Richard Johnson Lectures

Against Bitterness: Q&A Session with Stan Grant

In this episode, you'll hear the Q&A session following Stan Grant’s 2025 lecture, Against Bitterness: how do we live with suffering? Theologian and writer Stan Grant delivers a searing diagnosis of our times where chronic loneliness, runaway technological development, and fractious identity politics make bitterness the last real human emotion. He offers an antidote: imagination, re-enchantment, reconnecting with God, and human lives committed to doing the little things of the everyday. --- Stan is a public intellectual, writer, journalist, and, latterly, theologian. He has over 30 years of experience in radio, television, and current affairs, including as a foreign correspondent for CNN and the ABC. As a proud Wiradjuri man, Stan has grappled, publicly, and movingly, with the ongoing legacy of dispossession in Australia and the challenges faced by Aboriginal Australians. His lectures, books, and columns reveal an astonishing array of references, all delivered with poetic insight. These days, he is a distinguished professor at Charles Sturt University, and you can catch his columns in The Saturday Paper. His latest book is Murriyang: Song of Time. --- Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith [https://cpx.podbean.com/], a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. If you’d like to know more about CPX, our website is publicchristianity.org [https://publicchristianity.org/]

Against Bitterness: how do we live with suffering?

In this episode, you'll hear Stan Grant’s 2025 lecture, Against Bitterness: how do we live with suffering? Theologian and writer Stan Grant delivers a searing diagnosis of our times where chronic loneliness, runaway technological development, and fractious identity politics make bitterness the last real human emotion. He offers an antidote: imagination, re-enchantment, reconnecting with God, and human lives committed to doing the little things of the everyday. ---  Stan is a public intellectual, writer, journalist, and, latterly, theologian. He has over 30 years of experience in radio, television, and current affairs, including as a foreign correspondent for CNN and the ABC. As a proud Wiradjuri man, Stan has grappled, publicly, and movingly, with the ongoing legacy of dispossession in Australia and the challenges faced by Aboriginal Australians. His lectures, books, and columns reveal an astonishing array of references, all delivered with poetic insight. These days, he is a distinguished professor at Charles Sturt University, and you can catch his columns in The Saturday Paper. His latest book is Murriyang: Song of Time. ---  Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith [https://cpx.podbean.com/], a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. If you’d like to know more about CPX, our website is publicchristianity.org [https://publicchristianity.org/]

Exiles at Home: Q&A Session with Tim Winton

In this episode, you'll hear the Q&A session follwoing Tim Winton’s 2024 lecture, Exiles at Home: what our contempt for nature is costing us. Writer and activist Tim Winton reminds us that life on earth is a gift, a miracle we often fail to honour or even recognise. As we face an ecological crisis unprecedented in human history, Tim points to the critical need for solidarity - with the earth, our home, and with each other. Tim’s literary career spans 40 years and 30 books for adults and younger readers. His books have been translated into 29 languages and won numerous awards including the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times and he has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Tim is also the writer, narrator, and executive producer of the nature documentary series Ningaloo that screened around the world in 2023. Tim lives in Western Australia. --- Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith [https://cpx.podbean.com/], a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. If you’d like to know more about CPX, our website is publicchristianity.org [https://publicchristianity.org/]

Exiles at Home: what our contempt for nature is costing us

In this episode, you'll hear Tim Winton’s 2024 lecture, Exiles at Home: what our contempt for nature is costing us. Writer and activist Tim Winton reminds us that life on earth is a gift, a miracle we often fail to honour or even recognise. As we face an ecological crisis unprecedented in human history, Tim points to the critical need for solidarity - with the earth, our home, and with each other. Tim’s literary career spans 40 years and 30 books for adults and younger readers. His books have been translated into 29 languages and won numerous awards including the Miles Franklin Literary Award four times and he has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Tim is also the writer, narrator, and executive producer of the nature documentary series Ningaloo that screened around the world in 2023. Tim lives in Western Australia. --- Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith [https://cpx.podbean.com/], a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century. If you’d like to know more about CPX, our website is publicchristianity.org [https://publicchristianity.org/]

Rediscovering Hope: Q&A Session with Leisa Aitken

In this episode, you'll hear the Q&A session that followed Leisa Aitken's 2023 lecture titled, Rediscovering Hope. How we lost it. How we get it back? You can hear her lecture in an earlier episode of this podcast, but here is Leisa, with Simon Smart, digging deeper into the topic. --- Leisa is a clinical psychologist who's been counselling and teaching for more than 25 years in workplaces, hospitals, and private practice. She recently completed a PhD on the shifting grounds of hope through Western history and philosophy, theology, and psychology. --- Check out CPX’s other podcast, Life and Faith [https://cpx.podbean.com/], a weekly conversation about the beauty and complexity of belief in the 21st century.