Announcing My New Website – brendanebyrne.com

Some while ago, I noticed that my creative output – poetry, music, essays and op eds, a short story or two – were spread over a number of different websites. Which, for a whole lot of reasons, was not ideal.

So I have spent a bit of time consolidating my creative output into one site under a single domain name – brendanebyrne.com

Rest assured, The Still Circle is remaining for things like sermons, prayers, liturgies, etc. But brendanebyrne.com will be the place to go if you want to see what I have been up to creatively speaking.

I hope you come and check it out, tag anything you like, follow me, even drop me a line once in a while.

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14

In the ground-breaking television documentary series The Civil War, the American historian Shelby Foote states that one of the most difficult people to speak about is the famed US President, Abraham Lincoln. According to Foote, this difficulty arises because Lincoln’s public memory is “smothered” in stories about his compassion, and is distorted by his reputation as “the great emancipator”.  But as Foote and the other historians who appear in this series illustrate, Lincoln was nothing if not an extremely canny politician; one historian even says that everything Lincoln did was “calculated for effect”. And what they also demonstrate is that, contrary to popular belief today, for Lincoln, the American Civil War was primarily a matter of preserving the American Union, not a matter of abolishing slavery. Regardless of whatever his own views about slavery might have been, Lincoln made it quite clear that if he could preserve the Union by not freeing any slaves, or by only freeing some slaves, that is what he would do.

Downfall: A Study In Political Narcissism – Now and Then

PRESCRIPT: This is the text of an op-ed piece I wrote for Engage Mail, the online journal of the Ethos Centre for Christianity and Society. The original article can be found here.

The German motion picture Downfall (German: Der Untergang, 2004, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel), aside from being a masterwork of filmmaking, also serves an important purpose: it humanises Adolf Hitler. In doing so, it explodes the myth that subsequent generations of neo-Nazis would have you believe: that Hitler was a defiant, unbowed ubermensch, who, when the world rejected his genius and tried to destroy his accomplishments, chose to exit this life on his own terms in the manner of his own choosing.

A Tale of Two Crises: Reflections on Bushfires and COVID-19

PRESCRIPT: This article originally appeared (in a slightly different format) in the Winter 2020 edition of Zadok Perspectives, a journal of the Ethos Centre for Christianity and Society.

1. Comparing Apples and Oranges? Christianity and Capitalism

Within modern Christianity, two broad trends have emerged with respect to the question of how Christians relate the tenets of their faith with the ‘orthodoxies’ of capitalist theory – especially neoliberal capitalist theory, which, since the 1980s, has been the prevailing economic paradigm of the industrialised west.

Accidental Fascists: Progressive Politics and the Dilemma of Censorship

PRESCRIPT: This is the text of an article I originally published in Engage.mail, the online journal of the Ethos Centre for Christianity and society. The original article can be found here.

Let me be clear: I hate Fawlty Towers. Indeed, I have loathed it for decades. To this day, I cannot fathom why so many people think it is comedic ‘genius’.

The Israel Folau ‘Controversy’: A Study in Corporate Censorship and Capitalist Hypocrisy

PRESCRIPT: For international readers who may not be aware of all the identities who are the subject of this post, Israel Folau is an Australian rugby player who is a prominent Australian sportsman, having played successfully in rugby league, rugby union, and Australian Rules football. He was also a member of the Australian national rugby union team, known as the Wallabies. Folau is a conservative Christian who has previously attracted attention for his comments on social media regarding issues such as sexuality. This article was originally published by the Ethos Centre for Christianity and Society, located at http://www.ethos.org.au/online-resources/in-depth-articles/the-israel-folau-controversy

Prayer Resources In The Wake of Bushfires

PRESCRIPT: After the “Black Saturday” bushfires of February 2009, I created a prayer liturgy as a resource for those congregations seeking a way to express, through worship, their grief and suffering, as well as a way to approach God in faith and hope.

In the wake of the terrible bushfires that have devastated large parts of Australia in late 2019/ early 2020, and which – at the time of writing – continue to burn and inflict loss and suffering, I re-post those prayers here, in the hope that they may be of some use to those seeking a liturgical response to this disaster.

These are offered as an “open resource” – that is to say, they are freely offered and can be modified as seems fit, so long as appropriate attribution is given.

Working the Lectionary

After a period of hiatus and re-working, I have re-launched my other blog  Working the Lectionary: Reading the Weekly Lectionary Through the Lens of Work and Faith.

I hope to make this blog a resource for those who have to prepare services, or preach from, the weekly Lectionary; as well as for those who want to reflect on Scripture in a disciplined way and consider its relevance to modern life.

The link to the Advent 1 reflections can be found here:

https://workingthelectionary.net/2019/07/23/year-a-advent-1/

This will supplement my ongoing podcast,  Ergasia: a Podcast on Work, Faith, Theology and Economics, which can be found here:

https://ergasia.podbean.com/

Gender Identity, Discrimination, and the Reading of Genesis 1:27 – A Reflection

I recently read a blogpost by Neil F Foster entitled “Fired for using the wrong pronouns”. In it, Foster describes two recent legal cases – one in the UK and one in the US – which Foster believes have potentially negative implications for religious freedom and freedom of speech in Australia.

Cricket, Redemption, and the Myths of Modernity

PRESCRIPT: For those of you who are unfamiliar with cricket, it is a sport which emerged in England in the 18th century, descending from stick-and-ball games that were played during the medieval period (and which are also the ancestor of baseball, softball, rounders, etc). Cricket is widely played in countries of the former British Empire/Commonwealth; the Ashes are the oldest competition in cricket, played between Australia and England on a regular basis since 1882. This article was originally published in Engage.mail, the online journal of the Ethos Centre for Christianity and Society.

Ergasia Podcast: An Update

I know, I know…I haven’t posted here for a while! What can I say? I’m slack!

Well, actually, that’s not true. Aside from consolidating my new website where you’ll find all my creative work, I have also been working on my podcast Ergasia

I have just started a new series, an exploration of the book Hard Work Never Killed Anyone: How The Idolisation of Work Sustains this Deadly Lie (Morning Star Publishing, 2015) by my friend and mentor Rev. John Bottomley.

So if you’re interested in a conversation about the intersection between faith, work, economics and theology, wander on over. It will be nice to see you.