Barney Zwartz, conservative Presbyterian and Melbourne Age religion editor, ‘Crises of Faith’, Age, 30 Jun. 2006:
It so often comes down to sex. The Anglican Church has been tearing itself apart over the issue, but now the conservatives are winning.

[Think so do you, Barney? I'm caught between oxymoronic epigrams: 'We had to destroy the village in order to save it'; or 'The operation was a success but the patient died'. Score one for secularisation, I reckon.]

The Vatican, quoted in Melissa Fyfe ‘Stem cell technique could circumvent restrictive laws’, Age, 30 Jun. 2006:

The Vatican has threatened scientists who conduct stem cell research with excommunication. ‘Destroying an embryo is the equivalent of abortion’, said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who said the penalty would also apply to the mother, father and nurses.

[Why stop there, Fonzy? Surely there's plenty of room in hell for the hospital and clinic administrators, doctors, receptionists, sick people creating demand by selfishly seeking cures, and anyone else who plays some role in the procedure. Come on, think big.]

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Filed in: Their Own Mouths

The Australian National Secular Association in association with the Rationalist and Humanist Societies ran a very successful conference in Melbourne last weekend. The topic was ‘Keeping God out of Government’ and among the participants was one Barney Zwartz. Zwartz, a conservative Presbyterian who doubles as religion editor of the Melbourne Age, told us a few ‘home truths’ the most coherent of which seemed to be that, like Christianity and Islam, we had our fair share of ‘fundamentalists’.

I don’t think this is right. A central feature - I think the central feature - of humanism, rationalism and freethinking (I don’t know about ’secularism’, often used as a comprehensive political swear-word by people like Zwartz) is the provisional nature of knowledge, and I mean all knowledge. The only thing I’m pretty sure of is that I’m not sure of anything - and I’m not even quite sure of that. To characterise this as a species of fundamentalism - to class it with Christian and Muslim fundamentalisms - is to deprive the term of meaning.

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Filed in: Fundamentalism, Islam, Morality, Politics, Secularism

Our Bill is not a happy man. Interviewed on Channel 7’s Today Tonight program earlier this month he was most concerned about the treatment he received:

Strange, but when I was introduced, I was called ‘deeply religious’ and part of the Australian Family Association [AFA]. They got it wrong on the latter, as I twice told them I was secretary of the Family Council of Victoria. (’Vic. Education Dept promotes gay agenda’, News Weekly, 24 Jun. 2006)

Well, I can understand your frustration, Bill, but you must admit that following all your peregrinations is a challenge. As far as I can make out you arrived in Australia in about 1989 from America via the Netherlands and did some work with the Institute of Public Affairs and Quadrant magazine. You were then employed by the National Civic Council’s AFA in 1992 and moved to Focus on the Family Australia in 1996, having first become (part-time, honorary?) Secretary of the Family Council of Victoria in 1994. You moved to Salt Shakers in 1998 but by 2000 had returned to the AFA where you remained until the end of 2005. And you still have articles appearing in AFA and National Civic Council journals.

So I can see why journalists might get a little confused.

Filed in: People

Every week spews forth a new crisis in what is laughingly termed ‘the worldwide Anglican communion’. ‘Worldwide Anglican shambles’ is more like it. This week saw the US Episcopal (Anglican) Church electing a woman as its leader, thus setting off a frenzied conservative outcry. But in an effort to stave off expulsion from the ‘world communion’, the Episcopalians also issued a fawning promise not to consecrate any more openly gay bishops. (Church tries to head off ejection)

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Filed in: Evangelicals

If you want to see Peter Costello making a stirring, keynote speech you should hurry along to the Australian Christian Lobby’s (ACL) ‘Building a Nation of Character’ conference in September. Costello was a big hit at Brian Houston’s Hillsong church in 2004 and 2005 and is doing all he can to maintain his image as a Religious Right poster boy.

Fundamentalists and Pentecostals love being courted by Coalition frontbenchers and quickly forget about little lapses, like voting to strip Tony Abbott of his veto power over the RU486 abortion drug. You know, like Costello did. Because his conscience told him to. Nothing to do with most electors supporting the availability of RU 486, and safe, legal abortion in general.

But that’s water under the bridge. After all, Costello says he likes the Ten Commandments and the Judaeo-Christian heritage and young happy-clappies and all the right things. It hardly seems to matter that he’s a … POLITICIAN.

Filed in: Politics

We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion. The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an anti-child mind-set. So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception.

Judie Brown, American Life League, quoted in Russell Shorto Contra-Contraception, New York Times, 7 May 2006 -

The American Life League is a lay Catholic organisation and it’s therefore no surprise when someone like Judie Brown outlines an anti-contraception rationale. But increasing numbers of American Protestant churches and para-religious groups like Focus on the Family are beginning to take the same line. For instance, R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently wrote that:

The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age - and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm … A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control …

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Filed in: Christian Right, Family Values, Sexuality

[There are] two million American children with an incarcerated parent. [And jail is] exactly where we will send [those children] one day if we do not begin to reform the criminal justice system. We must re-evaluate who we lock up, why we lock them up and how we lock them up …

We need to challenge ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ laws and mandatory minimum sentencing, responsible for filling 60% of our federal prisons with drug offenders, many of whom have no prior criminal record for a violent offence … (New Life, 8 Jun. 2006)

So who is this weak-kneed, namby-pamby milksop campaigning to flood the community with social vermin? Convicted Watergate conspirator and now fire-breathing conservative evangelical Charles Colson, that’s who.

You see, Colson spends most of his time ranting against abortion, gay and lesbian rights, IVF, pornography and a whole lot of other things with which he’s totally unqualified to deal. But he did spend time in prison and he’s learnt a lot about the problems faced by prisoners through his Prison Fellowship organisation.

So when it comes to involving himself in an issue he actually knows something about - yes, you guessed it, Chuck Colson turns into a liberal!

Filed in: Evangelicals

Two quick comments about the ACT civil unions law (Mark I), recently overturned by the Federal Government.

Firstly, here is how Federal Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock’s reaction was reported when the bill was passed on 11 May 2006:

The bill had been hugely controversial, with … Ruddock at one point threatening to use Commonwealth powers to stomp on the law.

But this morning, after the legislation was passed by the ACT last night, his spokesman said Mr Ruddock was happy with amendments made to the original bill … However, [the spokesman] warned Mr Ruddock would still look closely at all the details to ensure the legislation doesn’t conflict with Commonwealth law. (’Gay groups applaud ACT civil union bill’, AAP, 12 May 2006)

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Filed in: Sexuality

Pro Life Victoria (PLV), once a rival but now practically a sister organisation to Margaret Tighe’s Right to Life Australia, is getting very hot and bothered about Labor Premier Steve Bracks:

… Bracks has done a deal to ‘decriminalise’ abortion if he wins the November election … We need every Victorian who has ever been pro-life … to come onboard a campaign to stop this barbarity. Otherwise we will be giving in to the obsessive demands of former failed Premier Joan Kirner and [current minister] Mary Delahunty who are browbeating the Premier and Attorney General Rob Hulls into submission to their ideological goals. (PLV Action Alert May 2006)

No doctor has been successfully prosecuted under Victoria’s abortion law for well over 30 years and calls for its preservation seem anachronistic. As if to remind us how out of touch they are, PLV is distributing old Right to Life postcards. Remember them, you ancient pro-choicers out there? - a photo of a baby with the legend: ‘Kill her now it’s murder … Kill her before birth it’s abortion.’ It should be worth attending a PLV demonstration if they decide to mount one, just to see the crinolines and button-up boots.

Filed in: Abortion

Religion-based parties like Family First (FFP), the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) and the rump of the old Democratic Labour Party (DLP) command a small share of the national vote, perhaps about five per cent. Most FFP and CDP votes are pinched from the Coalition, a fact not lost on John Howard who keeps throwing these electors crumbs from the table - a heterosexual marriage law here and a bit of internet censorship there. (Howard’s good at this - remember Pauline Hanson and the Tampa?) If he can’t recapture the primary votes at least he snags most of the preferences.

So why don’t these little parties amalgamate or at least cooperate much more closely than they do? Same god (well, more or less), very similar policies, economies of scale, unified voice and all the rest of it?

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Filed in: Christian Right, Politics