Professional Historian and History Consultancy Services Brisbane
Category: Concepts in Religious Thought Series
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Book Review. Reclaiming the Human Narrative from Biological Algorithms
Dr Neville Buch[1] Book Review: Reclaiming the Human Narrative from Biological Algorithms Les, Allan (2026). Harari’s Humanist Wars of Religion: A Critique of Harari’s History of Modern Ideologies. In his timely and provocative work, Harari’s Humanist Wars of Religion, Allan Les provides a surgical critique of Yuval Noah Harari’s popular historical narrative. Les argues that…
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Australian Take on the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: The Scandal of the Mechanized Mind
Dr Neville Buch Abstract This essay examines Mark Noll’s retrospective judgment on the thirty-year legacy of his seminal work, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994), through the critical lens of Dr. Neville Buch’s research into evangelical historiography and the sociology of religion. While Noll observes a “brighter” picture in the sheer volume of Christian academic output in the twenty-first century,…
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Summative Paper from Gary M. Jarson on Religious Studies: Thinking Religion in Place – The Sacred In Rebus
Dr Neville Buch Abstract In the contemporary intellectual landscape, Gary Jaron’s (2021/2022) definition of Religious Studies as the study of the sacred and our response to what we consider sacred serves as a vital catalyst for moving the field beyond the limited recognition of supernatural entities toward a study of human action. Dr. Neville Buch evaluates this…
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Cultural Christianity versus Theological Christianity or One and the Same
Dr Neville Buch The Tripartite Spectrum of Cultural, Religious, and Theological Identity Abstract In conversations with Dr. Buch, there is confusion in the false binary of “Cultural Christianity versus Theological Christianity” or it ends in a simplistic “One and the Same” conclusion. The issue here is a misunderstanding across a belief system spectrum. There are…
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Big Belief and Big Doubt. Navigating the Altar of Autocomplete
Abstract In the complex landscape of 2026, the concepts of “Big Belief” and “Big Doubt” emerge as the critical navigational anchors for the human mind. “Big Belief” refers to an “interpretive priority” where a comprehensive worldview—be it religious or naturalistic—orients a person’s engagement with every object and event in reality. Conversely, “Big Doubt” represents the…
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Local Example of Progressive Theology in the late 1960s: The Logic of Analogy and the Leap of Faith
Dr Neville Buch Abstract Produced in 1967 by Michael Macklin (writing as Br. Ronald OFM), Analogy, Analysis and God represent a significant local example of progressive theological inquiry in Queensland during the late 1960s. This philosophical thesis navigates the “crisis of theological language” prompted by the rise of logical positivism and linguistic analysis. By evaluating…
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1986 Pentecostal Gathering. Faith and Power in the Queensland Deep North
Dr Neville Buch Abstract The 1986 Pentecostal Gathering at the Christian Outreach Centre in Mansfield represents a definitive moment in the intersection of Queensland’s political and religious sub-cultures, marking the peak of an alliance between the Bjelke-Petersen administration and neo-Pentecostalism. This essay explores how the state’s political culture—defined by a “Deep North” ethos of…
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The Altar and the Academy: Worldviews in a Secular Age
Dr Neville Buch Abstract This essay introduces the complex interplay between education, religion, and the rising influence of non-religion in contemporary society. It explores how educational institutions have become primary battlegrounds for competing worldviews, ranging from conservative “combat concepts” to the Enlightenment-driven secular critiques of faith. Drawing on historical and sociological perspectives, the discussion…
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Global Themes that Australian Studies-in-Religion scholars are missing
10 May 2026 Dr Neville Buch Necessity and Choice. The Architecture of Necessity and Human Authorship Abstract This essay explores the dialectic between necessity and choice within the frameworks of semantic theory, sociology of education, and religious studies. It posits that while neoliberal models of “rational choice” attempt to reduce human behaviour to the mechanical…
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The Cognitive Organic Mechanics of Outlander’s Historical Workshop
PDF FILE: The Cognitive Organic Mechanics of Outlander’s Historical Workshop https://www.academia.edu/166781431/The_Cognitive_Organic_Mechanics_of_Outlander_s_Historical_Workshop The Outlander Workshop: Cognitive Landscapes of the 18th Century I. Contractarianism and the Strategic Social Deal In Outlander, the social structures of 1743 Scotland are characterized by a Hobbesian Contractarianism. This political theory posits that legitimate authority…