sexual offending behaviours and attitudes among Australian men” 

Read more about IJM’s 2023 report that found roughly one in 100 Filipino children were trafficked to produce live-streamed child sexual exploitation material.

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Erinch Sahan believes that the key to building safer, healthier and stronger communities can be found in a doughnut.

Doughnut Economics is a visual framework and growing movement that seeks to tackle humanity’s biggest problems through a fresh new understanding of our world.

Erinch shares how his experience as a senior executive at Procter & Gamble, Oxfam and head of the World Fair Trade Organisation, led him to his current role as head of the Dougnut Economics Action Lab, where he and his team works with businesses, governments and communities, to re-imagine how economics can be used to build a better future.

Erinch also teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a respected global voice on global trade, business practice and bringing ethics to economics.

We examine how this innovative new movement brings a fresh perspective to some of our biggest local and global challenges. And we take a closer look at how it’s possible to include ideals like stewardship in our continued pursuit of profits, pleasure and happiness.

Explore:  

Doughnut Economics Action Lab website 

Kate Raworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’ Ted Talk 

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Tim Winton talks to Life & Faith about his new novel Juice.

Tim Winton is one of Australia’s most loved writers. He is also well-known as an environmental activist and defender of landscapes and fragile ecosystems. And now, as a grandfather to 6 children, he is clearly deeply concerned about what we might be leaving behind to them and those who come after them.

His lates novel, Juice, is set in the distant future, a time when climate catastrophe has wreaked havoc on the globe. Civilisation has crumbled. Huge parts of the earth, in a band emanating from the equator, are completely uninhabitable. It's all about the global unravelling that could accompany climate devastation. It’s frightening and sobering. And yet somehow determinedly hopeful.

Tim came into the CPX studio to talk about Juice and what inspired this challenging piece of art.  

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Tim Winton’s novel Juice 

Ningaloo Nyinggulu

Simon Smart’s review of Juice at ABC Religion & Ethics

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Living out one’s commitments and beliefs is the most political thing we can do, says theologian and public commentator Michael Jensen.

Politics, both here in Australia and around the world, feels increasingly existential as we angst over whether our political tribe, or the other side, will gain office.

In this episode of Life & Faith, we get public commentator Michael Jensen to set us straight: how do we solve a problem like the ultimacy of our politics – the fact that it feels as though the fate of the country rests on whoever gets elected to lead it?

We cover the way Christianity is often identified with one side of politics and why “sin”, though an unpopular idea, acts as a helpful check on anyone who wields political power. Michael also offers us “a litmus test for whether a political position is Christian” and challenges everyone to be more realistic, and less idealistic, about what earthly politics can achieve.

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Michael Jensen’s book Subjects and Citizens: The Politics of the Gospel 

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The US will soon choose its 47th president. Peter Wehner, former Republican insider, explains the national mood. 

In the week before the 2024 US presidential election, perhaps the most consequential election in this year of elections, we hear from former Republican speechwriter and evangelical Peter Wehner on what has happened to the party he used to call his own.

Wehner served in three Republican administrations. He explains how President Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a “shining city on a hill” drew him to conservatism in the first place and contrasts that aspirational national myth with the current mood in the Republican party.

Now a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum based in Washington D.C., Wehner’s public commentary on politics, faith, and the politicisation of faith regularly appears in The New York Times and The Atlantic.

We delve into the role of self-described evangelicals in American politics, and Wehner’s grave concerns for the future of not only the Republican party, but his country.

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Peter Wehner’s profile on X (Twitter)

Peter Wehner’s article in The Atlantic: This Election is Different

Simon’s interview with Michael Wear, Cultivating Better Politics.

Simon’s interview with Darrell Bock, The US Election and the Politicisation of Faith. 

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Sarah Irving-Stonebraker makes a case for history as a key part of understanding who we are and where our lives find meaning.

Sarah Irving-Stonebraker says we are living in an ahistoric age – where we are increasingly ignorant of the past and therefore less equipped to understand ourselves and those around us. In her latest book Priests of History: Stewarding the past in an ahistoric age, Sarah urges her readers to attend to history; to seek to understand the past – it's people and events. She promises that if we do, we’ll find out “that it's far stranger and far more fascinating than you realise.”

In an age underpinned by the idea that life is about self-invention and fulfilment, Sarah believes that paying careful attention to history we will find ourselves more connected,  more embedded in stories larger than ourselves. This is something deeply needed in our rootless and disconnected age.

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Sarah's book: Priests Of History: Stewarding The Past In An Ahistoric Age

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Investigative journalist Nick McKenzie explains what drives him to risk huge amounts to expose injustice and corruption.

Nick Mackenzie is a 14 x Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist who has uncovered some of the highest profile cases of corruption in recent Australian history. Nick has exposed the local mafia, Crown Casino’s links to criminal figures, political donations by Chinese interests, national security issues, foreign bribery by the Reserve Bank and other companies. Most recently he uncovered corruption in the CFMEU - Australia's main trade union in building and construction.

When he and veteran journalist Chris Masters together revealed shocking war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, they opened a wound in the Australian psyche. Huge and powerful forces tried to shut them down, but they wouldn’t keep quiet. When the “defamation case of the century” was launched against them, they relied on SAS soldiers themselves telling inconvenient truths about their war experience.

Nick’s book on the war crimes saga and the unsuccessful defamation case against him and Chris Masters is Crossing the Line: The Inside Story of Murder, Lies and a Fallen Hero.

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Nick McKenzie’s website https://www.nickmckenzie.com.au/

The book Crossing the Line: The Inside Story of Murder, Lies and a Fallen Hero

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Author Shankari Chandran believes storytelling may be our most powerful weapon in the search for hope, truth, empathy and justice. 

Shankari is a Sri Lankan Thamil Australian author. Her third novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens won Australia’s most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin, last year. In this interview with Life & Faith, Shankari shares her story, her inspirations and the power of storytelling as a carrier of hope, an antidote to injustice and a catalyst for empathy.   

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Shankari’s website