In response to being asked about the recent Amnesty International report which accuses Israel of committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Prime Minister Scott Morrison replied that “no country is perfect.”

...who did God the Holy Spirit choose? Israel? Gentiles? Men? Women? Rich? Poor? White? Ethiopian? Cis gendered? Eunuch? Other?

Who gains and who maintains power when the tune of emancipation is sung in one voice. What if there are multiple tunes? What if they’re all in a different key? What if only some of it is even music?

Over the years, the Basis of Union has introduced the Uniting Church to a language of faith that is Christocentric and optimistic, and yet flavoured with humility and grace.

“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness” a hymn believed to be written in 1834 by Edward Mote, a Baptist minister. Lovely sentiment, but is it this really how most of us would define our hope?

The ultimate example for the prioritizing of the personal over the political in the David-Jonathan material is Jonathan, who chooses love over power. The text goes on to suggest that such an ordering of priorities can save lives, bestow dignity, shame kings into right action and move gods to mercy. Beauty for ashes; the government of heaven.

The privileging of a political or theological-political reading of Jonathan’s love over and against a personal and potentially erotic and/or sexual reading arguably has less to do with the text itself and more to do with the imposition of heteronormative values upon the text.

Such reflections ought to unsettle the assumption that biblical views on sexual practice (which are, in any case, multiple and contradictory) are identical to views espoused by modern religious readers...

‘What 1 Corinthians 12 insists is that we cannot give ourselves to the work of grace apart from giving ourselves to a community that gathers in defiance of the desire for authority and its associated virtues—decency, dignity, and honor.’