mountain masala

australian poetry library

thanks to stephen webb for this: a new website on Australian poetry.

The Australian Poetry Library - with thousands of free poems, including

James McAuley

AD Hope

Henry Lawson

David Malouf

Les Murray

Oodgeroo Noonuccal

David Rowbotham

Kenneth Slessor

Judith Wright

woooo. enjoy.

(now where is Kevin Hart?)

Freedom of Religion in Australia

I'm in Sydney for a few days getting oriented to working for the Assembly and meeting with the Assembly staff team with whom I will relate for two years.  Really great to discover more about what our church is doing nationally. I remember having the same feeling at Assembly Standing Committee meetings and of course at our triennial Assemblys.

I'm going mention a few things in the next few days, but the first (thanks Elenie) is that the Australian Human Rights Commission has just released a report called "Freedom of Religion and Belief in 21st Century Australia". The report is co-authored by Professor Gary Bouma, Professor Desmond Cahill, Dr Hass Dellal, and Athalia Zwartz.

Gary Bouma of course is Professor Emeritus of Sociology from Monash University, with a research specialisation in religion in Australia. He's the author of Australian Soul from Cambridge University Press.

I'm looking forward to reading this and working its findings into my writing about the kind of landscape in which Christian education takes place.

The main project page is here. There are a number of supplementary papers, some available now and some forthcoming.