As with his earlier novel, Captain Corellis Mandolin, de Bernieres throws the detail of village life against the dramatic backdrop of a world war and its attendant catastrophes. Birds Without Wings takes us to a small village in Anatolia, now Turkey, in the turbulent years leading up to WWI and beyond.

Tim Watson, history teacher at Abbotsleigh on Sydneys North Shore, has had a very expensive haircut - $4500 to be precise. After about a year of sporting shoulder-length dreadlocks, Tim offered his hair to raise money for the schools 2004 charity.

Evangelistic film nights are delivering a steady influx of inquirers to Christian workers focussing on Sydneys entertainment industry.

Every year Australians send millions of cards to each other. Unsurprisingly, most of us dont give a second thought to the maker of the card. Not so the men and women of All Saints, North Epping.

There is no illusion of mere objectivity in Garners non-fiction: that of an absent, disinterested observer. Garner is as much a character in the narrative as Anu Singh and Joe Cinques mother. And it is the rawness of Garners hurt spirit that gives her the ability to record so sensitively the pain, bewilderment and grief of others.

Phillip Jensen has published a number of essays of incisive socia commentary in Kategoria over the years. A collection of his Kategoria articles is to be published in his forthcoming book, Prodigal World: How We Abandoned God and Suffered the Consequences. This essay will form the introduction to the book. Click here to read the essay (PDF - 324k).

Recently about 40 students from New College decided to go as a group to see Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ at the local cinema. Not surprisingly, discussion of the films artistic merit, violent content and use of biblical and other Catholic texts has been red-hot among Christians and non-Christians alike. Why should this be the case?

In many ways, Australian society still lives on the capital of its Christian past, and we should thank God for that. But there are also clear signs that secularism is advancing and also that explicitly anti-Christian forces are at work in some quarters. This is not paranoia, it is simply observation. But is this cause for depression or despair? Is it cause for the Christian churches to begin a campaign of denouncing the evil in the midst of our land?