Life & Faith

Zombies, Faith, and Politics

 
Film and TV critic Alissa Wilkinson on the end of the world - as pop culture imagines it.
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“Dystopia is like the more woke version of utopia. It’s where we’re working out our biggest anxieties as a culture. For instance, does the human race deserve to continue? Or would it be better if we just went away?”
Alissa Wilkinson fell into film and television criticism after completing a degree in computer science – which she says actually helps her analyse culture well. 
“I think my job is to watch a movie as well as I can, and then be able to look at my reaction to it as a good watcher and articulate why that reaction happened, and then also to make space for the reader to have their own experience with the work of art,” Alissa says.
“Sometimes [my job is] to just say ‘this is bad’ or ‘this is a masterpiece’, but if I don’t add the ‘why?’ then I’m not doing my job at all as a critic.”
She’s particularly fascinated by ‘“end of the world’” narratives and is the co-author of How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World.
In this episode, Alissa talks The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, Strangers Things and The Handmaid’s Tale – and how the dystopian futures we imagine more often than not tell us more about the society we live in today.
“The bigger question is, what would it take for us, as an enlightened and progressive society, to end up back in that kind of a place? The answer The Handmaid’s Tale gives is really sobering – if we take our eye off the ball, if we get too distracted by our own comfortable lives, little by little our our rights and freedoms that we enjoy can be chipped away.”
But it’s not all about death and destruction. Alissa also recognizses that in the doomsday narratives, there’s often something more going on.
“We’re brought into the story to recognise ourselves in it, and then this sort of mysterious, transcendent thing pops up, and it adds a new dimension to the story, but it also shows us that it’s something we’re really longing for.”
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READ Alissa Wilkinson’s articles for Vox: www.vox.com/authors/alissa-wilkinson
Get a copy of How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and  Politics at the End of the World: www.alissawilkinson.com/book
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One Giant Leap

 
50 years on from the moon landing seems like a good time to ask a few existential questions.
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“He said he could stand on the moon, look up to earth, and with this gloved hand hold up his thumb and cover the entire planet. Under his thumb - every mountain, every river, every city, every person he knew, all the people he didn’t ... It made him feel terrifyingly small and vulnerable.” 
It’s 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission put humans on the moon for the first time. 
It was an event that captured the imagination of people across the world, and successive generations since. Four days after blasting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the crew radioed to Mission Control in Houston: “The Eagle has landed.” In the stillness following the landing, before taking communion with bread and wine he had brought specially for the occasion, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin sent this message back to Earth: 
“I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” 
In this celebratory episode of Life & Faith, Simon Smart asks some existential questions about the universe and our place in it, and our tendency to reach for the spiritual to make sense of such moments of wonder and awe. In conversation with CPX resident philosopher Richard Shumack, he muses on why the moon landing so captivated them as children. And Andrew Smith, author of Moondust: In Search of the Men who Fell to Earth, talks to Simon about how the moonwalkers were changed by the experience, and how they’ve coped with being earthbound in the decades since. 
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Referenced in this episode: 
Andrew Smith, Moondust: In Search of the Men who Fell to Earth
Frank Cottrell Boyce, Cosmic 
Audio courtesy of NASA 
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REBROADCAST: A White Man's World

There’s sadness and hope on the long road towards Aboriginal recognition and reconciliation.
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“He said to me, ‘never forget you’re an Aboriginal, but do the best you can in a white man’s world’. So that’s what I’ve tried to do. With the help of the Lord Jesus.”
Every year, National Reconciliation Week celebrates the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. The theme for 2017 is: “Let’s take the next steps”. It seems pretty fitting because while there have been some important, and long overdue, moves towards reconciliation, there’s no doubt that many more steps still need to be taken.
In this episode, stories from Cummeragunja, a significant place when it comes to Aboriginal rights, recognition – and Christianity.
Hear from Uncle Denis Atkinson who explains his problem with the word “reconciliation”, and says there’s only “one good thing” to come from white settlement in Australia for Aboriginal people.
Also, Aunty Maureen shares her powerful story about growing up on Umeewarra Mission as part of the Stolen Generation.
“We weren’t allowed to be inside at all, we had to play outside all day. But there were times when I needed to get away and there was one little room. That’s where I’d mourn my family. I’d sit there and rock backwards and forwards, just missing them so much.”
Plus, we speak with Uncle Boydie in front of the new Reconciliation Week mural in Shepparton. It features the faces of his grandfather, William Cooper, and his friend, Pastor Doug – both men were iconic Aboriginal leaders who spent their entire lives fighting for their people.
“I think these two men would be very pleased if they could look forward to today and know what happened because of the work they did in their time.”
Keep listening at the end of this episode for a very special thank you to a few people who made this Reconciliation Week episode possible – including a beautiful song from Uncle Denis and Aunty Maureen.
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This episode was first broadcast on 1 June 2017.
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Are we victims?

Michael Ramsden on how we respond to injustice: as nations, groups, and individuals.
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“There’s a very interesting phrase in the Old Testament where it says you’ve turned justice into bitterness. In a more poetical translation it says you’ve turned justice into bitterness, so your righteous acts taste like poisoned fruit. In other words, if your motivation for justice is bitterness, even if you get that which is right, it can taste like poison to everybody else.”
Michael Ramsden has been thinking about our culture’s struggles with injustice and disagreement a lot lately. In this conversation with Natasha Moore, he talks about what it means to live in a “victim culture” - according to definitions from history and psychology, rather than the opinion pages that rail against “snowflake” millennials! - and our options for responding to past trauma. 
From the Balkans to the Holocaust, Superman movies to very personal stories of trauma and forgiveness, Michael helps us interrogate how we construct our identities, and what kind of society we want to be. 
“The problem is, when we hold onto our bitterness, we end up paying twice for all of the injustice we’ve suffered. We pay once when it happens and then we pay again on every remembrance of it.” 
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This is the second part of Natasha’s conversation with Michael Ramsden, International Director of RZIM and one of the founders of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. To hear more about Michael’s personal story, listen to the first part. 
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Are we commitment-phobes?

Michael Ramsden talks to everyone from politicians to terrorists about culture, faith, and Jesus.
“I just thought if I became a Christian my life would become worse … I was 100% sure that I was sacrificing on the altar of truth my only chance for happiness in this world.”
Michael Ramsden was a very unlikely convert to Christianity - and that’s the least unlikely of the stories he has to tell in this two-part interview. From talking to Australian MPs on the day of a leadership spill to being invited to spend time with terrorist groups, he has a lot of interesting conversations with interesting people. 
In this episode of Life & Faith, Michael offers a window onto the various worlds he’s part of, and some cultural observations that we may find more skewering than is comfortable. 
“[We] struggle with the sense of commitment that’s required, all the time forgetting that all relationship relies on commitment. Whatever you’re slightly committed to is going to feel shallow by comparison. So although some commitments may seem huge, when you understand how the nature of all relationship works - which is the more you’re committed to it and the more you’re giving to it, the more enthralling and deep it is - then that equation begins to change.”
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Rebroadcast: Extravagance

Life & Faith tackles a series of moral dilemmas around poverty and luxury, beauty and utility. 
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How can we act ethically in a world that contains so much suffering? 
One of our Facebook followers articulated the moral dilemma involved in devoting money to “non-essential” things when they commented on a Life & Faith episode about the Museum of the Bible, a $400-million project being built in Washington DC. They posted: 
“Surely it is better to spend the time, money and energy required for this project on putting what Jesus said into practice. What about feeding the homeless on the streets of DC.” 
It’s a fair point - but it’s also a slippery slope. 
If we’re truly paying attention to the poverty in our local communities and around the world, how can we ever spend money on a pair of nice shoes, an expensive holiday, or even our morning coffee?
For that matter, how can we justify art and culture? Is it frivolous to spend money on beautiful things, or to spend time making or enjoying art, rather than on feeding the hungry or curing someone of a preventable disease? 
John Dickson and Simon Smart join Natasha Moore for a discussion about luxury and poverty, beauty and utility, with reference to Peter Singer, effective altruism, the Met Gala, and the woman who poured perfume on Jesus’ feet. 
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This episode was first broadcast over two weeks in August 2016. 
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The Philosopher’s Faith

John Haldane on virtue, happiness, narcissism, and the possibility of God.
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“Philosophy from its origins has always had its focus on the idea that we investigate thought and the world and so on in order to answer the question: how ought I to live?”
John Haldane is that rare breed, a public intellectual. He’s an academic philosopher who also works hard to introduce philosophical concepts to the rest of us in ways that connect with our lives.
“Anybody who is seriously interested in living their own life well is going to be somebody who is looking for answers to questions and they’re going to talk to others and so on. They’re not going to think that they can just generate that out of themselves - or they ought not to think that.”
Simon Smart grills John on unhappiness and virtue, self-love, what higher education is really for, optimism and pessimism, and whether arguments for the existence of God have any traction. He also asks: what personal reasons do you have for being a Christian? How do you arrive at belief?
“These are different areas or elements within one’s broader view of the world … There is the scientific over here, there’s the philosophical there, there’s the experiential there and so on, and it’s more a matter of kind of going on the Grand Tour, and revisiting and coming to these, and then experiencing them and reflecting on them in the light of what one has previously experienced and reflected upon, and then moving, and then coming back - and so on. So it’s a kind of to-ing and fro-ing between these different areas."
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John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. He was in Sydney as a guest of the Scots College, to deliver their annual Clark Lecture.
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Sister Act

Life & Faith hears from two young women who’ve made some very counter-cultural choices.
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“Sometimes we’ve been mistaken for many other things. We have a convent in New York City, and one night our Sisters were walking on the streets, back to one of our convents. A group approached them and said, ‘Hey Sisters, what’s the show on Broadway tonight?’ I mean, you see a lot of things in New York, and we’re just part of it. Then we were in Sydney too, a little girl boarded a bus one day when there were a few of us on, and said, ‘Look Mum, all these women are getting married today.’ You know, so it’s a sight unseen.” 
Sister Jean Marie and Sister Mary Grace are Sisters of Life. They’ve taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience – the vows that nuns have taken for centuries – as well as an extra vow, to protect and enhance the sacredness of every human life.
Their order is often described as “pro-life”, but Sister Mary Grace says she likes to think of their work as radically “pro-woman”, supporting mothers and pregnant women who feel that their choices are limited by offering them practical help, and unconditional love.
In this episode of Life & Faith, we hear from two young women who’ve made very counter-cultural choices: opting for commitment in an age of keeping your options open; celibacy in an age obsessed with sex and romance; communal living in an age of atomisation and loneliness; a life of prayer in an age that pursues productivity and efficiency. What could lead someone to make that kind of choice?
“Ultimately, what I've discovered in joining the Sisters of Life is that love desires to commit. Just last August I professed my first vows, and that day was like a wedding day for me. It was really an experience of freedom. I think love ultimately desires to give itself away to the beloved, to the other person that is loved.”
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What we talk about when we talk about movies

A conversation with film critic CJ Johnson, for anyone who’s ever loved a film.
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CJ Johnson was an only child who grew up watching Bill Collins present the best of Hollywood every Friday and Saturday night on Channel 10, and who calls film his “first real friend”. These days, he’s a film critic, lecturer, and playwright who watches and thinks about movies for a living and reviews them for the ABC, among other places. 
That’s how he met Simon Smart - the two appeared together on an episode of ABC Radio’s Nightlife program one Easter to talk about some of the myriad cinematic versions of the Jesus story. 
"I came to respect that that story, in the New Testament, is a bloody good story - just an outrageously brilliant story. For the first time, I got properly an understanding of why that story is beloved by a certain sizeable chunk of the planet. And it was seeing it told cinematically that got me to that place.” 
In this conversation, CJ and Simon try to get to the bottom of their love of film; touch on classics from Casablanca to Jaws as well as the Marvel phenomenon and 2018’s Mary Magdalene; and talk about how to recognise a good movie when you see one. CJ also tackles the eternal question of whether you have to read the book before watching the film - as well as which kinds of books make the best movies. 
“I see art as something that those of us who don’t go to church have - going to the cinema is my church. … No one can survive on nothing, and art feeds the soul.” 
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Missionary Doctor

What could make someone give up everything to serve some of the world’s poorest women?
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"As a junior doctor I went to Ethiopia to work with my aunt in the desert area, and we were just wandering around the desert with camels, treating people under trees and shrubs and things in 50-degree heat … You’d have to sleep with a guard with a gun because the hyenas get quite close, so every now and then you’d get woken up with a gunshot and this hyena yelping off in the distance. And then a bit later that night a camel was bellowing just a few metres away from my head and gives birth, and I get splattered with all this amniotic fluid."
Andrew Browning has spent more than 17 years in Africa as a missionary doctor. As a medical student, he spent time working with Rwandan refugees fleeing the genocide; as a junior doctor, he joined Catherine Hamlin at the Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, dedicating his life to helping women who are suffering from debilitating childbirth injuries. 
In this episode of Life & Faith, Andrew explains how he could give up a lucrative, comfortable life as a doctor at home in Australia to help thousands of women halfway round the world. He explains the risks of childbirth in rural places, what a fistula is, and his hope for a future where women don’t have to face this kind of suffering. 
He also talks about the difference between being a missionary doctor or a secular healthcare worker somewhere like Africa - as well as how African and Western people respond differently to illness, suffering, and death. 
"I remember telling people in Australia they’ve got cancer, or 'You’ve got a life-threatening condition’, and the immediate reaction was 'No, no, you’re wrong' or 'Give me a second opinion; that can’t be true’, or they’re angry. Whereas if you do that in Africa it’s much more 'Oh, okay, sure. My time is up.' I mean they’re much more attuned to death and accepting of suffering as part of life, they see it every day … The poor in Africa, the physically poor, people say that they’re spiritually rich, and the materially rich are often spiritually poor - at least in my experience."
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Content warning: This episode contains explicit medical details, as well as descriptions of violence, that you may find distressing and that probably aren’t appropriate for kids. 
Find out more about Andrew's ongoing work to end obstetric fistula globally through the Barbara May Foundation. 
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