Life & Faith

How to revive a language

Can Australia’s “dreaming beauty” – our Indigenous languages – be reclaimed? Meet some people who say a joyful yes.  
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250 years ago, hundreds of languages were spoken across this continent; today, only about 3 percent survive.  
What happened in between is a familiar and harrowing story of dispossession – of land, lives, and culture – including a story of linguicide, or the deliberate killing of language.  
Is it possible to revive a language that has been long dormant – that has “gone to sleep on country”, as Charmaine Councillor, a Wardandi-Balladong woman heavily involved in the revival of the Noongar language of southwestern WA, puts it?  
In this bumper episode of Life & Faith, Charmaine and her Yamatji colleague Roslyn Khan describe what their language means to them, what the process of learning or relearning it has been like, and how they go about reviving Noongar – including by translating the Bible.  
“It’s like when you’re riding a bike for the first time, and you’ve got your training wheels on – then all of a sudden you’re taking off down the road and then you forget about how you’re riding the bike, you’re just riding it and enjoying it. That’s where I am at the moment, I’m getting to the part where I’m really enjoying it and start speaking it more.” 
We also hear from Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Professor of Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide, an Israeli linguist who has been using the work of a 19th-century German missionary to help the Barngarla people of South Australia reclaim their language. 
“Aboriginal people who reconnect with their heritage tongue, they feel totally empowered … I would argue that language reclamation can improve the diabetes problem among Aboriginal people. We do need to change our understanding of Aboriginal culture; there are billions or if not trillions of dollars being wasted by the government on tangible things, and I think that there is a total overlook of the intangible. Language is intangible, you cannot touch it. But I think that this intangible element can have a huge benefit when it comes to tangible elements.”  
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Explore: 
The Story of Ruth in Noongar 
Gospel of Luke in Noongar/English 
Ghil’ad Zuckermann’s book Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond 

The real story of science and religion

Nicholas Spencer insists the history of the relationship between science and religion is infinitely more interesting than the myths would have us believe.  
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Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half–truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century. 
Nick Spencer takes these myths on in his comprehensive book, Magisteria: the entangled histories of science and religion. The history of science and religion is complex. It’s a story of religion at times inspiring scientific discovery and endeavour, and at other times stifling it.  
And it’s a deeply human story that remains potent today as we continue to face the profoundly important question: “What is the human being?” And “Who gets to say?”  
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Explore 
Nicholas Spencer, Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and faith 
Nick Spencer Darwin and God 
Nick Spencer Atheists: the origin of the species 
Nick Spencer CPX’s Richard Johnson Lecture, “Where did I come from?: Christianity, secularism and the individual.” 

Intensive Care

A tender conversation about the start of life, the end of life, and quality of life. 
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1 in 10 babies in Australia are born premature, and 15% of all babies will need some form of extra care at birth.  
Today on Life & Faith, we venture into a place that will be unfamiliar to many – but all too familiar to some: the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. Dr Annie Janvier is a neonatologist (she takes care of sick babies); she’s also a researcher and ethicist, thinking about difficult decisions doctors have to make, and trying to understand the perspective and experience of parents in the NICU.  
And 17 years ago, she also became the mother of an extremely premature daughter. Violette was born at 24 weeks – and her mother discovered that knowing how a respirator works did not help her to be the mum of a baby on a respirator.  
Annie shares some of the emotions that arise from being a parent in NICU; and some of the questions that arise – about life, death, disability, and meaning – for people in this situation.
And we have a bonus story for you here too: Andy Crouch describes the short, vulnerable, but deeply significant life of his niece Angela.  
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Explore:  
Annie’s book Breathe, Baby, Breathe! Neonatal Intensive Care, Prematurity, and Complicated Pregnancies 
Andy’s book Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing 

Feminism against Progress

“The Pill is a bad metaphysic”: Mary Harrington on says the pill has changed everything – and not really for the better.
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“Is there something to be said for all of these things which I’ve been busy trying to dismantle? Because I’d taken it at face value that they were all just bad by definition.” 
As Mary Harrington writes in her book Feminism Against Progress, she’s someone who has “liberalled about as hard as it’s possible to liberal”. In her 20s, she pursued maximum sexual freedom, non-hierarchical relationships, and communal forms of living. By the end of that decade, she experienced a “personal crash” that coincided with the global financial crisis. And she found she no longer believed in “progress”. 
These days, Mary calls herself a reactionary feminist, one who is against “progress”. She disbelieves that we are steadily moving into a better and brighter future of freedom and human perfection. Neither does she believe that self-determination and liberation from every constraint is the path to that utopian goal. 
This doesn’t mean that Mary wants to wind back the clock to a time when women were permanently pregnant and lacked rights as well as the vote. But she argues that “progress” has meant a series of trade-offs in the name of freedom, and she’s sceptical that these have delivered unmitigated gains, overall, for women. 
In this interview with Life & Faith, Mary Harrington explores how the technological shocks of industrialisation and the contraceptive pill have deeply shaped feminism and male-female relationships, and changed everyone’s lives – not really for the better. 
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Explore: 
Mary’s book Feminism Against Progress 
An article in First Things where Mary explains “reactionary feminism” and tells a bit about her own story 
An essay in The UK Spectator – and edited extract from Feminism Against Progress – where Mary makes the pro-sex case against the pill. 
A column in UnHerd on the place of faith in the “newly-ascendant post-Christian moral regime” 
Mary Harrington on Twitter 

In praise of guilt

You have probably mucked things up once or twice in your life. Congratulations, you’re human. There’s hope for all of us in the Easter story.
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This week, Simon Smart and Justine Toh tiptoe through the minefield of ‘guilt’, ‘sin’, and ‘morality’: three words and ideas that are offensive to the modern ear – no doubt partly due to the perception that Christians and the church have been all too judgmental of others. 
The weighty, Christian baggage of these words aside – is there not something good about acknowledging the times we’ve hurt people and gotten things wrong? Simon and Justine discuss how The Picture of Dorian Gray, directed by Kip Williams for the Sydney Theatre Company, confronts viewers with the darkness of the human heart. And in discussing parenting fails and climate inaction, they explore the mismatch between the people we want to be and the people we actually are. 
This episode of Life & Faith grapples with our human tendency to ‘muck things up’ – a sanitised version of author Francis Spufford’s working definition of ‘sin’ – and how even this seemingly fatal flaw is not the whole human story. The hope of the Easter narrative is not just one of sin confronted, but conquered.  
Also appearing in this episode: contributions from The Sacred podcast host Elizabeth Oldfield, New York Times columnist David Brooks, theologian Alister McGrath, author Marilynne Robinson, and author Francis Spufford. 
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Explore: 
Conal Hanna’s article in The Guardian on the “teal paradox” 
Elizabeth Oldfield’s full interview – with transcript – with David Brooks for The Sacred.  
Alister McGrath on why sin is such a useful idea 
Marilynne Robinson on original sin 
Life & Faith interview with Francis Spufford about Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. 
Francis Spufford on your ruined life I
Francis Spufford on your ruined life II 

Tea with Tolkien

On March 25, it’s Tolkien Reading Day: a day to enjoy all things Tolkien – including what makes The Lord of the Rings so beloved. 
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“… above all shadows rides the Sun”.  
That’s a line from a song that the hobbit Samwise Gamgee sings to give him hope at a critical moment in J R R Tolkien’s epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings. Sam is stranded in the dark land of Mordor and Frodo, his master, has been captured. Their quest to destroy the one ring of power looks hopeless. But hope is not lost.  
Kaitlyn Facista, who runs the online fan community Tea with Tolkien, says that this belief is what draws people to The Lord of the Rings: the hope that helps people persist through dark times. 
On Tolkien Reading Day, observed on March 25 every year, Kaitlyn enjoys reading Tolkien’s writings along with other similarly devoted fans. The poem quoted above – “In Western Lands Beneath the Sun” – is a particular favourite. 
In this interview with Life & Faith, Kaitlyn explains the significance of March 25 within the world of Lord of the Rings: it’s the day the one ring is finally destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. The date is also significant within Tolkien’s own Christian tradition. It’s when the Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated – when the angel Gabriel told Mary she would bear Jesus, God’s son. March 25 is also regarded as the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.   
Tolkien once described The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”. Kaitlyn explores these religious resonances and tells us about being invited to meet the showrunners of The Rings of Power, the Amazon Prime TV show and prequel (of sorts) to Lord of the Rings. 
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Explore: 
www.teawithtolkien.com 
To Middle-Earth and Back Again: Kaitlyn’s companion journal to The Lord of the Rings 
Tolkien’s poem: In Western Lands beneath the Sun 

Facing the pain: A guide for those who suffer

Bruce Robinson knows more than most about the impact of suffering on human beings. But he also knows about resilience and joy in the face of life’s biggest challenges.  
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As a doctor, Professor Bruce Robinson has been on the front line of Tsunami-ravaged or earthquake-devastated poor regions of Indonesia. And as a lung specialist and expert in asbestos-induced cancer, he has had decades of experience breaking bad news to patients.  
His book, Behind the tears – understanding, surviving and growing from suffering, is a practical guide to dealing with suffering – either our own, or that of someone we care about – in a positive, life-affirming way.  
Here he shares hard won wisdom about what helps and what doesn’t and ways we can all prepare for the inevitability of grief and pain.   
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Explore: 
https://www.brucerobinson.com.au/suffering/ 

A Life Reclaimed

Cynthia Banham barely survived a brutal plane crash. She speaks about trauma, suffering, and hope. 
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It was supposed to be a routine assignment. Back in 2007, journalist Cynthia Banham was sent to Indonesia by the Sydney Morning Herald to cover a visit by then Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
But tragedy struck. The Garuda flight she was on crashed on landing at Yogyakarta International Airport. 21 people were killed. Cynthia survived but with terrible injuries, including a broken back and life-threatening burns. She wound up losing both her legs.
It’s been a very long and painful road to recovery, one Cynthia has written about in A Certain Light: A memoir of family, loss and hope.  
In the years since, Cynthia has become an academic, pursuing doctoral studies and a Masters in International Affairs. She also became a mum.  
In this raw interview with Life & Faith, Cynthia talks about rebuilding her life after trauma, her hard questions about God and suffering, and what has given her hope along the way. 

Feasting & Judgementalism

What our love affair with food reveals about us; and navigating a modern no-no: judging others.
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Life & Faith is 450 episodes and counting, and we’re about to hit a million downloads. We’re excited to mark the milestone – even we’ve forgotten all the things we’ve ever talked about. 
That’s why we’ll occasionally dip into the Life & Faith archives this year and bring you two conversations from the vault.  
This time, we’re hearing from chef Alex Woolley, Simon Smart and Justine Toh on the pleasures of eating, our love affair with food, and what feasting can tell us about the spiritual life. 
After the break, we tackle a modern taboo: do not judge others. It’s a notion that comes to us from Jesus but has taken on a new life in our times – especially online, where people condemn each other all the time. Steve Liggins joins Simon and Justine to talk about a very human dilemma – why we hate judgemental attitudes, and yet are often guilty of them ourselves. 

Who’s Afraid of Critical Theory?

Christopher Watkin is an expert in cultural theory – and thinks the Bible yields the best one we've got. 
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“If all we think of when we hear the term critical theory is something like critical race theory, then we tend to think of ourselves as some sort of SWAT team parachuting down into society to deal with one particular spot fire, and then airlifting ourselves out at the end of it – without realising that there are lots of different ideas in culture that are connected with each other and that rely on each other and that sort of form an ecosystem. And in order to understand any particular part of it, you've got to see where it fits in the whole.” 
Does the term “critical theory” or “cultural theory” make you nervous – or make your eyes glaze over? Christopher Watkin, a lecturer at Monash University and author of the book Biblical Critical Theory (and a CPX Associate), argues that theory isn’t just for academics, nor merely a political hot potato. He says it's about reading the world and everything in it – which makes it an everyone thing. 
“That’s the origin of cultural critique, isn’t it? It is the ability to say not simply ‘I don’t like things as they are’, but things as they are are either unjust or not right or cruel.” 
In a conversation that touches on globalisation, the profit motive, radical justice, the nature of society, and a God of “superabundance”, Chris makes the case for why he thinks looking at our culture through the lens of the Bible makes the most sense of reality as a whole. 
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EXPLORE: 
Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory