Soul Search

Have you ever read a book and wanted to be friends with the characters? For over 200 years, Jane Austen's fictional figures have been companions and inspirations for many readers of her novels.

How might religious traditions animate the world's modern peace movements? What tools do they provide people working towards a more just and peaceful society?

Do you believe in God? It's not a question we ask often, and answering it stretches language — and belief itself — to its limit. Perhaps poetry is the best response! Meredith Lake speaks with Pádraig Ó Tuama at Sacrededge festival about his most recent book of poetry, Kitchen Hymns, which explores this question and more.

What does it look like to explore the sacred on the edges of traditional religion? Meredith Lake and Rohan Salmond visit the Sacrededge festival in Queenscliff, Victoria, an arts and spirituality festival that this year explores "Stories of the Edge: Listening to Story — Discovering our Own".

Eighty years ago on 11 April 1945, American soldiers marched into Buchenwald concentration camp and liberated the people they found there, including 14-year-old Joe Szwarcberg.

It's been 75 years since the publication of CS Lewis' novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. What's so enchanting about the worlds created in children's fiction — in Narnia, Middle Earth, or the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?

In the wake of Pope Francis' death, Australian and Pacific theologians reflect on defining elements of his legacy. Francis' 2015 encyclical Laudato Si was the first in papal history to focus on the environment. How might Francis' teaching about the cry of the earth, and the cry of the poor matter in our region?

At the Council of Nicaea 1700 years ago bishops from across the Christian world gathered to settle a theological showdown that rocked the fledgling religion: Who was Jesus — a perfect human? Or God himself? Or something else? What they decided would become the very foundation of the Christian faith itself, and would shape art, religion and culture even today.

Sufism, also known as Islamic mysticism, can be found in all kinds of unexpected places — like Broken Hill, a rural town in far west New South Wales. Sufi music has a special place in the history of Central Australia, and is still played in the desert region, attracting attention and acclaim from Sufis throughout the world.

Culture, history and faith collide in the remote Aboriginal community of Ltyentye Apurte. A former mission town 80kms east of Alice Springs, it remains one of the most Catholic communities in the country.