Australians love a long weekend, and our longest long weekend is this week’s. I don’t hear anybody complaining about having Friday and Monday off, but Easter itself — apart from a few chocolate egg hunts — goes little marked now in Australia. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday: these are like way markers on what used to be a main road but has been much quieter since they built that bypass.
Books
Faithful Peace: Why the Journey to Build Resilience is Multi-Religious
Religions for Peace and its Standing Commission on Interreligious Education are proud to launch our latest publication, Faithful Peace: Why the Journey to Build Resilience is Multi-Religious.
Interfaith Engagement Beyond the Divide: Approaches, Experiences, and Practices
Interfaith Engagement Beyond the Divide showcases interfaith dialogue and collaborative research and praxis between authors of different faiths. Thhis book explores future prospects of interfaith collaborations and effective solutions to contemporary global problems. It features inspirational, aspirational, and propositional reflections from diverse religious traditions.
The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment
THIS strong collection of scholarly essays by 18 university teachers from the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Germany explores the wide-ranging interactions between (mostly Western) Christianity and “nature”, “creation”, “the environment”.
Review: Marching to a Silent Tune
Some people are called to stand up and say “Hell, No” to war, despite the personal cost. Set against the backdrop of the turbulent 1960s, this remarkable memoir details the author’s experience as a conscript in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Jerry Gioglio relates with compelling honesty his struggles to understand and embody his working-class , Catholic upbringing while responding to civil rights challenges, the military draft, and the dehumanizing aspects of military training.
Addressing Modern Slavery
Addressing Modern Slavery provides important insights into the complexities that perpetuate slavery in a contemporary context, long after it was officially abolished. This book confronts the dark side of development that comes with intractable, complex, multi-tiered global supply chains. In particular, it highlights that global supply chains not only link us to modern slavery, but frequently generate the preconditions necessary for modern slavery to flourish in industries such as agriculture, manufacturing and mining, which account for the majority of slaves in the world. Governments can also be complicit: while modern slavery can be connected to companies and consumers through supply chains, there are also governments that actively promote and benefit from slave labour.
Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular
How did American Christianity become synonymous with conservative white evangelicalism? This sweeping work by a leading historian of modern America traces the rise of the evangelical movement and the decline of mainline Protestantism’s influence on American life. In Christianity’s American Fate, David Hollinger shows how the Protestant establishment, adopting progressive ideas about race, gender, sexuality, empire, and divinity, liberalized too quickly for some and not quickly enough for others.
Atmasiddhi Shastra
Atmasiddhi Shastra (Six Spiritual Truths of the Soul) is the work of Srimad Rajchandra of India. It is a simple question-and answer work that engages a conversation between a doubter and a teacher (a guru) about the nature of the soul. Rajchandra was guru to Mahatma Gandhi. The book has forewords given by the XIV Dalai Lama and the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.
Interreligious Heroes – Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice
The Elijah institute announces a new book in the Interreligious Reflections series, presenting inspirational leaders in Interreligious relations. This volume was conceived as a tribute to Elijah board member and contemporary interreligious hero, Rabbi David Rosen, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.
A Rabbi writes: Two Books That Lifted My Spirits in the Time of COVID
On this day of the Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashannah – Religions for Peace Australia greets the Jewish Community with Shanah Tovah!!!, (meaning ‘have a good year). To celebrate Rosh Hashannah in time of Lockdown, we bring you the writing of one Jewish Rabbi who found his spirits uplifted with two books … during lockdown.
Peace in The Age of Chaos: The Best Solution for a Sustainable Future
The much-anticipated book by renowned businessman, global philanthropist and peacebuilder, Steve Killelea, A.M., offers a new and accessible understanding of peace: one that is measureable, resilient and above all, achievable in a time of chaos.
Zealot: A Book about Cults
Jo Thorneley is an Australian writer and the host of a comic podcast, ‘Zealot’. She asserts that she has an obsession about cults, and that is, no doubt, correct. Her book about the zealots who generally establish and profit in one way or another from cults is written in a witty, colloquial, stream-of-consciousness style. It aims to be – and succeeds in being – highly entertaining. It has no pretensions towards being learned or scholarly, but it is well researched and beguilingly thought-provoking.
