Richard Johnson Lectures

In this episode, you'll hear the Q&A session following Stan Grant’s 2025 lecture, Against Bitterness: how do we live with suffering?

Theologian and writer Stan Grant delivers a searing diagnosis of our times where chronic loneliness, runaway technological development, and fractious identity politics make bitterness the last real human emotion. He offers an antidote: imagination, re-enchantment, reconnecting with God, and human lives committed to doing the little things of the everyday.

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Stan is a public intellectual, writer, journalist, and, latterly, theologian. He has over 30 years of experience in radio, television, and current affairs, including as a foreign correspondent for CNN and the ABC. As a proud Wiradjuri man, Stan has grappled, publicly, and movingly, with the ongoing legacy of dispossession in Australia and the challenges faced by Aboriginal Australians. His lectures, books, and columns reveal an astonishing array of references, all delivered with poetic insight. These days, he is a distinguished professor at Charles Sturt University, and you can catch his columns in The Saturday Paper. His latest book is Murriyang: Song of Time.

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Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. If you’d like to know more about CPX, our website is publicchristianity.org

In this episode, you'll hear Stan Grant’s 2025 lecture, Against Bitterness: how do we live with suffering?

Theologian and writer Stan Grant delivers a searing diagnosis of our times where chronic loneliness, runaway technological development, and fractious identity politics make bitterness the last real human emotion. He offers an antidote: imagination, re-enchantment, reconnecting with God, and human lives committed to doing the little things of the everyday.

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Stan is a public intellectual, writer, journalist, and, latterly, theologian. He has over 30 years of experience in radio, television, and current affairs, including as a foreign correspondent for CNN and the ABC. As a proud Wiradjuri man, Stan has grappled, publicly, and movingly, with the ongoing legacy of dispossession in Australia and the challenges faced by Aboriginal Australians. His lectures, books, and columns reveal an astonishing array of references, all delivered with poetic insight. These days, he is a distinguished professor at Charles Sturt University, and you can catch his columns in The Saturday Paper. His latest book is Murriyang: Song of Time.

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Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. If you’d like to know more about CPX, our website is publicchristianity.org

In this episode, you'll hear the Q&A session follwoing Tim Winton’s 2024 lecture,

Exiles at Home: what our contempt for nature is costing us.

Writer and activist Tim Winton reminds us that life on earth is a gift, a miracle we often fail to honour or even recognise. As we face an ecological crisis unprecedented in human history, Tim points to the critical need for solidarity - with the earth, our home, and with each other.

Tim’s literary career spans 40 years and 30 books for adults and younger readers. His books have been translated into 29 languages and won numerous awards including the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times and he has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Tim is also the writer, narrator, and executive producer of the nature documentary series Ningaloo that screened around the world in 2023. Tim lives in Western Australia.

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Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. If you’d like to know more about CPX, our website is publicchristianity.org

In this episode, you'll hear Tim Winton’s 2024 lecture,

Exiles at Home: what our contempt for nature is costing us.

Writer and activist Tim Winton reminds us that life on earth is a gift, a miracle we often fail to honour or even recognise. As we face an ecological crisis unprecedented in human history, Tim points to the critical need for solidarity - with the earth, our home, and with each other.

Tim’s literary career spans 40 years and 30 books for adults and younger readers. His books have been translated into 29 languages and won numerous awards including the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times and he has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Tim is also the writer, narrator, and executive producer of the nature documentary series Ningaloo that screened around the world in 2023. Tim lives in Western Australia.

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Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century.

If you’d like to know more about CPX, our website is publicchristianity.org

In this episode, you'll hear the Q&A session that followed Leisa Aitken's 2023 lecture titled,

Rediscovering Hope. How we lost it. How we get it back?

You can hear her lecture in an earlier episode of this podcast, but here is Leisa, with Simon Smart, digging deeper into the topic.

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Leisa is a clinical psychologist who's been counselling and teaching for more than 25 years in workplaces, hospitals, and private practice. She recently completed a PhD on the shifting grounds of hope through Western history and philosophy, theology, and psychology.

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Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century.

In this episode, you'll hear Leisa Aitken's 2023 lecture,

Rediscovering Hope. How we lost it. How we get it back?

The future feels tenuous these days, uncertain … overwhelming, even. Hope might be scarce, but it's not lost. At least not with Leisa Aitken is our guide. Leisa is a clinical psychologist with 25 years’ experience in her field and she's just completed a PhD on Hope. For those feeling hopeful, and perhaps especially for those who are not, this is a great talk to hear – hope from the perspective of psychology, philosophy, and theology.

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Leisa is a clinical psychologist who's been counselling and teaching for more than 25 years in workplaces, hospitals, and private practice. She recently completed a PhD on the shifting grounds of hope through Western history and philosophy, theology, and psychology.

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Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century.

In this episode you’ll hear the Q&A session that followed Scott Stephen’s 2021 lecture titled… 

Out Of Sight: Attentiveness in a Dismissive Age 

You can hear his lecture in an earlier episode of this podcast, but here is Scott, with Simon Smart, digging deeper into the topic. 

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Scott is the ABC’s Religion and Ethics online editor, and the co-host, with Waleed Aly, of The Minefield on ABC Radio National. His book On Contempt is published by Melbourne University Press. 

Read Scott Stephens’ Uncivil Wars, written with Waleed Aly for the Quarterly Essay 

Check out CPX's other podcast Life & Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. 

In this episode you’ll hear the Q&A session that followed Sarah Irving-Stonebraker’s 2020 lecture titled… 

Free To Be Me? The Forgotten Story of Religious Liberty 

You can hear her lecture in an earlier episode of this podcast, but here is Sarah, with Simon Smart, digging deeper into the topic. 

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Sarah is Senior Lecturer in History at Western Sydney University. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Cambridge, after which she was a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford then Assistant Professor at Florida State University. Her book Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire, published in 2008, was awarded The Royal Society of Literature and Jerwood Foundation Award for Non-Fiction. 

Sarah Irving-Stonebraker’s book, Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire 

Check out CPX's other podcast Life & Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. 

You can hear his lecture in an earlier episode of this podcast, but here is Tim, with Simon Smart, digging deeper into the topic. 

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Tim is co-founder of More in Common, an international initiative which has published some of the world's leading research on the drivers of polarisation and social division. He has worked as chief speechwriter and economic adviser for two Australian Prime Ministers and has helped start and grow social movement organisations around the world that have worked to protect civilians in Syria, address modern day slavery, promote gun control in the U.S., and engage faith communities in social justice. 

Tim Dixon’s organisation, More in Common 

In this episode you’ll hear the Q&A session that followed Nick Spencer’s 2018 lecture titled… 

Where Did I Come From? Christianity, Secularism, and the Individual 

You can hear his lecture in an earlier episode of this podcast, but here is Nick Spencer, with Simon Smart, digging deeper into the topic. 

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Nick is Research Director of Theos Think Tank in London. He has written for The Guardian and The Telegraph and has been described by The Economist as “like a prophet crying in the post-modern wilderness”. Nick is the author of several books including Atheists: The Origin of the Species, and The Evolution of the West: How Christianity Has Shaped Our Values.  

Some of Nick Spencer’s books: 

• Atheists: The Origin of the Species 

Check out CPX's other podcast Life & Faith, a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century.