# Roundup: Faith and beauty, Uniting Church and First Peoples, Woody Allen, religious freedom

> Many Christians are either indifferent to beauty or suspicious of its snares, content to worship in tacky churches and amuse themselves with cultural products that are well-meaning but distinctly second-rate. Few Americans think of religion as a great wellspring of aesthetic achievement anymore and the Christian message is vastly weaker for it.

31 July 2012 · News

Canonical: https://insights1.uca.org.au/articles/roundup-faith-and-beauty-uniting-church-and-first-peoples-woody-allen-religious-freedom/

## [The shape of things to come](https://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/07/30/3556405.htm)

Many Christians are either indifferent to beauty or suspicious of its snares, content to worship in tacky churches and amuse themselves with cultural products that are well-meaning but distinctly second-rate. Few Americans think of religion as a great wellspring of aesthetic achievement anymore and the Christian message is vastly weaker for it.

## [The First Peoples are ‘us’](https://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/07/30/3556672.htm)

Improbably, uncomfortably, but wonderfully we have recognised that we are one body in Christ after all. And “if one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26). That’s what the Assembly was doing on the steps of the South Australian Parliament House. The Assembly wasn’t meddling in politics – it was being itself, the church.

## [The remarkably moral Woody Allen](https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2012/07/31/the_remarkably_moral_woody_allen.html)

What I found utterly remarkable about *To Rome With Love* is how its writer and director consistently and energetically insisted that simple love should triumph over glitz, glamour and ephemeral pleasure.

## [Religious freedom report](https://news.yahoo.com/religious-freedom-report-world-sliding-backwards-clinton-says-002112925.html)

World is sliding backwards, Clinton says.