A Toolkit for Telling the Australian Faith Stories

We have been gifted some excellent resources in recent times by some dedicated researchers. Only a small number are going to read the thousands of pages of stories. These carefully collected narratives could lie idle on bookshelves and gather dust or people like you could take them and put them to work in the marketplace.

There is a big job to do. Greg Sheridan wrote in his book God is Good For You, ‘The sense of Christianity in education has become cockeyed, unbalanced, inaccurately hostile.’ It’s urgent that we get stuck in to set the story straight.  We need creative storytellers to love the stories, who will make them jump up and live in public imagination. Good storytelling and good stories can counter the wave of negativity towards the faith that has been the backbone of our country. The tools are in your hands. READ MORE to see a list of good resources.

RESOURCES FOR UNCOVERING AND TELLING THE AUSTRALIAN CHRISTIAN STORY

AUSTRALIAN CHRISTIAN HISTORY
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The Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography. Ed. Brian Dickey, Sydney Evangelical History Association, 1994. (Available on line)

The Shaping of the Good Society in Australia. Ed. Stuart Piggin, Australia’s Christian Heritage National Forum, 2006.

The Fountain of Public Prosperity. Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740-1914, Stuart Piggin & Robert D. Lindner, Monash University Publishing, 2018.
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Attending to the National Soul. Evangelical Christians in Australian History, 1914-2014. Stuart Piggin, Robert D. Linder, Monash University Publishing, 2019.

The Bible in Australia, A Cultural History. Meredith Lake, Newsouth Publishing, 2018. 

Australian Christian Life from 1788. Iain H Murray, Banner of Truth Trust, 1988.

That Better Country, The Religious Aspect of Life in Eastern Australia 1835-1850.
John Barrett, Melbourne University Press, 1966.

The History of the Churches in Australasia. Ian Breward, Oxford University Press, 2001.

One People, One Destiny. Mike Spencer, Southern Cross Educational Enterprises, 2014. 

One Blood. 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: A Story of Hope. John Harris, Albatross Books, 1990.

God is Good for You. Greg Sheridan, Allen & Unwin, 2018

Post-God Nation: How Christianity Fell off the Radar in Australia - and What it Needs to Get  Back on It. Roy Williams , HarperCollins, 2015.

STORYTELLING

Storytelling, Imagination and Faith. William J Bausch, Twenty Third Publications, 1966.

Storyteller, Storyteacher, Discovering the Power of Storytelling for Teaching and Living. Marni Gillard, Stenhouse Publishers, 1966.

Telling the Gospel Through Story. Christine Dillon, IVP Books, 2012.

To be told. Know Your Story, Shape Your Future. Dan B Allender, Waterbrook Press, 2005.

The Call of Stories. Teaching and the Moral Imagination. Robert Coles, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989.

How to Hold and Audience without a Rope. Clifford Warne and Paul White. A.I.O. Press, 1986.