Centre for Public Christianity

16/06/2026

My weekend of sport was a tale of two teams. I went with a friend to watch my beloved footy team Essendon play Melbourne at the MCG. By half time, it was clear we’d lost – continuing a recent losing streak. The game left me disconsolate.

It was even harder as throughout the game my friend, a One Nation supporter, had been constantly in my ear about how great Pauline Hanson is and how terrible it was that we let so many refugees into Australia. To get some relief I left the match and him well before the finish of the game.

On Sunday I settled in to watch the Socceroos play Türkiye. I assumed with Türkiye dominating possession and doing all the attacking, and the Socceroos constantly defending, it was only a matter of time before they cracked us. And then against the flow of play Irankunda broke free, wrong-footed a number of the Opposition, and goaled.

Who was this man in the green and gold? I discovered Nestory Irankunda was a Burundian refugee born in Tanzania and whose family was granted humanitarian access to Australia when he just three months old. As the former CEO of World Vision, I remembered the horrific killing in the Great Lakes conflict that would have forced his family to flee.

I texted my friend immediately, ‘Thank God for refugees’. He shot back, ‘Pauline says he can stay until the World Cup is over’.

Australia had an historic 2-0 victory and I was ecstatic. But the even sweeter feeling was that a refugee was the hero. In my faith the Bible unequivocally says God’s face is seen in the ‘stranger’, which is the biblical language for ‘refugee’.

Thank you, Australia, for welcoming Irankunda and his family.

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This week's Thinking Out Loud was written by Tim Costello.

Credit: Photo by Amy Elle/SPP/Sipa USA

14/06/2026

More people request euthanasia out of fear of burdening their loved ones than out of fear of pain. What does that say about how we understand human dignity and who counts as a full person?

On last week's episode of Life & Faith, Leah Libresco Sargeant spoke on dying, dependence, and what we lose when we treat need as undignified.

🎧 LISTEN: bit.ly/4vDOoow or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guest: Leah Libresco Sargeant
Hosts: Simon Smart & Justine Toh

10/06/2026

Would you be happy to collect mail for your neighbour while they’re on holiday? Help a friend move in to their new place? Make dinner for a sick loved one?

Now imagine you’re the one in need. Are you still happy to ask for help?

In this episode of Life & Faith, author and thinker Leah Libresco Sargeant explains why, in a world that prizes autonomy and independence, it feels shameful to be what we actually are: dependent on other people.

🎧 LISTEN: bit.ly/4vDOoow or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guest: Leah Libresco Sargeant
Hosts: Simon Smart & Justine Toh

09/06/2026

As a sometime philosopher-theologian I come across some odd questions. Here’s one: ‘Should your Tesla kill you?’ – a recent twist on the classic ‘Trolley Problem’ thought experiment.

In case you’re blissfully ignorant or have happily forgotten Ethics 101, here’s how the Trolley Problem goes. A runaway train is heading towards five people stuck on the tracks. They will die unless you switch it onto another line with only one person on it. If you do nothing, five people will die – but not at your hand; if you flick the switch, only one person will die – and you’re responsible. What will you do?

Isn’t philosophy fun?

So, here’s the twist: if you’re in an accident, should your Tesla be programmed to protect the lives of you and your passengers, or innocent bystanders?

This is both more complicated and simpler than the trolley problem: in this case, I’m not killing someone to save others, but risking my own life to save them. Isn’t that what any morally responsible driver would do?

Not so fast. It matters that my Tesla’s not making an adrenaline-fuelled life-or-death decision, but enacting a kind of pre-programmed agency delegated to a machine and the algorithms that drive it. And frequently our cool-headed in-advance decisions are driven by self-interest instead – for example, the preponderance of over-sized 4WDs on suburban streets, which makes their drivers safer and everyone else less safe.

Whichever way we go, I wonder whether the true value of this thought experiment isn’t the answer we give, but how it exposes the ways such devices may distort our moral reasoning.

Outsourced protocols tend to muzzle our better angels in favour of individualistic self-interest. Sometimes our instincts and intuitions are better than our policies and protocols. And it’s hard to program them into a machine.

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This Thinking Out Loud was written by CPX Fellow, Andrew Sloane.

07/06/2026

The world is the wrong shape for women and anger is an acceptable response. But then what?

Coming up on this week's episode of Life & Faith, thinker and author, Leah Libresco Sargeant offers some deprogramming from a culture big on autonomy and a built environment defined by a narrow range of the human experience.

Podcast drops this Thursday. Find it wherever you get your podcasts 🎧

03/06/2026

Max is offended. But also encouraged. He thinks you should be too, no matter your politics.

02/06/2026

What are we building?

Pope Leo, in his AI encyclical, fears we’re building a Tower of Babel where, dazzled by the possibilities of scientific development (‘we’re making sand think’, says one feverish techno-optimist), we’re rushing headlong into an uncritical embrace of AI that risks reducing humans to cogs in the machine.

But building isn’t Leo’s only fertile metaphor. Later, courtesy of Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, Leo offers another – cultivation:

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.

The desire to ‘master all the tides of the world’ channels the Babel spirit to overcome human limitation. A noble desire, if relieving human suffering is the primary aim. Equally, an uneasy one, since good intentions can be corrupted, and efforts to relieve human suffering can easily blur into relieving us of the human condition.

Instead, a different kind of mastery is called for, one that looks more like wielding a plough rather than a ring on a finger, or an agentic AI that becomes the tool of tools.

Even if our work involves tapping at a keyboard rather than working the field, we can all aim for ‘clean earth to till’. Above all, this is a call to create culture. A word rich in agricultural associations, culture care invokes being engaged in the slow, patient, work of tending, of institution-building, of being human with other humans.

‘The sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity’ is where the Pope sees real progress – something in which we all have agency.

So, what are you cultivating today?

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This week's Thinking Out Loud was written by Justine Toh.

31/05/2026

Will AI will make us redundant? Ordinary people just got a powerful champion in the Pope. In The Age, Barney Zwartz reflects on what may become a civilisation-defining debate.

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on artificial intelligence shows that, in him, ordinary people do have a champion.

28/05/2026

What does anti-gambling advocate and Baptist pastor Tim Costello think of Jesus running the NRL?

27/05/2026

A hairdresser trains to be a nurse. A singer shifts to art teaching. A customs agent becomes a paramedic.

What did these changes involve? What was the motivation? Was it all worth the pain? And where do we find the deepest satisfaction in our work?

In this episode of Life & Faith, Simon Smart speaks to three people who made radical changes in their careers and lived to tell the tale!

🎧 LISTEN: bit.ly/4vaGYJd or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guests: Ben Sommerville, Nicola DeVries, Ally Joy
Host: Simon Smart