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Written by: Stephen Hale

How to not be anxious, in an anxious age?

STEPHEN HALE

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Philippians 4:6

We’re all familiar with St Paul’s wonderful words in Philippians 4. Yet we all know the challenge of them becoming a reality for us. There is so much to be anxious about. In fact, the statistics on the rise of mental health challenges in a place like Australia are striking. As I understand it these are consistent with the numbers in other western nations.

The Australian Bureau Statistics reports that in 2024 • 1 in 5 adults will experience mental health problems throughout a year

• 1 in 4 adolescents have a mental health illness
• 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys suffer from an anxiety or disorder
• 1 in 7 primary school kids have a mental health illness

  Read more: How to not be anxious, in an anxious age?

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Written by: Andrew Esnouf

Crimes of the Cross: The Anglican Paedophile Network of Newcastle, Its Protectors and the Man Who Fought for Justice
Anne Manne
Black Inc, 2024
Reviewed by Andrew Esnouf

Crimes of the Cross is an important book for Anglicans to read. It is also a difficult book to read. It discusses the horrific and weighty issues of child sexual abuse in Anglican churches, and so it is at times confronting, at times disturbing and at times enraging. It is also conflicting, as many will personally know, or be acquainted with those who know, pivotal people described in this book. So not all Anglicans will be able to read this book, but many should.

It is an important book for Anglicans because a central practice of our faith is to confess our sins and failings. Also central to the Anglican tradition is seeking to love and bless our communities, particularly the young and the vulnerable. If Anglicans are true to our faith, then we must recognise our failures, repent of them, and work to ensure they are never repeated.

Anne Manne has previously reported on stories of abuse revealed by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Here, she expands upon that reporting with further research into specific stories of abuse from within the Diocese of Newcastle. Crimes of the Cross follows the story of Steve Smith, whose family were active parishioners in their local church in suburban Newcastle. He was a bright boy, his father was a churchwarden and his mother was a church organist. Mr Smith was abused, repeatedly, by his parish priest George Parker.

The book then largely follows Mr Smith’s journey, tracing the tragic aftermath in the decades since his abuse. Mr Smith’s struggles to find healing and justice are documented. He sought justice through the courts and was failed. He sought truth-telling from the church and encountered church officials either unwilling or unable to admit complicity.

The book culminates in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and its aftermath. The Anglican Diocese of Newcastle was scathingly rebuked, and Mr Smith’s testimony was heard and honoured as a ‘truthful and compelling witness’. This horrific story is not a horror tale of the impact of an individual’s sin. It is a condemnation of multiple system failures within organisations, particularly the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, and of the ability of perpetrators to manipulate people and organisations to benefit abusers and their allies. On this Manne is not making baseless assertions, as she maps out the network of power players within the Newcastle Anglican and high society network.

“Team Church” as Manne calls them includes Graeme Lawrence, who was Dean of the cathedral in Newcastle from 1984 until 2008, and Peter Rushton. Both were priests who serially abused children, and both had allegations of their abuse swept under the rug by senior church leadership, including a succession of bishops.

Throughout this weighty book, there are moments of hope and humanity. The love, courage and determination of Mr Smith’s mother when he disclosed his abuse is one such moment. His ability to love and support other abuse survivors is another. Mr Smith’s ability to offer grace to the clergy and church who failed him is truly admirable.

An underlying plot of the book is that progress has been made in institutional cultures, and it beautifully articulates how this progress has been incredibly hard-won, and honours some of those whose sweat and tears contributed to this progress.

Perhaps the most valuable chapter for the church to learn from in this book is not any of the harrowing details of abuse or the malicious deceptions carried out to defend perpetrators or to save face, but rather the penultimate chapter Powerful Perpetrators.

In this chapter, Ms Manne examines the patterns of abuse that manifested in the actions of George Parker, Graeme Lawrence and Peter Rushton, which includes the cultivation of a reputation and image that mimics that of a good vicar, in order to gain access to victims and allies when their abuse is revealed. They impress with their leadership and charismatic authority, they regularly visit the troubled and the vulnerable, and they are well thought of as generous and benignly helpful. These are traits many in parish ministry seek to emulate, which is why churches find themselves hunting grounds for sexual predators.

Crimes of the Cross is a troubling but important book. Anglicans must know both the history of our failures and the patterns abusers use to prey upon the young and vulnerable. This is a painful and difficult book for Anglicans to read, but it is a gift to us. It is a gift we should embrace and give thanks for.

As published in the The Melbourne Anglican.

The Reverend Andrew Esnouf is Parish Minister (Youth) in the parish of St Alban’s and St Augustine’s Merri-Bek.

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Written by: Denise Nicholls

The Meaning of Singleness
Danielle Treweek
Ivp Academic 2023
Reviewed by Denise Nicholls

This is a great book! A must read for ministers of the gospel whether engaged, married, single or single again. I say this because so many ministers (myself included) have often longed for and prayed for young families to come to their churches as THIS will see a renewal of our Churches. Further we can either neglect or pay lip service to the Church as THE family of God, when we concentrate our efforts upon the nuclear family as the mainstay and structure of our Churches. Danielle Treweek’s 2024 Australian Book of the Year is a sober reminder of the place of the important and often neglected place of the single Christian disciple in the life of the Church.

Through thorough research on the various positions of single believers since the inception of the Christian Church, to the Patristics, the middle and late medieval church to the present day, Treweek provides us with a very readable book in ten chapters and four parts, navigating the Context, Diagnosis, Theological ‘retrieval’ and finally her own thoughts on the Meaning of Singleness for the evangelical church today.

Read more: Book Review: The Meaning of Singleness

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Written by: Dale Appleby

Bridging the Testaments: The history and theology of God’s people in the Second Temple Period
George Athas
Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic. 2023
Reviewed By Dale Appleby

George Athas is senior lecturer in Hebrew, Old Testament, and early church history at Moore College. A difficulty in being a teacher is not knowing things. Worse is not knowing that we don’t know. Bridging the Testaments is a great help for those of us whose knowledge of the period between Malachi and Matthew is best represented by the two blank pages between those books in our Bibles. However, Athas begins with a different question: did prophecy cease during that period? Was there any prophetic activity between Malachi and Herod? In answering this he provides a thorough (re)construction of both the history and the prophetic activity of the people of Judah and Samaria in the period between the return from exile and the birth of Christ.

The book is in four parts: The Persian Era; The Hellenistic Era; the Hasmonean Era; The Roman Era. As well there are eleven Tables of Rulers, High Priests, and others, lots of maps and many family tree diagrams. The writing is leisurely and easy to read. Athas seems happy to take time to explain things rather than skimming over the details. The book is interesting not tedious.

His argument is that there was a lot of prophetic activity in this period and that it had a lot to do with the status of Jerusalem over against Mount Gerizim, and the status of the Davidic line over against the priesthood. Mount Gerizim and Samaria had various advantages of population and wealth. Jerusalem was the seat of the Davidic monarchy which had less and less power as time went on. Thus the prophetic activity was focused on Jerusalem and David’s line in order to help the people of both north and south focus on Jerusalem as the centre of national life and hope. The prophetic line was that “Yahweh had himself entered the Davidic dynasty as its father figure and that he ruled the nation through his son, the Davidic heir, as stipulated in the canon of the Prophets.” (p18). So the redefinition of the “kingdom of God” as a “kingdom of priests” and the development of the priesthood as the central power of the nation (especially if centred on Mount Gerizim) raised serious questions about the promises of God and his purposes. The way this developed kept changing as different world powers had influence in Judah and Samaria. One of the great strengths of this book is the clear and detailed description of the great powers and their influence on the life of the people of God.

This relates to one of the main theological arguments, that of late theological development. The progressive revelation of God and his purposes continued because God pursued a relationship with his covenant people. He did not go silent for 450 years. Athas says, “We should, therefore, expect theological developments to have occurred, but it is important to understand the contexts in which it occurred so that it might be understood correctly.” (p13).

The book takes a bold approach to dating and to contextualising such matters as the Book of the Twelve Prophets, some of the well-known difficult passages such as the final chapters of Zechariah and the visions of Daniel that relate to Greece and so on. (They were up to date prophetic applications of earlier prophecies applicable to the current context). Athas gives excellent foot-note references (there is no Bibliography as such) to support his decisions and to reference other voices in the discussions.

Overall this is a terrific book. It is a great combination of well written history and a theological path to understanding both the books of the canon and the extra-biblical writings such as Maccabees and Josephus in their historical context. It is a book that as a local church minister I would have liked to have had from the beginning.

Dale has retired at least three times after ministries in Perth, Darwin and Jakarta. He is a member of St Mark’s Bassendean WA.

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Written by: Ben Underwood

Each Sunday I write a short column for the Sunday order of service. I write different kinds of columns, including seasonal topics, introductions to sermon series, tangential titbits that did not make it into the sermon, mission partners’ news etc. But recently I have found what seems to be rich pickings in stories of the faith of prominent or remarkable people which have made it into the public eye. Here are five of the profiles I have included over the last 13 months. Two are Australians, two testify to the sustaining power of faith in terrible conditions, three are of conversions in mid or late life. All I found inspiring and an encouragement that God is at work in his world and our lives. I hope you might too.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Muslim, Atheist, Christian
26 November 2023

“The more time I spent with … people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins … the more confident I felt that I had made the right choice. For the atheists were clever. They were also a great deal of fun. So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?”

These are the recent words of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose life has been full of twists and turns. As a girl in Somalia she absorbed the vigorous Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1992 she found political asylum in the Netherlands, escaping a forced marriage. Following the September 11 attacks she renounced Islam and joined the circles of the leading New Atheists. She became a strong critic of Islam, especially in its treatment of women, and a member of the Dutch parliament. She has been controversial, acclaimed by some, accused by others, threatened by a few.

She moved to the US in 2006. Her latest change of direction has been to embrace Christianity, explaining herself in an online essay (unherd. com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian). She gives two reasons for doing this. First, she feels that Western civilisation is under threat, both externally and internally, and that secularism cannot provide the source of unity that is required to meet those threats. Nor is secularism the source of the values, ideas and institutions that have safeguarded human life, dignity and freedom in the West. Rather, these have their source and unity in Christianity and are its legacy. Only by owning Christianity can the West find itself and the resources to meet the hour. But there’s a second reason: She says, “I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive.” At first atheism was a release from fear of Allah’s hellfire. But Ali found atheism incapable of providing either meaning or consolation. She’s been going to church. Pray that she might indeed find the spiritual home she seeks in Christ and as one of his people. And pray that others who feel the same need might find the same home themselves.

Bill Hayden – Home Late
3 December 2023

“I do believe Jesus was such a magnificent man, he suffered for our shortcomings.”

These are the words of the late Bill Hayden, one time Labour leader who died on October 2, 2023. But for much of his life he was outwardly stridently opposed to Christian faith. His father was, he told the ABC, "a very bitter anti-religionist. I think that got to me." As a young man the riches of the Vatican offended his sense of the just sharing of wealth. In 1966 his 5-year-old daughter Michaela was hit and killed by a car. “Don't think I was an atheist just by chance. I thought a lot about it.” he said after his baptism in 2018 at age 85. He was the first governor-general to make an affirmation, and not to swear an oath on the Bible.

However, his mother was Catholic, part of his schooling was Catholic and he had a long friendship with Sister Angela Mary Doyle, longtime administrator of Mater hospitals in Brisbane. She was a great campaigner for universal health insurance, which Hayden was championing as a government minister. Troy Bramston wrote that it was “seeing so many selfless acts of compassion by Christians over his lifetime, and deep contemplation while recovering from a stroke, that prompted his decision [to be baptised].” He owned that, “There’s been a gnawing pain in my heart and soul about what is the meaning of life. What’s my role in it?”

During this time of recovery and contemplation Hayden and his wife Dallas visited Sister Angela in hospital and, he said, “The next morning I woke with the strong sense that I had been in the presence of a holy woman.” Reading a book on Shia Islam, it dawned on him that Christianity was love, forgiveness and compassion, not law. All this tipped him over into Christianity. “I can no longer accept that human existence is self-sufficient and isolated”, he came to say. “I do believe Jesus was such a magnificent man, he suffered for our shortcomings.” “I’m going to vouch for God”. He experienced his baptism as a homecoming, a recognition of where he belonged. He said, “I thought, 'I've always been here, I shouldn't have wandered off ’.”

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-01/bill-haydenexplains-why-he-decided-to-be-baptised/10316846

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-19/bill-haydenturns-to-god-at-85-baptism-brisbane/10280724

Alexei Navalny – Hungering For Righteousness
25 February 2024

Alexei Navalny has been one of Vladimir Putin’s most well-known opponents. He founded the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) to investigate and expose Russian government corruption. He organised political rallies and ran for office in opposition to the ruling party. He survived a couple of attempts to poison him. He was imprisoned on various charges carrying long sentences. On 16 February, he died in a notorious Arctic Russian prison.

Part of what sustained and guided Navalny was a Christian faith. In a 2012 interview he said, “Up to the age of 25 or so, when I became a father, I was such a rabid atheist that I was ready to grab any priest by the beard.” But by 2012 he said, “I’m ashamed to say that I’m a typical post-Soviet believer—I observe the fasts, I cross myself when I pass a church, but I don’t actually go to church very often.” When atheist friends mocked his piety and shallow knowledge of his faith, he admitted, “It’s true, I don’t know as much about my religion as I would like to, but I’m working on it.” At his 2021 trial, he said, “The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually sets me up for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists. […] But now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities, because everything becomes much, much easier.” Easier because he sought to live by the Bible, and so had a path to follow. But he also acknowledged, “It’s not always easy to follow this book”, he said, “but I am actually trying”. Navalny took Jesus’ words, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” as a commandment to fulfil. Reflecting on his decision to return to Russia and face arrest and imprisonment, he said, “while not enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back, or about what I’m doing. […] On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction. Because at some difficult moment I […] did not betray the commandment.” Truth and righteousness were worth more to him than his life, and Jesus was the Lord who named them as the goal to pursue.

Ken Elliot – He Was Always There
8 September 2024

Dr Ken Elliot and his wife Jocelyn are Christians from Perth. Seeking to serve God’s purpose for them, they founded a hospital in Djibo, Burkina Faso. From 1972 to 2016, Ken operated on people from all over West Africa, charging little or nothing, and praying for what they needed rather than fundraising. “It was just amazing how we got what we needed when we needed it”, said Ken. Militant Islam is pushing south through Africa, and nations such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are suffering its violence. The kidnapping of westerners, held for ransom, is part of the Islamist business model. In 2016, Ken and Jocelyn became victims of this tactic. The town of Djibo was their home for over 40 years, and the people there were outraged at their kidnapping, for the Elliot’s had done nothing but good for the people there, whatever their creed. Jocelyn was released after three weeks, but octogenarian Ken endured over 7 years of captivity in the Saharan desert, with gruelling weather, scorpions, poor diet, scurvy, boredom and uncertainty. He was released in 2023 and returned to Perth. He and Jocelyn have given their only interviews to Jonathan Holmes on the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent. The episode aired on August 29, 2024 and I found it compelling viewing.

For someone who has endured such injustice and hardship as Ken has, he came across as wonderfully sane, at peace, undamaged by his ordeal, and his Christian faith seemed lodged right in his bones. The reporter, Jonathan Holmes, asked him about attempts by his captors to convert him. Ken said, “The Lord has been good to me. There's no way I was going to dishonour him by converting to Islam. Or even pretending to convert.” Holmes challenged Elliot: “Some might say that the Lord hadn't been doing you any favours for this period of your life. Didn't you ever feel that God had abandoned you?” Ken’s reply: “Never. No. He was always there.” If you can, read Holmes report ‘Scorpions, sandstorms and scurvy’ on the ABC news website, or watch the episode on iView.

Niall Ferguson – We Can’t Be Spiritually Naked
19 Jan 2025

Respected historian Niall Ferguson has joined his wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali in coming out publicly about his recent adoption of Christian faith. Born in Glasgow in 1964, Ferguson was brought up by atheist parents whose outlook was shaped by the Scottish Enlightenment. And atheism did him nicely for much of his life. But in recent years he has changed his mind. Greg Sheridan wrote about Ferguson’s journey to Christian faith in The Weekend Australian recently (21-22 Dec, 2024).

Ferguson describes his loss of faith in atheism in two stages. First, he said, “as a historian, I realised that no society had been successfully organised on the basis of atheism. All attempts to do this had been catastrophic.” But further, he came to believe “that no individual can in fact be fully formed or ethically secure without religious belief.” This conviction was, he says, “born of our experience as a family”.

Ferguson was not hostile to religion. In fact his conservative convictions made him respect it. But he has crossed over from respecting the church to wrestling personally with Jesus whom the church proclaims, praying and going to church in a spirit of faith and learning. He is struck by Jesus, “whose power to transform the world has never been equalled”, he now thinks it is cruel to deny the human impulse to pray, and he prays and finds prayer real. “We can’t be spiritually naked, we can’t be spiritually void, it’s too miserable”, he says. Were your child to go missing, “if you don’t pray in those moments, you are not flesh and blood”, he says.

He laments that we have largely given up on religious observance in the West. “This is a mistake—the empty churches on Sundays, people not saying grace at dinner … we’ve lost something very powerful and very healing”. And in a passage to warm the heart of pastors everywhere he says, “What strikes me … is how much one learns every Sunday morning. Every hymn contains some new clue as to the relationship between us and God. … All of this matters hugely, and as a society we’ve turned away from it.” Ferguson suspects that our mental health crisis exists because, “we’ve thrown away those wonderful support mechanisms”. Sanity is sustained by relating not only to other people, but, finally, by relating to God through Christ.

I have found writing a weekly column a good discipline. I enjoy writing and the chance to give the people in the congregations a side dish, to complement and add to what they get from me in the sermon feels like a worthwhile use of my time. Enough people say regularly enough that they value it for me to keep going. It makes me look out for things to share and perspectives on situations both current and perennial. This little set of testimonies is an example of how the columns can develop their own threads and themes. The testimonies of prominent people can cut both ways, but I hope I’ve been measured enough to avoid claiming too much for the journeys of faith these people have been on.

Ben is Rector of St Edmund’s Wembley in Perth Diocese.

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Written by: Allan Chappel

While walking home from church after we’d sung Horatius Bonar’s hymn ‘I heard the voice of Jesus say’, I was thinking what a shame it was that he hadn’t written more than three verses. The obvious next thought was, ‘Stop complaining and have a go!’ It turned out to be much harder than I realised, and I doubt the end result is all that good. But it might prompt a better versifier to have a go.

Four extra verses for ‘I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say’
Tune: Kingsfold
Based on John 6:35-40; 10:2-4, 11, 27-29; 11:25-26; and 14:2-6

4. I heard the voice of Jesus say, “I am the living bread,
I’ve come to bring the world new life; its cost is my blood shed.
I give it free to all who come, and drive no one away.”
My endless hunger’s ended now: I feast on him each day.

5. I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Your shepherd I will be.
Because I give my life for you, you’ll live eternally.”
He searched and found me, called my name; I’m safe inside his pen.
He knows me, leads me, holds me fast: I won’t be lost again.

6. I heard the voice of Jesus say, “I have new life to give.
My resurrection conquers death, and guarantees you’ll live;
My rising means a bright new world, where death no more holds sway.”
He’s now my life, my hope; the dawn of everlasting day.

7. I heard the voice of Jesus say, “I’ll make a place for you
inside my Father’s spacious house, where life is always new.
When this life’s done, I’ll come for you, and take you home with me.”
I want no other guide or home; no better place to be.

And here is my second and only other attempt, which resulted from walking home after singing ‘Abide with me’ at church. I thought, ‘But nobody “abides” these days!’

‘Abide with me’ updated
Tune: Eventide

1. Stay with me, Lord, when daylight fades away
And death’s dark night arrives to end the day.
All other helpers fail, too weak like me;
Help of the helpless, Lord, remain with me.

2. Like grass that withers, earthly life is brief;
Its joys soon gone, with death a cruel thief.
Change and decay mark all that I can see—
But I’ll stand firm if you remain with me.

3. Through all my days I need you at my side,
as my protector and my constant guide.
Because my sin brings harm and misery,
Transform me, Lord, as you remain with me.

4. You hold me fast to bring me through my fears;
Your tender touch will heal my wounds and tears.
Death comes defeated, deprived of victory;
Life cannot end while you remain with me.

5. Hold up your cross before my dying eyes:
Pledge of eternal glory when I rise.
In life and death, my true security,
My lasting joy, that you remain with me.

Allan was raised and converted in WA, and has served as a pastor, AFES worker, and theological teacher in WA, the UK, Malaysia, and back in Perth. * The lyrics in this article are © 2025 Allan Chapple.

If you would like to use them, please contact him using This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.