Soul Search

The Bible has been held sacred by Christians for centuries, and in the process has become one of the world’s most beguiling and disputed texts. Why do people still read it, nearly 2000 years after it was compiled?

Rev Dr Robyn Whitaker is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pilgrim Theological College, at the University of Divinity. She specialises in the Book of Revelation and the Synoptic Gospels and is the author of Even the Devil Quotes Scripture, a book about hermeneutics. Robyn is also the co-host of By the Well, a podcast for preachers which unpacks the lectionary readings each week.

Dr Christopher Watkin is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Monash University. He is the author of Biblical Critical Theory: How The Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture which won Australian Christian Book of the Year in 2023.

Despite their many similarities, the colonial governments in Australia and New Zealand have taken very different approaches to relations with Indigenous peoples. After the referendum, what can Australia learn from Māori people in Aotearoa, and what role can churches play in working towards a post-colonial world?

Rev Dr Rangi Nicholson has spent five decades working in the area of Māori language revitalisation as an educator and sociolinguist, teaching at four universities and working across government, community and church to develop language policy. He’s also a contextual theologian and an ordained Anglican priest, and a member of Anglican General Synod’s Treaty, Church and Nation Commission.

More info:

• Hear more about Maori Christianity on Soul Search: Hirini Kaa – Māori and Christian ideas of the sacred, reciprocity, and spiritual flourishing
• Mentioned in this episode: Dr Christopher Watkin on reading the Bible

Did you know there were Muslims who fought on the side of the Anzacs in World War I, some even in Gallipoli? That ill-fated campaign has become a defining story of contemporary Australia, but we’re still learning new things about who was there and what that means for us. Also, meet the first ever Muslim to serve as a chaplain in the Australian Defence Force.

Dr Dzavid Haveric is an adjunct research fellow at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation, Charles Sturt university. He is the author of ANZAC Muslims: An untold story, and the forthcoming book, A history of Muslims in the Australian military from 1885-1945: Loyalty, patriotism and contribution, which unearths the tales of Muslim Australians who’ve served in the defence forces.

Imam Majidih Essa is the first permanent Muslim chaplain to the Australian Defence Forces. He serves with the Royal Australian Navy.

More info:

• Dzavid's book, A History of Muslims in the Australian Military from 1885 to 1945: Loyalty, Patriotism, Contribution is now available from Cambridge Scholars Publishing
• Hear more about Muslims from early colonial Australia on Soul Search: The Muslim Cameleers: The lives and legacies of Australia's little-known outback pioneers
• Mentioned in this episode is The Minefield: Do we know what the result of the Voice referendum means?

What would it take for a wiser and more beautiful world to emerge, even in the midst of crisis? Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee says stories are like seeds, and when they are watered with our attention, they can grow into a landscape of awe, wonder, reverence and love.

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is the founder and executive editor of Emergence magazine, which connects ecology, culture and spirituality. He is also a filmmaker and Naqshbandi Sufi teacher, and grew up in an ashram overseen by the Russian-British mystic, Irina Tweedie.

More information

• Watch Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee’s film, Earthrise.
• Learn more about the Naqshbandi “silent Sufis” and how their order journeyed from India to Europe and America

What does community look like in this increasingly fractured world? Iona Community Leader Ruth Harvey sounds a note of optimism that, although sometimes dispersed, intentional communities working for justice and peace can create thin places that connect us with each other and the divine.

Rev Ruth Harvey is Leader of the Iona Community, an ecumenical Christian community working for justice and peace in Glasgow, the island of Iona, and across the world. She is ordained in the Church of Scotland and is a member of the Society of Friends, the Quakers.

Ruth was on Arrernte Country in Alice Springs as part of the Caring for Creation Wellspring and Iona Listening Pilgrimage across Australia, coordinated by the Wellspring Community.

More information:

• Hear poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama on Soul Search
• Hear writer and theologian Celia Kemp on living in Central Australia on Soul Search

Have you ever felt the impulse to just tear it all down? Iconoclasm — or image breaking — has real potency as a way of contesting the sacred and re-imagining the world, even in a post-religious society. From the Byzantines to Sinead O'Connor, iconoclasm remains an almost universal form of protest.

Philip Jenkins is Professor of history at Baylor University in the United States, and co-director for Baylor's Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is the author of A Storm of Images: Iconoclasm and Religious Reformation in the Byzantine World.

Vrasidas Karalis is Professor of Byzantine and modern Greek Studies at the University of Sydney.

Frances Di Lauro is an interdisciplinary scholar and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney with a background in archaeology, religious studies and writing.

Further links:

• Listen to Soul Search, Icons and iconoclasts part 1.
• Soul Search: Philip Jenkins on how climate shocks drive religious change.

We live in a highly visual culture — the image is king, and image-breaking is a key form of protest. But this is hardly new; idols, icons and iconoclasts have been part of the human story for millennia. We’re all familiar with these words though, even if they carry slightly different meanings outside religious contexts. So what’s going on?

Vrasidas Karalis is Professor of Byzantine and modern Greek Studies at the University of Sydney.

Michael Galovic is an artist and iconographer who has spent at least five decades painting icons, mostly from his studio on the New South Wales Central Coast. A book of his work, called Icons + Art is available.

Sophie Matthiesson is Senior Curator of International Art, Auckland Art Gallery in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the initiating curator of Heavenly Beings: Icons of the Christian Orthodox World.

Jane Clark is Senior Research Curator at MONA — the Museum of Old and New Art — in Hobart Tasmania, where you can see the Heavenly Beings exhibition until Easter 2024.

James Alison says scapegoating is one of our oldest social behaviours. But casting someone out to maintain group cohesion has its obvious drawbacks — particularly for the person taking the fall! As a gay Catholic priest, Dr Alison was drawn to the work of French polymath René Girard, who proposed that scapegoating is not the only answer.

Dr James Alison is a Catholic priest, retreat leader, author and theological interpreter of the work of René Girard. His many books include, Jesus the Forgiving Victim. He was brought to Australia by Catholic Religious Australia, the peak body for Catholic Leaders of Religious Institutes and Societies of Apostolic Life.

• James Alison’s 2023 Australian tour dates.
• Hear more on René Girard and victimhood on the Philosopher’s Zone on ABC Listen. 

William Shakespeare's world was marked by social change, spiritual tumult, and cosmic disorientation. Elizabeth I was on the throne, defining and defending England's Protestant reformation, and Europe now knew the Earth wasn’t the centre of the universe. So how secular — or perhaps, enchanted — was Shakespeare himself?

Professor Kristen Poole from the University of Delaware is the author of The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Cultures of Interpretation in Reformation England and Supernatural Environments in Shakespeare's England: Spaces of Demonism, Divinity, and Drama.

Professor Helen Smith is one of the editors of The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530-1700.

It’s been 100 years since the publication of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, a book beloved by everyone from Indira Ghandi to Elvis Presley. What is the story behind one of the most enduring spiritual texts of the Twentieth Century, and why did it strike such a chord?

Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian American poet, essayist and aphorist. His most recent book is Quarantine notes: aphorisms on morality and mortality.

Glen Kalem is founder of the Kahlil Gibran Collective and a research historian of Khalil Gibran’s life and work for more than 25 years. He has curated a series of events in New York City and a pop-up exhibition in Melbourne. For more information, visit theprophet100.com