John Howard the then Prime Minister of Australia introduced a series of measures (June 2007) to regulate the life of Aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory, an action that became known as the Intervention. The measures were introduced as emergency measures designed to control the widespread physical and sexual abuse of children, the excessive use of alcohol, poor levels of education and unemployment rife among Aboriginal people in the Territory according to a government sponsored report, Little Children are Sacred. The local councils of aboriginal communities were immediately dissolved, their property acquired by compulsory leases for five years and business managers appointed to administer them. After an initial occupation by army units and police to stabilize the situation in Aboriginal communities and settlements, the Federal government introduced a number of measures designed to channel welfare money for purchase of wholesome food, to limit access to alcohol and it made a commitment to refurbish schools and clinics and to build houses to ease overcrowding. These were all good things to do and cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars, but were imposed from without in a bureaucratic manner with little consultation of local people. Construction programs were conducted largely by non-aboriginal workers and school curricula were not revised with an eye to Aboriginal cultural needs or interests. The ancient culture of Aboriginal people depends upon the land, family relationship and upon the Dreaming. The bureaucracy dealt with Aboriginal communities as if it were dealing with a particularly difficult city suburb that required a new master plan. Instead of this, Aboriginal people must resolve their communal problems in their own way. For that to happen there is a need to encourage initiative and creativity and conversion of life. The Intervention and what followed did not deal well with the cultural side of its program and it did more to smother Aboriginal initiative than to encourage it.

Arthur Peacocke, a biochemist turned theologian, accepted Christ's personal resurrection but not his bodily resurrection from the grave. He argued from Paul's silence about the discovery of the empty tomb, from Christ's sharing fully in our human condition, and from the irreversible processes of nature. John Polkinghorne, a physicist turned theologian, has maintained that Paul's view of resurrection implies an empty tomb, that Christ's resurrection from the grave has revealed the transformed destiny of matter, and that, for good reasons, God can suspend and change the laws of nature. In Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's vision of an evolving world, Christ's resurrection from the grave released a new force of love and revealed the spiritual destiny of matter. With Polkinghorne he shared a hope for the transformation of the universe, a process initiated by the glorious raising of Jesus’ crucified body.

The growing non-religious spiritualities are markedly neo-Gnostic in their interest in cosmologies and their opposition to institutional religion. Gnostic cosmologies, specifically their teachings on the cosmic significance of the Cross, angelology and multiple heavens in fact all have counterparts in Irenaeus and Christian apocrypha. Clement of Alexandria asserts an authentic Christian gnosis communicated by Christ to Peter, James and John. The use of Richard Bauckham's “eyewitness” Biblical exegetical method shows that most of the Christian cosmological traditions can be credibly held as teachings of the apostles and “deepening” (Daniélou) interpretations of Scripture. Gnosticism appropriated but distorted them. The existence of an inner circle among the disciples, the patristic and liturgical traditions and the teachings of Paul indicate that for the early Church, gnosis was the Holy Spirit's gift of knowledge, God's knowledge of the cosmos. This knowledge could not be understood outside the Church. To enable application of Christian gnosis to dialogue with contemporary spirituality, renewal of Christian theology and practice in the light of the gnosis is proposed, particularly in the areas of liturgy, fundamental and natural theology and evangelisation.