Religion & Ethics

The Protestant work ethic that persisted into the post-industrial era helped create the vast wealth of the very countries that are today most concerned about burnout. But it also valorised a destructive ideal of working to the point of martyrdom. To overcome burnout, we have to get rid of that ideal and create a new conception of how work fits into a life well lived.

Pentecostalism is one of the fastest growing religions in the world. What’s the appeal and why are young people drawn to it?  Compass visits the Life House Church in Murray Bridge, South Australia to find answers. And investigates the fallout from recent scandals in Pentecostal mega-churches here in Australia and overseas.

Coming up on 4 September

The Jobs and Skills Summit being convened this week in Canberra sets out to address the employment challenges that Australia currently faces. But even as we respond to today’s skills shortage, we must also keep an eye on the long-term consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning on jobs.

Our labour gives us purpose and allows us to contribute to the creativity of the world, and to our living well within it. As Pope Francis puts it, “Those who do not have work feel that something is missing, that they lack the dignity that work gives”. How might the dignity of work inform the outcomes of this week’s Jobs and Skills Summit?

Much of the uproar over Critical Race Theory in the US emerges from a group of people who feel they no longer belong to their political communities. This can express itself as a concern about belonging to the nation itself. The irony is that this anti-CRT fervour has emerged in response to a telling of US history that better includes persons who have long been excluded.

When many of us think of the art of Sir Sidney Nolan, it is his stylised images of Ned Kelly that come to mind or his 1952 Drought Photographs. Less known is his artistic response to the trial of Adolf Eichmann and the horrors of the Holocaust. Nolan’s account of Auschwitz is a powerful depiction of humanity’s capacity for evil, and a reminder of our communal forgetfulness.

In recent years there has been an all-out assault on the very idea of “civility” — with activists, pundits, and politicians declaring that the time for civil disagreement is over, and the time for moral outrage has begun. But before we reject civility altogether, we should be clear on what it is that we’re rejecting, lest we miss it when it’s gone.

Reports of religious bullying in Australian schools has reignited the “religion in schools” debate. Research has demonstrated that increasing religious literacy plays a significant role in reducing negative stereotypes of religious minorities. It is little wonder there are renewed calls for Australian schools to offer a more comprehensive form of religious education.