Markets & Justice

Markets & Justice
Freely operating markets yield a just outcome?

White Australia Has A Black History

White Australia Has A Black History

Thursday 31 December 2015

Who is/was Jesus really? Have we, in western Christendom, painted for ourselves a false picture of the Jesus that walked this planet? Greg Jenks explains...

The post below comes from the blog of Greg Jenks.  It is being posted not only because of the discussion/reflection on the humanity of Jesus but also because of the discussion on the various issues of justice which need to be addressed as and if we are followers of Jesus. Advocacy @ St Paul's is a small group within the parish of St Paul's, Bakery Hill in Ballarat.  We have been in existence only just over a year.  What we do here at this time is local.  Greg Jenks has given us a list on a broader scale.  We will have to consider how we can tap into these vital issues which extend beyond our Australian borders because at we welcome 2016, the Millenium Development Goals have been neither met nor completed.

The Human Jesus


[An extract from my recent book, Jesus Then and Jesus Now: Looking for Jesus, Finding Ourselves. Melbourne: Mosaic Press, 2014), pp. 124–30.]
The humanity of Jesus is not to be considered as a philosophical puzzle and carefully dovetailed with his preexistent divinity, but observed in its ordinary expressions in everyday life. Taking the humanity of Jesus seriously means that we notice his ethnicity, his religion, his economic status, and his political situation. If such categories seem odd for a discussion of Jesus it may well be an indication of just how little significance we have attributed to the humanity of Jesus.
A Palestinian Jesus
This first attribute of the historical Jesus may come as a surprise since ‘Palestinian’ has largely become a pejorative term in recent Western discourse. I am, of course, using the term as a geographical descriptor, rather than an ethnic or a political identity. Jesus was indigenous to the land of Palestine,[1] and he lived there at a time when it was—once again—under the control of a foreign imperial power exercising its authority through local puppet rulers.
One of the continuing tragedies of our time is the theft not only of the Palestinians’ land, but also their culture and history, so essential for their identity.[2] In the struggle for possession of their historical lands, the Palestinians have been represented as violent extremists, while the systematic violence directed towards them is overlooked or excused.[3]
If we put aside the caricature of Palestinians as anti-Semitic terrorists, what might it mean to consider Jesus as a Palestinian? The first and most significant element may simply be to dislodge traditional assumptions and expectations. A ‘Palestinian Jesus’ is as incongruous to many people as the term ‘Palestinian Jew’ even though the latter term was not unusual prior to 1948.
Yet, as Naim Ateek reminds us,[4] Jesus the Palestinian was an oppressed and marginalized person, as well as a liberation theologian. There are few peoples in the world more marginalized than the Palestinians, and Jesus shares their experience both as someone indigenous to Palestine and as someone who suffered undeserved violence from the imperial powers of his own time.
Jesus the Palestinian is God doing theology from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. The imperial churches of Rome, Geneva, and Canterbury—to name just three historical expressions of Christianity—have always preferred to do their theology the other way around. The Palestinian Jesus challenges his followers to lay aside our inherited privileges and stand among the poor and the dispossessed, where God is more often to be found than in the cathedrals and chapels of Christendom.
A Jewish Jesus
Alongside the Palestinian Jesus we place the Jewish Jesus. They are the same person. Why does this surprise us? What assumptions and stereotypes continue to control our thinking if we find this a strange combination? Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. (Paul, on the other hand, was a Diaspora Jew.)
For almost two thousand years the Jews were the despised ‘other’. In the Christian West, the devotees of Jesus the Jew hated his people and subjected them to shameful discrimination and violence. The horror of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany was not so much an aberration as the most extreme example of Christian anti-Semitism. Jesus would have been sent to a Nazi death camp had he been found in occupied Europe during the 1940s. Jesus was sent to the death camps. He was crucified again and again in the gas chambers and the ovens.
The Jewish Jesus confronts our suspicion of the Jew, and of anyone who is different from us. The Jewish Jesus compels us to see that God’s mercy is more ancient than Christianity. The Jewish Jesus invites us to imagine a way of being religious that is not about orthodoxy, but service; forming communities that—in their best moments—live the covenant and provide a light to the nations.
Jesus was a particular person, with a distinctive culture and a religion that refused to be domesticated by the dominant cultural and political powers of his day. As a Jew, as someone who shared the Jewish historical experience of oppression and loathing, Jesus challenges his own followers to embrace their own religious tradition without rejecting, fearing, or persecuting those of other faiths.
Jesus the Jew resisted power and privilege, and that cost him his life. On Good Friday it seemed that privilege and power had won the contest, but three hundred years later the emperor of Rome was a devotee of Jesus. Exiled from their lands and dispersed among the nations, it seemed that the Jews were condemned to a destiny of diaspora and discrimination. Crucifixion was not the final word on Jesus, and dispersion was not the final word on the Jews.
As a Palestinian Jew, Jesus holds together two identities that many Palestinians and Jews today see as opposed. To his Palestinian brothers and sisters, Jesus offers hope and an invitation to nonviolent resistance in the cause of human liberation. To his Jewish sisters and brothers, Jesus presents a Palestinian child and invites them to see in her a daughter, a sister, a beloved, and a child of Abraham.
Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:36–37)
A Small-Town Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth was not a city person. In a world where so many people now live in cities,[5] with our toes touching concrete but rarely the bare earth, this makes him a stranger to us. Our unnatural lives also make us strangers to the earth. We are like caged chickens isolated in wire cells to make us more productive, and no longer able to follow our natural desire to scratch in the dirt.
As we have seen, there were cities in the world that Jesus inhabited. Close to hand were modest Jewish cities such as Sepphoris and Tiberias. Not much farther away were the cosmopolitan cities of the Decapolis, as well as Caesarea Maritima, Ako-Ptolemais, or Tyre. The only city Jesus seems to have visited was Jerusalem. He died there.
Back then, cities were places that promised opportunity, but delivered disease, exploitation, and poverty. Cities were the haunts of the powerful and the criminals. Cities were where the taxes went. Cities celebrated the international culture of the mobile and the privileged with their academies, their gymnasia, and their theatres. Cities offered palaces, temples, hippodromes, and the circus.
Lots of village people were drawn to the city. Like the prodigal son, they consumed their inheritance and sank into the crowd of expendables at the bottom of the social order. Few of them made it back home to the embrace of a loving parent. Even fewer were laid in a new tomb when their lives were cut short by disease and violence.
Soon after Easter, Christianity became—and has remained—a religion of the cities. From as early as the ministry of Paul, the centre of gravity for the Jesus movement shifted from the villages of Galilee to the cities of the Mediterranean rim. The word ‘pagan’ derives from the Latin paganus, a term for villager, rustic, or rural person. We have forgotten our roots. Jesus was a pagan, a rustic from an exceptionally small village. Yet we are so sophisticated, so at home in the city, so comfortable in the corridors of privilege.
Luke’s version of the beatitudes strikes us as harsh and extreme, but for the vast majority of the world’s population these words may sound like good news.
Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
A Third-World Jesus
From all that has been said so far, it is clear that Jesus seems to have more in common with the so-called ‘Third World’ (better said, the ‘Two-Thirds World’) than with either the big end of town or the aspirational suburbs of contemporary urban life. The kind of human being that Jesus seems to have been would be a beneficiary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG),[6] rather than a celebrity using his ‘name’ to raise donations to assist the poor. Looking at Jesus through the lens of the MDG is a worthwhile exercise, employed below.
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Jesus seems to have understood God’s compassion as especially directed towards the poor and the hungry. His program included meals where all were fed regardless of status or assets. At the heart of the so-called Lord’s Prayer is a petition for bread, along with the forgiveness of debts.[7] In every Eucharist we break the bread and share the cup, but the agape meal of earliest Christianity has been reduced to a symbolic taste.
2. Achieve universal primary education. Growing up in a small village with no access to education, Jesus would have benefited from such a program. He seems to have been technically illiterate, as he read no books, cited no books, and wrote no books.[8] At the same time, he seems to have been a gifted oral poet.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women. As religious progressives we would like to imagine Jesus as an advocate of gender equality and opportunity for women. Such a Jesus would be most congenial to us. It is not clear to what extent Jesus encouraged the participation of women in his covenant renewal movement, but we see the legacy of his kingdom message in Paul’s assertion that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).
4. Reduce child mortality. High rates of child mortality were sad realities for Jesus and his contemporaries. It has been estimated that half of all live births ended in death within the first twelve months, and that only half of those who survived the first year would live to see their fifth birthday.[9]
5. Improve maternal health. This goal is closely related to the previous one, and it is surely a gift to us that the NT Gospels represent Jesus as consistently respectful to women and concerned for the well-being of his own mother. Whether or not that reflects the historical reality,[10] Jesus can serve as a model for other men to be concerned for the women in our families and our communities.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Jesus acquired a reputation as a healer.[11] As with a modern disease such as HIV/AIDS, the problems Jesus cured were as much psychosocial as medical. He declared people clean and restored them to their communities.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability. Jesus was not an environmental activist. However, he does seem to have lived close to nature. Poor people have little choice. A great many of his parables and aphorisms express his profound reflection on the natural world as a source of wisdom for the spiritual life. His underlying outlook of simple reliance on the generosity of the good father[12] suggests a relationship with the environment that rejected the dominion paradigms found in the Genesis creation myths.
8. Global partnerships for development. This goal would have been incomprehensible to Jesus, yet central to his vision of the kingdom of God was a community that transgressed the conventional boundaries of family, village and ethnicity. He imagined the kingdom as an experience of community to which many would come from East and West (Matt 8:11). The double accounts of the feeding of the multitude in Mark and Matthew suggest that his ‘good news’ was understood to embrace both Jews and Gentiles. In his encounter with the Canaanite woman (Mark 7:24–30 = Matt 15:21–28) Jesus seems to accept her instruction as he embraces the idea that God’s compassion extends even to those outside the covenant community. That is an insight many of his most enthusiastic followers have yet to grasp.
An Expendable Jesus
It is no surprise that a Jesus such as I am sketching here was also an expendable Jesus, like so many of his poor sisters and brothers back then and ever since. An expendable human is one whose worth—as perceived by those who are in a position to act upon it—is calculated on the basis the benefits that others can derive from them: economic production, consumer spending, military recruits, church growth statistics, and so on.
As an expendable person, Jesus was eventually a victim of the systemic violence that was embodied in the Roman Empire and its Herodian puppet regimes. From the perspective of power and honour in his own time and place, Jesus was a failure, while someone such as Herod Antipas was a success. Antipas had John the Baptist killed and may have done the same to Jesus had Pilate not preempted him. The crucified Jesus dies in profound solidarity with the poor and the expendables across human history.
The human Jesus is in many ways a forgotten Jesus. Recovering his legacy may be a precious gift that the Christian community can offer to a world that is in real need of spiritual wisdom about what it means to be authentically human.
Footnotes
[1] While it is sometimes asserted that the name ‘Palestine’ was only applied to these territories after Rome had suppressed the Bar-Kokba Revolt (132–35 c.e.), in fact the new Roman name for the former Jewish territories reflected ancient local practices going back to the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt (ca. 1150 b.c.e.). Herodotus (ca. 484–425 b.c.e.) refers to a “district of Syria called Palaistine” (Hist. 2:89), while Aristotle refers to the Dead Sea as “a lake in Palestine” (Meteorology 2.3).
[2] For a recent attempt to reclaim the history of Palestine, see Whitelam, Rhythms of Time. See also his earlier work, Invention of Ancient Israel.
[3] Revisionist Israeli scholars such as Ilan Pappe are doing both Jews and Palestinians an immense service by bringing much of this suppressed history into the public domain. See Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
[4] Ateek, “Jonah, the First Palestinian Liberation Theologian”.
[5] The UN Population Fund reports that in “2008, for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population will be living in towns and cities. By 2030 this number will swell to almost 5 billion, with urban growth concentrated in Africa and Asia.” http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm
[6] See http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/.
[7] For texts and discussion, see 120 The Lords Prayer in the Jesus Database online. The version in Matt 6:9–13 seems more spiritualized than the less familiar version found on Luke 11:2–4.
[8] In this observation I follow the general findings of the Jesus Seminar, which tended to see such literary elements in the Jesus traditions as evidence of a later phase of development.
[9] For a brief discussion of these demographics, see Meyers, Discovering Eve, 112–13.
[10] For a critical assessment of the enthusiasm to promote Jesus as sensitive to women’s issues, see Corley,Women and the Historical Jesus.
[11] See http://www.jesusdatabase.org/index.php?title=Jesus_as_Healer.
[12] See 082 Against Anxieties in the Jesus Database online.

About gregoryjenks

Academic Dean at St Francis Theological College, Brisbane, and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University.

Now some sort of decision has been agreed by the Australian Government, are we in time? Are we doing enough of what it takes?


'Many Of Our Major Cities Will be Submerged': Climate-Change T...
"I don't think most citizens in the world have really grasped what is happening -- and what these risks are."
Posted by HuffPost Australia on Sunday, 29 November 2015

Wednesday 30 December 2015

How to get economic growth: give to the poor instead of the already rich

Economic growth more likely when wealth distributed to poor instead of rich


Having money from economic growth flow to poor people rather than the rich feeds into a lift in the rate of economic growth and lower unemployment. Conversely, as income inequality increases, the potential for economic growth is constrained.


The economic case for maintaining a progressive income tax structure and targeting welfare payments to those most in need is overwhelming.
The issue can be illustrated through a simple stylised example which outlines how a higher cash flow to the poorest is growth enhancing while a higher cash flow to the rich boosts savings, but keeps economic growth lower.
Take a situation where there is a $1bn addition to the economy via growth. That $1bn can be distributed in many different ways but let’s initially assume the 10 richest people in Australia each receive all of that gain, with $100m going to each person.
According to the BRW Rich list, the tenth richest person in Australia has wealth of $2.65bn while the richest, Gina Rinehart, has more than $14bn. Economic theory and research suggests that the extra $100m to each of these uber wealthy people would be almost totally be absorbed into their wealth and there would be only a very small increase in economic activity as a result.
According to research from the Brookings Institution and the Reserve Bank of Australia, the marginal propensity to consume of high-income earners is substantially less than for low-income earners. In other words, poorer people are likely to spend the bulk of any extra income while the wealthy are more likely to save it.
Looked at another way, would Gina Rinehart, Anthony Pratt or Harry Triguboff increase their spending over and above their current consumption patterns if their income had a one off boost of $100m? The answer is an overwhelming no. More likely the extra $100m would merely find its way into their assets and wealth. Any impact on the macro-economy as a result would be small.

An alternative is distributing the $1bn by allocating $1,000 to each of the poorest one million people via a $20 a week tax cut or benefit increase. In this scenario, there is a strong probability the vast bulk of the $1bn would be spent to improve their living standards. Low-income earners are unlikely to save or invest the extra income.
Now think of how the different distribution of the $1bn will affect the economy and jobs.
If the money finds its way to those on low incomes, there will inevitably be higher aggregate spending, more jobs and quite simply a stronger economy. And if the income distribution continues to be skewed to those on low incomes, there will be a lift in the growth potential of the economy. Unemployment would be structurally lower and there would be a self-supporting cycle of stronger activity as a result.
In most sober analyses of income distribution, no one is suggesting governments have a policy framework to crunch the rich and blindly give the money to the poor. Rather, the idea of greater income equality and a more even distribution of wealth reiterates the importance of a progressive income tax structure. It also highlights the economically sensible nature of targeted welfare assistance to those on lower incomes and a tightening of payments away from high income earners.
This is where the current tax breaks to very wealthy Australian superannuants and the business sector need to be radically overhauled.
Not only will changing policies in these areas enhance economic growth and see a structural lowering in the unemployment rate, they have the other benefit of being fair, decent and compassionate.
Let’s hope the next election covers the issues of income inequality and how redistribution is such a vital element for growth.
Stephen Koukoulas is a Research Fellow at Per Capita, a progressive think tank.

Pensioner Poverty in developed nations - Australia is second last

We do have to be grateful for the fact that Australia has a system of old-age economic provision. So many nations on this earth do not.  So the graph below relates only to OECD nations. Infographic: Where Is Pensioner Poverty The Most Prevalent? | Statista
You will find more statistics at Statista

Tuesday 29 December 2015

More on Homelessness and "Notes from a Crisis".

Father Constantine has replied to the embedded Facebook Post in the preceding blogpost as follows:

Constantine Osuchukwu 

Samuel Johnson once said that "the true test of any civilization is how it treats those on the margins." By cutting the funding for the homeless we are really showing what kind of civilization we are building -one that looks after and protects the rich, powerful and influential and ignores or doesn't take very seriously the plight of the 'least among us'. We should be cutting spending on the billions we spend on incarcerating refugees by closing detention centres and use the money on helping our homeless people tackle the issues that lead them to homelessness, like addictions, domestic violence, mental illness, etc. What can I do? May I help? I agree with Brigid that we ought to do something about this FG spending cut for homelessness advocacy.


This blog has posted fairly regularly on homelessness.

Below is a PowerPoint presentation - Notes from a Crisis -
compiled from feedback following a major forum
on homelessness held in 2015 by 
Ballarat Regional Multicultural Association & Ballarat Interfaith Network




Monday 28 December 2015

The Federal Government cutting homelessness funding? Charles Dickens' Scrooge is alive and well this Christmas


This sounds like a task for Ballarat Interfaith Network and Ballarat Regional Multicultural Council and Anglicare...
Posted by Brigid O'Carroll Walsh on Sunday, 27 December 2015

Tuesday 29 December 2015.

Father Constantine has replied this morning:

Constantine Osuchukwu Samuel Johnson once said that "the true test of any civilization is how it treats those on the margins." By cutting the funding for the homeless we are really showing what kind of civilization we are building -one that looks after and protects the rich, powerful and influential and ignores or doesn't take very seriously the plight of the 'least among us'. We should be cutting spending on the billions we spend on incarcerating refugees by closing detention centres and use the money on helping our homeless people tackle the issues that lead them to homelessness, like addictions, domestic violence, mental illness, etc. What can I do? May I help? I agree with Brigid that we ought to do something about this FG spending cut for homelessness advocacy.

Friday 25 December 2015

Christmas at St Paul's

Christmas greetings and blessings to all. 
Last night's family service at St Paul's was a happy and beautiful occasion.
It was led by Father Constantine and Father Chris Chataway.
Father Chris is the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral here in Ballarat.
He is also St Paul's next door neighbour - living with his family
on the other side of St Paul's carpark!
The Crucifer is Gabriel Waldron - who doubles as Verger at St Paul's.
Wishing you a happy and beautiful Christmastide
from everyone at Advocacy @ St Paul's. 

Thursday 24 December 2015

How people have found a way to help #2


Make your own Homeless Gift Packs to give away. Keep a couple in the car for when you see someone in need!Food...

How people have found a way to help #1 ....


I saw this gentleman in Safeway on 29th tonight. People looked horrified as he walked around the store wearing a blanket...

The blessings of the season to all - and, if you follow the message below, Christmas can be present in our hearts and lives all year round


Want to keep Christ in Christmas?

Feed the hungry
Clothe the naked
Forgive the guilty
Welcome the unwanted
Care for the ill
Love your enemies
and do unto others as you would have done unto you

From Steve Maraboli

Wednesday 23 December 2015

Do Australians own up to their own racism and discrimination?


How do Australians tolerate the 'soft' apartheid which operates in so many parts of their nation?
Posted by Advocacy at St Pauls on Tuesday, 22 December 2015

Tuesday 22 December 2015

Refugees being frozen out of Australia to tropical Australia? Companies profiting from cruelty in detention centres will be frozen out by the City of Sydney.

Cross-posted with The Network and Beside The Creek

Campaign for Councils to refrain from doing business 
with companies that abuse human rights

Companies Involved In Offshore Detention

 Frozen Out By City Of Sydney

https://newmatilda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/City-of-Sydney.jpg
(IMAGE: Jason James, Flickr)

By Max Chalmers on December 15, 2015 Featured


A growing campaign to stop institutions from doing business with companies that abuse human rights has claimed a major scalp. Max Chalmers reports.

Companies profiting from the offshore detention of asylum seekers could be prevented from doing business with the City of Sydney after the Council resolved to review its investment and procurement policy and bring them into line with the No Business in Abuse campaign.

In a meeting last night, the Council voted to adopt a pledge not to support companies, institutions, or organisations that profit from abusive practices towards people seeking asylum.
Councillor-Irene-Doutney
Moved by Greens Councillor Irene Doutney (pictured), the successful motion will not impact current contracts, but could cause headaches for companies working in the offshore detention industry when new tenders are released.

Of particular interest will be the implications for Wilson Security, subcontracted by detention centre operator Broadspectrum (formerly known as Transfield) to provide security services in offshore centres. Wilson also provides substantial carparking and security services in Australia and the company has had a number of contracts with the City of Sydney, including an estimated $2.4 million deal to manage the Kings Cross Car Parking Station which is due to be reviewed in 2017.

Doutney told New Matilda that most members of the Council – dominated by Clover Moore’s progressive independents – were appalled by the abuses occurring in detention, and that she expected the motion would make it difficult for the Council to renew contracts with companies like Wilson in the future.

“I just think it’s really important for institutions, particularly councils, to take a stand on these sorts of things,” Doutney said. “People will say ‘it’s not Council business’, but I think anything to do with human rights is Council business. It’s really important to take a stand and, being City of Sydney, maybe other councils will now look favourably on the pledge.”

Doutney said the motion would not have an immediate impact but would put pressure on the Council not to sign contracts with or invest in companies linked to detention in the future. She said the Council already avoids investments in fossil fuels, tobacco, and nuclear.

The City of Sydney’s move comes at the end of a year that has seen Broadspectrum in particular come under pressure for its role in offshore detention, with the No Business in Abuse campaign occurring in tangent to a divestment movement. In August, super fund HESTA announced it was divesting, withdrawing $18 million from the company formerly known as Transfield.

The No Business in Abuse campaign said Leichhardt Council and Yarra City Council had also signed on.

“The City of Sydney is one of Australia’s largest councils, and their decision last night provides unstoppable momentum to the NBIA campaign which has expanded to target the clients of Broadspectrum and Wilson, including councils, schools, hospitals and big resources companies,” Shen Narayanasamy, Executive Director of No Business in Abuse and Human Rights Campaign Director at Getup, said in a press release.

Narayanasamy said the Wilson Group currently had over $3 million worth of contracts with the City of Sydney. If the Council holds its resolve, that number is likely to head towards zero in the coming years.

The Wilson Group could not be reached for comment.


You've fallen for Fresh at Woolworths? Want some pokies with that?


Here it is -the Woolworth's other 'Happy Christmas' advert courtesy of Getup. Please blare and share and dare your...
Posted by Gypsy Jack on Monday, 21 December 2015

Monday 21 December 2015

Exclusion and Embrace: Disability, Justice and Spirituality - August 2016, Melbourne

Andy Calder

11:05 (14 minutes ago)

 
to andy.calder123
 
Exclusion and Embrace: Disability, Justice and Spirituality

August 21-23, 2016                                            
Jasper Hotel, Melbourne



Artwork by Nathan Photiadis at Araluen Centre

Dear friends and colleagues

I am writing to bring this important multi-faith Conference to your attention and to your organisation/members/networks who may wish to participate.


Multi-faith Conferences such as this one, bringing together people who wish to explore the understandings and experiences of disability and spirituality, are rare occurrences in Australasia. The Conference will include keynote presentations, concurrent sessions and an Art Exhibition.

The organising Committee would therefore like to reach as many interested people as possible. This Conference has the endorsement of a number of entities including the Jewish Christian Muslim Association,Spiritual Care Australia and the Faith Communities Council of Victoria.

We are most appreciative of the support provided by a range of organisations and they are acknowledged on the website’s Homepage.

We have been most fortunate in attracting two internationally esteemed keynote speakers, Prof Hans Reinders and Rev Bill Gaventa who are in Australia for the IASSID Congress being held August 15-19 in Melbourne. The range of multi-faith presenters continues to grow, and is being regularly updated on our website.

We are now also seeking Abstracts from people who wish to make a presentation, drawing on the themes of exclusion and embrace.  In addition to spoken presentations and workshops, encouragement is also given to stories, poetry and song. Closing date for Abstracts is 10 April, 2016


Registrations are now open with Early Bird prices set till 17 June 2016. It is highly recommended people take advantage of the opportunity to register early, as Conference numbers are capped at 160.


Easy English information will be added to the website very soon.

downloadable brochure with all Conference details is available.

Please circulate and forward this email widely through your networks and request the content be brought to people’s attention and cross-linked to relevant websites/social media. Apologies for any cross postings. Please also refer to our Facebook page.

Thank you for your support in promoting this event as widely as possible. Further details from Ann Byrne at ann.byrne@victas.uca.org.au 03 9251 5404.


Yours Sincerely

Andy Calder
Conference Convenor