Above Rubies ‘Up and Coming Events’ leaflet, distributed Oct. 2006:

Christians are now a minority group in Australia …

[Hey, Above Rubies, will you keep that quiet, please? The official line as spouted by the Australian Christian Lobby, Salt Shakers, Bill Muehlenberg etc. is that the vast majority of Australians are Christian, and that therefore the government should ban abortion and homosexuality and make women wear longer dresses. In future, keep your subversive ideas to yourselves.]

Nancy Campbell ‘From Our Home to Yours’, Above Rubies, Jun. 2006 (distributed in October), 3-4:

[God] does not want our enemies to rule over us, but that we should rule over them and beat them into the dust. We have many [evil] enemies … in our land today, evils of abortion, homosexuality, the breakdown of family life [etc.]

['Beat them into the dust', eh? Funny how rarely 'love your enemies' makes it into Christian right literature.]

Amy Leiter, ‘We Gave Up the Dull Life’, ibid., 8:

When my parents decided to home-school, my younger brother and I were actually excited … We stopped watching TV and chose only selective movies. We began to attend a home church. My mother started grinding our wheat to make bread, … my parents were introduced to courtship and girls not going off to college …

['Girls not going off to college'!!! Anybody hear a great big alarm bell just start ringing?]

Nancy Campbell, ‘Fully Female’, ibid., 17:

It is interesting that today many women are so educated beyond their intelligence that they no longer understand the way God created them - with a womb to nurture life and breasts to nourish that precious life.

[Will someone please shut off that ear-splitting alarm?]

Peter Stokes, Salt Shakers, email to supporters, 23 Oct. 2006:

[H]omosexuals …have no evidence to support recognition or rights.

[And a happy Halloween to you too, Pete.]

Bill Muehlenberg, ‘Stay on course in Iraq‘, 27 Oct. 2006:

It is hard to know what is really going on in Iraq. Much of the media gives us a fairly slanted view, highlighting the carnage and bloodshed.

[Yes, we're never told about the gorgeous weather Baghdad's been having lately.]

Andrew Snowdon, comment on Bill Muehlenberg, A review of Full Gospel, Fractured Minds? By Rick Nanez, 18 Oct. 2006:

I note the diminished male presence in Pentecostal churches and wonder if it is due to the lack of reasonable doctrine … I’m involved with origins issues [i.e. creationism] and I see a significant difference in the level of interest between men and women. Maybe men need that [rational, intellectual] component more, being less intuitive. I know someone will cry ’sexist’ but I didn’t invent the differences, they are real, I’m just observing them.

[Andrew, I think you're a nong, but I didn't invent your nonghood, it is real, I'm just observing it.]

John Angelico, Christian home educator, comment on Bill Muehlenberg, Abortion truths, 21 Oct. 2006:

… I agree that most ‘pop’ Christian authors don’t understand the worldview problem. Try looking for authors like Francis A. Schaeffer, or the likes of R. J. Rushdoony, David Chilton, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, Ray Jordan (all of the ‘Reconstructionist’ label, but don’t let that put you off) …

[John, since Reconstructionists favour measures like the public execution of women who have abortions, I think I will 'let it put me off', if that's OK.]

Bill Muehlenberg, A review of Repenting of Religion. By Gregory Boyd. Part 2, 15 Oct. 2006:

Yes, on the one hand, all sin is terrible and earns the judgment of God. But there seem to be sins which God singles out. For example, homosexuality is seen as so reprehensible by God that he calls it an abomination, and says that it deserves the death penalty. Neither is true of, [say], overeating.

[No. Or jaywalking either.]

Frank Brennan, author of Acting on Conscience: How Can We Responsibly Mix Law, Religion and Politics?, quoted in Barney Zwartz, ‘Religious people “have a responsibility to respond” to public issues’, Melbourne Age, 28 Oct. 2006:

Even secular humanists must acknowledge that religious citizens have something distinctive to contribute in calling a halt to utilitarian sentiments and saying sometimes there are things that are right or wrong in themselves.

[Sorry, Frank, most of the secular humanists I know hold that something is right or wrong if it's shown to be right or wrong e.g. paedophilia is wrong because of the demonstrable harm it causes to children. There's no basis for any criterion other than persuasive evidence, and certainly not for some arbitrary supernatural standard.]

Pastor Ron Onks, Gold Coast, Queensland, letter in John Mackay’s Creation News, Oct. 2006, 1:

Using your [creationist] materials along with extensively teaching [my religious education] students the Ten Commandments has helped them to realise how much they constantly sin against God.

[Yep, Ron's classes are a bundle of fun.]

NSW Council of Churches, ‘Human cloning unnecessary and morally flawed’, New Life, 19 Oct. 2006:

The NSW Council of Churches believes the proposal to allow destructive research on human embryos is morally flawed, potentially harmful to individuals and society, and unnecessary …

[So have all members of these churches undertaken never to benefit from this research, nor to allow their children to do so? Come on, guys, show us your sincerity.]

‘Lutherans reject ordination of women’, New Life, 19 Oct. 2006:

The more than 380 delegates attending the [Lutheran Church of Australia] conference debated the motion to allow women’s ordination, and while the No vote was defeated by 194 to 169, the two-thirds majority required for the Yes vote to be successful was not achieved. A similar vote conducted in 2000 had a similar result …

[Very progressive. Remember, to a Lutheran, 'progress' means 'not going backwards'.]

‘CDP [Christian Democratic Party] calls for action on water crisis’, New Life, 19 Oct. 2006:

… [T]he Christian Democratic Party recognises that Almighty God is in charge of the weather. He both gives and withholds rain. After ten years of drought in Australia, what might God be saying to us?

[Hold it! Didn't the Australian Prayer Network tell us several times last year that its members' prayers had broken the drought? Did one of them go and think a lustful thought or something? Come on, God-botherers, get your act together or we'll be right up the creek.]

John Hartnett, creationist speaker, ‘Genesis in a Chinese restaurant’, Creation Ministries International (formerly Answers in Genesis) Prayer News, Oct.-Dec. 2006, 4, regarding a conversation he had with a Chinese waitress:

I told her that many Chinese characters have their origins in the Garden of Eden and are the result of the Chinese people being related back to Adam through occupants of Noah’s Ark and the Tower of Babel when God dispersed people groups by creating various languages.

[No wonder you forgot to order the spring rolls.]

Peter A., Creation Ministries International supporter, quoted in ‘Flaming koalas’, ibid., 15:

On a visit to the Coffs Harbour Zoo we were informed by the keeper that the koala was so highly evolved that it could only eat certain kinds of leaves, mostly gum leaves. I said that in that case evolution must be crazy. If this is the most highly evolved creature in Australia, how is it that since its diet is essentially diesel fuel, it sits in trees during fires and goes up like a Roman candle?

[Peter, even allowing for your colossal over-simplifications, since you believe that God created the koala, does it follow that God must be crazy?]

Peter Stokes, Salt Shakers, E-News (’Greens propose civil unions …’), 12 Oct. 2006:

The Victorian Greens would move to destroy marriage, family and society if they gain the balance of power in the Victorian Upper House.

[But apart from that their platform is exemplary.]

Stokes again, E-News (’Update on cloning …’):

When writing to MPs and candidates, please do NOT say ‘please do not vote for the decriminalisation of abortion bill’ - There is no bill to vote on and MPs are tending to think you do not know what you are talking about …

[And the MPs are tending to be right.]

James Adams, Fathers for Equality, ‘Discrimination and Fatherhood’, Fatherhood Foundation email, 8 Oct. 2006:

… [O]ur ‘fertility debate’ is controlled by those who hate men …This is a war … [T]hese radical feminists hate men more than they love children.Did you know that an Australian girl who goes to university only has 50% chance of having a family? … (Why? Sexism in education means that for every five female graduates, there are only four male graduates [and one of them is gay and another marries his secretary] … Who are these professional women going to marry? The milkman?)

Australia is a matriarchy … Whatever women want, they get … What the radical feminists call ‘patriarchy’ - 1950s America - where dad slaved away in the factory and mum slaved away in the kitchen, was balanced, it was fair, men and women both worked and suffered equally.

[You win, James. A punchline would be redundant.]

Babette Francis, Endeavour Forum, ‘The selective indignation of Senator Stott Despoja’, News Weekly, 14 Oct. 2006:

Pregnancy support services in Australia also report the acts of coercion daily witnessed at abortion clinics: tearful daughters being rushed in by parents, reluctant wives and girlfriends being virtually dragged in by husbands or de factos.

[And children, if you don't believe every word of this story, the big bad wolf's gonna gobble you all up.]

Bill Muehlenberg, ‘Time to de-radicalise our schools’, CultureWatch - 9 Oct. 2006:

… [W]hile many students graduate from secondary school barely literate, they seem well-versed in feminism, Marxism and radical social experimentation.

[I'm trying to imagine teaching feminism and Marxism to a barely literate student.]

‘Fred Nile clocks up 25 years of faithful service’, New Life, 5 Oct. 2006, regarding the Christian Democratic Party leader’s speech celebrating his quarter-century in the NSW Legislative Council:

Thanking Almighty God and the NSW public for the opportunity to serve, Fred Nile briefly recounted the good he had managed to do for the community.

[Very briefly indeed, I'd imagine.]

More Fred, Family World News editorial, Oct. 2006, 2:

The main question to be decided is what are our Australian values? One noisy lobby quoted secular humanist values such as tolerance, acceptance etc., which are not values as they need to be associated with another activity, for example, tolerant of drugs, tolerant of child sexual abuse …

[I see it, but I don't believe it.]

Filed in: Their Own Mouths