As a child Marty Williamson was obliged to go to Sunday School. His wife Katherine's experience of church was ‘the odd wedding'. Now their friends are puzzled; even concerned; why would the newly married couple, who lived in a de facto relationship for seven years, suddenly bother to give up their Sunday mornings to go to church?

In this chapter Peter Carnley looks at the progress made towards ordaining women to the episcopate in the Anglican Church of Australia.

As one would expect from the author's earlier scholarly study, and ongoing interest, in the topic of resurrection, this chapter is insightful and commands regard, even when one disagrees with several of its tenets and inferences. This level of writing is most evident in the first section, on resurrection, but is far from absent from the second, the cross. However, this scholarly discipline does not extend to how he portrays ideas, and their protagonists, with which and with whom he disagrees. In exploring the cross, the author's main target is penal substitutionary atonement, and especially Sydney Diocese and Moore Theological College.

It has been said that ‘from the motel room to the classroom – no one escapes the Gideons', but Gideons Northern New South Wales Regional President, Barry Hammond, disagrees. “I love that quote but frankly it is untrue. It may be that there is some truth in it for Western developed countries but it is untrue elsewhere. Even in developed countries like France, there is huge opposition to the reception of scriptures,” he says.

I have a friend who is a Pentecostal pastor. Once when we were having coffee I was giving him a hard time about the title of Brian Houston's book, You Need More Money. What an outrage, I said, how could this guy be serious!

Evangelicals seem to be great squabblers. They divide over all sorts of issues: from creationism to the millennium and all the bits in between, it seems. The word ‘evangelical' itself seems particularly rubbery, implying ‘fundamentalism' to some, ‘charismatic' to others, referring to a liturgical style at one point or to a right-wing social programme at another.

The educational funding debate is a vexed issue with many of the facts distorted by political opportunism and entrenched rhetoric which is deaf to different points of view. Even amongst Christians there will be sharp differences in opinion and even some bitterness.

Darfur, the world's ‘worst humanitarian crisis' has been in the media for weeks. Every day seems to bring new twists to the narratives of despair, violence and inhumanity.