Life & Faith

Westerners take religious freedom for granted but as a teenager growing up in Eastern Ukraine in the 1970s, Victor Akhterov’s Christian faith was challenged by the Soviet state’s hostility to religious commitment. Along with sharing stories from his past, Victor gives us an insider’s take on religious freedom in Russia today, and some of the country’s social issues that particularly affect its next generation.

Drawing on Nietzsche, Professor Volf explores two pervasive and mutually reinforcing nihilisms of our time - our misplaced search for meaning, and our wrongheaded pursuit of pleasure - and counter common critiques of religion by arguing that faith in God intensifies and deepens enjoyment of the world, uniting both meaning and pleasure.

In the year 2000 The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) laid out a bold vision for the ways the developing world could assist the poorest countries out of poverty and to find ways to foster better environments for the most vulnerable people and communities on the planet. The aim was to halve extreme poverty by 2015. How did it go? The Rev Dr Joel Edwards is the International Director of Micah challenge – a coalition of Christian organisations that aimed to hold governments to account for their pledges made at the turn of the century. He was in Australia with TEAR international and we caught up with him to discuss the progress of the MDGs – what has gone well, and where there is still a lot of work to do.

Ross Piper has had an eclectic career working for a major bank and some mining companies. He’s also had two stints overseas working for World Vision in AID and development. Firstly as country Director for World Vision in Montenegro - running programs to assist refugees from Kosovo and the war in Bosnia More recently Ross and his family spent four years living in Cyprus running the operations for World Vision in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. CPX spoke to Ross about the good and the bad of the NGO sector and the place of his Faith in both motivating him for development work, and also processing the many confronting aspects of the job.

Cameron Watt got the shock of his life when he was sent to gaol for two and a half years after being convicted of a white collar crime. In this two-part episode of Life & Faith he tells his story and, amazingly enough, explains why he’s grateful for the experience of life on the inside.

Cameron Watt got the shock of his life when he was sent to gaol for two and a half years after being convicted of a white collar crime. In this two-part episode of Life & Faith he tells his story and, amazingly enough, explains why he’s grateful for the experience of life on the inside.

Living alongside people from different cultures to our own is a fact of life in multicultural societies but it’s less clear how we can do this well. David Smith discusses what it means to learn from – and even love – the stranger.

Margaret Somerville is originally from Australia but works in Canada as a bioethicist at McGill University. She’s sympathetic to those who see euthanasia as a way of easing suffering - but also strongly disagrees with them. Simon Smart talks to Professor Somerville about what’s happening with euthanasia around the world, how we make ethical choices, and what kind of society we want to leave for future generations.

Australia is rightly proud of its rich ethnic diversity but whether people of varied cultural backgrounds actually share their lives with each other is another matter. Parkside Church in Edensor Park, however, brings under the one roof people of over 50 nationalities to do life together. We speak to its Senior Pastor, Mathew Kuruvila, on the unity that is greater than cultural differences.

Ross Gittins is an Australian institution: he’s been writing economics columns for Fairfax for 40 years and has had a ringside seat to 40 budgets, 16 federal elections, and the coming and going of 13 treasurers and 8 Prime Ministers. Here he speaks to Simon Smart about his memoir, Gittins: A Life among Budgets, Bulldust, and Bastardry. Among other things, they cover the seismic changes he’s seen happen in Australian politics and society, the enduring influence his Salvation Army upbringing has had on him, and what the future of journalism might - and should - look like.