ABC Religion and Ethics editor, Scott Stephens, delivers CPX’s annual Richard Johnson Lecture for 2021.
ABC Religion and Ethics editor, Scott Stephens, delivers CPX’s annual Richard Johnson Lecture for 2021.
ABC Religion and Ethics editor, Scott Stephens, answers questions after delivering CPX’s annual Richard Johnson Lecture for 2021.
ABC Religion and Ethics editor, Scott Stephens, delivers CPX's annual Richard Johnson Lecture for 2021.
ABC Religion and Ethics editor, Scott Stephens, answers questions after delivering CPX's annual Richard Johnson Lecture for 2021.
We commonly hear that the times in which we live are “unprecedented”. Not entirely without justification, when we consider the proliferation of technologies that flood our waking hours.
Yet beneath the busy surface of our media-saturated age, there lurks a temptation that is in no way unprecedented: the old temptation to live superficially – which is to say, inattentively. Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, we increasingly crave affection, fear irrelevance, are unsure who to trust, and so banish those who might wound us “out of our sight”.
The eyes are a moral organ. The contemptuous gaze can wither; the attentive glance gives life. At a time when so many distractions can cloud our vision, Scott Stephens urges us – in the tender words of the loyal Kent, in King Lear – to “see better”.
Scott Stephens is the ABC’s Religion and Ethics online editor, and the co-host (with Waleed Aly) of The Minefield on ABC Radio National. His book On Contempt is forthcoming from Melbourne University Press.
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Re:CONSIDERING is a series from Acorn Press and the CPX team that invites you to look at what's familiar from an unfamiliar angle; to consider how we consider things, and how to do it better.
Now available - The Pleasures of Pessimism by Natasha Moore, The Cost of Compassion by Tim Costello, The End of Thinking? by Mark Stephens and Achievement Addiction by Justine Toh.
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The Richard Johnson Lecture is an activity of the Centre for Public Christianity. The lecture seeks to highlight Christianity's relevance to society and positively contribute to public discourse on key aspects of civil life. For more information and past lectures, click here.
