McGillion, Chris 1954-

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McGillion, Chris 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954. Education: University of Sydney, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Office—School of Communication, Charles Sturt University, Panorama Ave., Bathurst, New South Wales 2795, Australia; fax: 2-6338-4047. E-mail—cmcgillion@csu.edu.au.

CAREER:

Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia, senior lecturer; Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, senior journalist and religious affairs commentator. Also, senior research fellow with the Council of Hemispheric Affairs.

WRITINGS:

(With Morris Morley) Unfinished Business: America and Cuba after the Cold War, 1989-2001, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor and contributor) A Long Way from Rome: Why the Australian Catholic Church Is in Crisis, Allen & Unwin (Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia), 2003.

The Chosen Ones: The Politics of Salvation in the Anglican Church, Allen & Unwin (Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia), 2005.

(Editor, with Morris Morley) Cuba, the United States, and the Post-Cold War World: The International Dimensions of the Washington-Havana Relationship, University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Eureka Street, Inside Sport, Miami Herald, National Catholic Reporter, Christian Science Monitor, Tablet, and the Age.

SIDELIGHTS:

Chris McGillion is a university lecturer on communications in Australia. He also serves as the religious affairs commentator at the Sydney Morning Herald, where he previously worked as a senior journalist before moving into academia. From 2002 to 2005, McGillion published four books, two each on the topics of U.S.-Cuban relations and the state of the Church in Australia. McGillion's first book, Unfinished Business: America and Cuba after the Cold War, 1989-2001, was written with Australian academic Morris Morley. Unfinished Business argues that domestic politics and Cold War-era thinking distorts U.S. government policy on Cuba despite the rest of the world overwhelmingly decreasing their pressure on the island nation. Stephen Hoadley reviewed the book for the New Zealand International Review and found it "a conscientiously documented, informative, and easily read narrative-analysis." Hoadley did concede that "those more tolerant of U.S. exceptionalism will find the book biased towards criticism with little acknowledgement of good intentions or artful diplomacy in the political arena that is Washington."

The Chosen Ones: The Politics of Salvation in the Anglican Church was published in 2005. A fair amount of the book deals with the particular case of the Anglican Church of the Sydney diocese in Australia. In a Quadrant review, Tom Frame took issue with the fact that McGillion was not Anglican himself, but instead, a Roman Catholic. Frame commented: "While I applaud his attempt to remain impartial and independent, and believe he has striven to be fair to those he portrays in his book, his own views hide in the shadows even as his own opinions determine where the margins are located." In a separate review in Quadrant, Chris Thomson did not mention McGillion's religious disposition. Instead, Thomson wrote that The Chosen Ones "is invaluable for anyone who gets as bewildered as I do at the curious image the Sydney diocese presents to the rest of the Anglican communion."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New Zealand International Review, September-October, 2003, Stephen Hoadley, review of Unfinished Business: America and Cuba after the Cold War, 1989-2001, p. 30.

Quadrant, July-August, 2005, Chris Thomson, review of The Chosen Ones: The Politics of Salvation in the Anglican Church, p. 122, and Tom Frame, review of The Chosen Ones, p. 123.