Penances You Can Hear: Christianity, Pop Culture & Multiculturalism

Mt Macedon in Victoria, Australia, after the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Lent is upon us and Melbourne and Sydney readers have the opportunity to do their penances early , because the Divine Wedgie is hitting the road again.

Melbourne

The first penance, on 5th March, will be will be at the Church of All Nations (CAN) in Melbourne, a plant of the Uniting Church in Australia. Antony McMullen, who writes for the CoopShop, is working towards building a coop brewery for Australia and works for CAN, has put together a workshop entitled Who Do You Say I Am: Identity, Multiculturalism & Christianity.

The panel will tap into some themes on the relationship between multiculturalism, migration and the Christian life. These include Christian perspectives on multiculturalism, multiculturalism in the Congregation and multiculturalism and Christians in the public square.

The panel comprises the Rev Dr John Flett, Associate Professor in Mission Studies and Intercultural Theology at Pilgrim College, the Rev Dr Christine Sorensen, who is Dean Formation United Theological College and the Divine Wedgie’s own Dr Matthew Tan. The paper presented will build upon the material that he put together in two posts on identity (here and here), as well as his research into Augustinian theology and migrant identity whilst a visiting Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies at DePaul University in the United States.

Find out more about the panel by clicking here.

Sydney

The second penance, on 11th March, will be at St. George’s Anglican Church in Sydney, and is entitled Playing for Eternity: The Sacraments of Pop Culture. The event will be a dinner and speech and is organised by PEACEtalks. The talk is a taster for an upcoming book (still in development) on the relationship between pop culture and Christian spirituality, and looks at how the former mimics and preys upon the vocabulary on the other, particularly the logic of sacramentality.

Readers will probably already know that this builds upon the recently published book Redeeming Flesh: The Way of the Cross with Zombie Jesus, copies of which will be available after the event.

Find our more about this event by clicking here.