Life & Faith

In a money-hungry world that's focused on profits, ethical impact investing seeks to re-introduce compassion and benevolence to our system of buying, selling and money-making.

Sam Richards is the Managing Director of Brightlight, an investment firm that seeks to do more than simply make money. Brightlight - along with a growing number of family offices and individual investors - seeks to use financial markets to improve social and environmental outcomes for real people in real communities. In this interview with Life & Faith, Sam offers us a glimpse into the world of ethical investing - its motivations, its challenges, its inner workings and its growing impact.

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Explore: 

• Brightlight website 
• CPX Podcast Episode: The Ethics of What We Eat  
• Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’

Life & Faith producer, Allan Dowthwaite, takes over the studio to mark 500 episodes of amazing conversations.

Allan Dowthwaite, CPX’s media director, normally runs the recording studio for the team. But in this special episode, marking twelve-and-a-half years of the podcast, he’s commandeered the mic as your personal guide to Life & Faith’s greatest conversations, organised into the following categories for your listening pleasure.

Links are included to any episode you want to listen to in full.

1. The cultural waters in which we swim, featuring Sydney Morning Herald Economics Editor Ross Gittins, political scientist Dale Kuehne, New York Times film writer Alissa Wilkinson, cultural critic Andy Crouch, and author Tim Winton.
2. How Christianity explains our world, featuring cold case detective Jim Warner Wallace, author Marilynne Robinson, author Francis Spufford, and historian Tom Holland.
3. Surprising stories, featuring Oxford mathematician John Lennox, Alex Gaffikin, who wintered on Antarctica for two years, Johnnie Walker, beloved authority on the Camino de Santiago, and the late scholar of African-American religion, Albert J. Raboteau.
4. Indigenous Australians, featuring Yorta Yorta man William Cooper, Torres Strait Islander leader and pastor Gabriel Bani, and Aunty Maureen Atkinson, member of the Stolen Generation.
5. Changing one’s mind about faith, featuring ABC Religion & Ethics editor Scott Stephens and author Susannah McFarlane.
6. Ordinary people, extraordinary acts, featuring Australian nurse Valerie Browning AM, Zimbabwean fast bowler Henry Olonga, and Danny and Leila Abdallah, whose remarkable act of forgiveness stunned the nation.

Big thanks to Hugh Clark, Karen Tong, and Anthea Godsmark who have all worked on Life & Faith over the years. 

Thanks to Phillipa West for her photographic prowess on this episode's artwork.

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Get tickets to this year’s Richard Johnson Lecture with Tim Winton.

On the 24th anniversary of the Sydney Olympic Games, we look back at what made those games so special. Simon Smart and Mark Stephens ask what these kinds of events can tell us about who we are as human beings. 

Former Olympics Minister Bruce Baird talks us through the hair-raising bid process and the joy of seeing the whole thing come together so well. Veteran sportswriter Greg Baum outlines what he found so special about Sydney 2000. And seven-time Paralympian Liesl Tesch recalls the buzz of playing in front of packed houses cheering the home team on, and what this event did for Paralympians generally. And Simon Smart gets all nostalgic remembering his experiences going to anything he could get tickets for.

Reconstructive surgeon Tertius Venter tells Life & Faith how his life changed forever when he saw how much he could impact the lives of desperate people.

Dr Venter is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who spends 8 months of every year volunteering his time to two charities helping the poorest people on the planet get surgery they’d have no hope of getting were it not for people like him.

Over 20 years ago Tertius went on a mission to The Gambia in West Africa where a hospital ship was providing medical care to extremely poor people. His surgical skills were needed and completely altered the prospects of those coming for help.

He returned home a different person, so animated by both the incredible need that he saw, but also the difference he was able to make in people’s lives.

Since then his life has been dedicated to providing relief to suffering and poor people whose lives are very often completely changed by what Tertius and his team are able to offer them.  

Tertius’s Christian faith drives him on through challenging and sometimes heartbreaking situations, and he says he never feels closer to God than when he is doing this work.

His is a challenging and immensely inspiring story.

Explore:

Mercy Ships where you can support the organisation or even Tertius directly

Cure international

Dr Venter’s Website

Operation Smile 

Trevor Cooling explains how educating the whole person lays foundations for the ‘life worth living’.

Professor Trevor Cooling has spent a life time in education, in universities and also public and independent schools. Here he talks to Life & Faith about why teaching worldview is a crucial skill students need to learn as they engage in a pluralistic society.

We discuss the true purpose of education, the lessons that are life-long and where religious education fits, even in a culture that has been moving away from institutionalised faith. Trevor also explains why vocation and a sense of calling can be such a gift for a student finding their way in the world.

What vision of a full and flourishing life can we offer the young men in our lives? 

Justine Toh interviews Simon Smart about his new book The End of Men? Simon wrote this book after observing that boys and men are struggling in many ways—socially, emotionally, and at school. Boys are finding it difficult to understand their place, and wondering if there is something inherently toxic about their masculinity. Simon explores a more holistic understanding of what it means to be a man, and the importance of harnessing a tender masculinity for the common good. Boys need good examples of men to lead them into a healthy expression of their masculinity, to encourage them to use their strengths to benefit others and to protect the vulnerable: to operate with a “lens of love”.  

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Get the Book: The End of Men? 

The ex-Rolling Stones journalist throws open the door the devil hides behind. Warning: not for kids.

The devil’s best trick, according to French poet Charles Baudelaire and/or criminal mastermind Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects (1995) was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.  

Randall Sullivan’s new book, The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared, argues that despite our sceptical age that dismisses the existence of the supernatural, evil is at work in the world, and can’t be dismissed as the product of a bad upbringing or warped psychology.  

In this interview with Life & Faith, Sullivan, the author and former investigative reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, tells us about his miraculous conversion experience, recounted in his earlier book The Miracle Detective: An Investigation of Holy Visions.  

He also spills on his new book, which took him 20 years to write, and his experience of coming up, close, and personal with the divine... and what felt like a malevolent presence in the Piazza Navona in Rome.  

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Explore:

The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared

The Miracle Detective: An Investigation into Holy Visions

Randall Sullivan’s Wired article on Michelle Gomez, the world’s best bounty hunter (paywalled)

A short Thinking out Loud column quoting Randall Sullivan in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in 2024 

With despair on the rise and hope in short supply, children’s literature offers people of all ages a treasure trove of wisdom.

Dr Amanda B Vernon is a literature expert who believes that children's stories are not just for children. In this interview with Life & Faith, Amanda talks about how stories written with children in mind often shed light on deep human needs, including our longing for justice, agency, truth, wonder and redemption through suffering. From Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter to Winnie the Pooh, Amanda explores the joy, the wonder and the enduring wisdom of children’s literature.

Explore:

Amanda B Vernon’s website: www.amandabvernon.com

George Macdonald’s, ‘The Fantastic Imagination’

Neda Ulaby's NPR article on "protopias"

Darrell Bock fears the church in the U.S. is in danger of losing its distinctiveness. How might it recover? 

The United States is a divided country, and this year’s presidential election will bring that into sharp focus. Darrell Bock is a New Testament Scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary and the Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center.

Life & Faith interviews Darrell about the divisions in the U.S. and how tribal and ideological they have become. Darrell is concerned that the church has increased this polarisation with its misplaced loyalties, and by creating a social atmosphere that does not deal well with difference. Darrell believes it has been a mistake for the church to become an extension of a political arm, and that younger people have left the church in droves as a result.

Darrell sees a great need to return to a sense of welcome and care for the marginalised, as a distinctive marker of the love of God.

Explore: 

The Hendricks Center 

Darrell Bock books (there are many) 

• Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone’s Asking  
• Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ 
• Gospel of Luke Commentary 

The spirit of our politics feels negative and harmful. Michael Wear believes the improved spiritual health and civic character of individuals can change that.

“We belong to a political party because we believe things, we should not believe things because we belong to a political party”.

Michael Wear is the author of The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life. In this episode he talks to Life & Faith about his desire to cultivate a more healthy and vibrant political and civic life in his country that is wracked with polarisation and enmity across the political spectrum.

Wear is under no illusions as to how large a challenge that is but remains committed to making a contribution towards a healthy pluralism.

He also has huge reservations about the way in which faith has been captured to further political, rather than religious, outcomes. Wear think there is huge danger in Christianity being instrumentalised as a means of advancing one set of political ideas. Instead, faith should be about the flourishing of all society.

Explore:

Michael Wear’s latest book The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life.

Michael’s previous book Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama Whitehouse About the Future of Faith in America.

The Centre for Christianity and Public Life