From the Editor

Andrew Hamilton’s usual perspicacious comments on the issue of greed were embraced by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
But greed is only one cause of the disaster which Benoit Mandelbrot (author of the Chaos Theory) has described as an apocalyptic meltdown of commercial structures.

Common Theology’s editorial mentors have lived through most of the last century and saw money first detached from the gold standard and attached to commodity then to services. In the past few decades money has lost contact altogether with what it represents, as debt is traded against risk and insurance.

The core of the financial meltdown appears to be more pernicious than greed – which afflicts only a small number of people. The unstable core was illusion, which affects us all. The illusion that money, feeding on itself without any material foundation, creates wealth and power.

Like a Faustian pact it can work for a while but must collapse eventually because it has no incarnation in the real world. In theological terms this is what we call sin. Something that has an illusion of substance.

Common Theology borrows freely from Eureka Street on-line magazine and we have a cordial relationship with the editorial team. It is one of the features of the world wide web that we can share freely – and of course this also is creating havoc with the current market system.

Melbourne Anglican Archbishop Philip Freire’s public conversations in Federation Square have taken the Church back into the market-place, and we feature his oddly ironic conversation with Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, above Paul Collins’ response to the revelation a month later that the ABC were to abolish The Religion Report. So much for truth in public places!

The story of Pos Konea will sadden many readers, particularly those who remember the Brisbane theological colleges from their salad days, when they were great communities.
From the postmodern fog between fact and fiction Bronwyn Lay brings us a Generation X perspective that no baby-boomer should miss.

It remains to thank subscribers who “value-added” to their subscriptions following last edition’s editorial comment on how close to the breeze independent publications such as Common Theology have to sail in terms of resources. Your extra dollars have helped pay the bills, but much more importantly, have encouraged us to believe that Common Theology is seaworthy.