Civic Religion

With All Due Respect

This episode is brought to you by Anglican Aid. Your gift will strengthen churches and help transform communities. You can donate to With All Due Respect's featured causes here.

This week, Megan and Michael discuss the place of "civic religion" in Australian society.

Defined as the implicit "religious" values of a nation - expressed through public ceremony, symbols, and rituals - our hosts ask if Australia even has a civic religion in the first place.

They then turn their eyes to the place of the Welcome to / Acknowledgement of Country in Australia: specifically in the church. What does it mean that some churches have pushed back against this now largely normal part of public procedure?

Finally, they take stock of a recent episode of Bluey and discuss why a children's show (of all things) brought Michael to tears.

Help internally displaced people in Africa!

Disasters and conflicts have led to a record number of over 75 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, around the world. IDPs are people who have been forced to flee their homes but have not crossed international borders.

Almost half of all IDPs - more than the population of Australia and New Zealand combined - are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the displaced have left everything behind: their homes, belongings, and livelihoods. They urgently need food, shelter, clothing, and trauma counselling. So Anglican Aid has launched a Forced to Flee Emergency Appeal to provide essential aid to IDPs in Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, and beyond. This aid will be distributed by local churches, who are sacrificially providing for the needs of the displaced, and pointing them to the God who is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.

To find out more about this appeal and make a tax-deductible gift, visit anglicanaid.org.au/wadr.