Much excitement! I received my advance copy of “The Australian Book of Atheism” last night. Boy, it’s big! Even more exciting, we’ve just heard that it’s been reviewed in Bookseller + Publisher, the bible of the Australian book trade, and awarded a 5 star (out of 5 star) rating!
The book will be released into all good bookstores on 22 November (e.g. Booktopia, ABC Shops, Borders, Readings) and can also be pre-ordered from Embiggen Books (use the link below).
After I got home last night, I couldn’t resist dipping into the book immediately.
Editor, Warren Bonett has written a brilliant and funny introduction.
I started by re-reading my own chapter on the history of Australian atheism and was quietly pleased with this first attempt to sketch out the skeleton of a history which I hope to flesh out into a book over the next 12-18 months.
Max Wallace’s chapter on the Australian constitution picks up many of the historical markers in my essay and expands on them. Similarly, Clarence Wright’s “Religion and the Law” adds yet another layer of knowledge to the ‘historical’ section of the book.
Robyn Williams (The Science Show) headlines the next section on personal experiences of being an atheist.
“What puzzles the atheist, even about full-square mainstream religions, is how many odd, or even mad, shibboleths they insist upon,” Williams explains.
Colette Livermore, formerly a nun with Mother Teresa’s order follows with the story of her loss of faith.
“Mother Teresa asserted that ‘she, who has herself for a guide, has a fool for a guide.’ However, if the inner core of one’s being is surrendered, what protection does the individual have against tyranny?”
“… we were schooled as women to be as the Proverbs 31 woman. Stepping one step up from the ‘Submissive Wife’ movement so popular in the States, the Proverbs 31 woman is all of those things without actually being human. She is Mrs America and the Bride of Christ.”
Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon’s chapter comes next, writing about growing up in an atheist/communist household and its impact on her political views.
“The curious thing is that, as Australian society has become increasingly secular, religion has more than ever begun to creep back into political life.”
I was delighted to discover that David Horton is a brilliant, funny and witty writer. His light-hearted (but serious) diatribe against agnostics draws on inspirations as diverse as My Fair Lady and Bob Dylan.
“Being agnostic is a bit like voting for the Iraq war and then saying later that you only did so because of the dodgy intelligence, knowing all along that there wasn’t dodgy intelligence; there was in fact no intelligence …”
And, finally, around 2am, I finished my night’s reading with Tim Minchin’s beat poem, Storm. I think all of us have been in Tim’s situation – sitting at a dinner party when someone spouts off with some absolute religious or new age garbage and despite urgent, silently mouthed warnings and furious kicking under the table from our partner our self-restraint fails and we explode:
“I’m becoming aware
That I’m staring,
I’m like a rabbit suddenly trapped
In the blinding headlights of vacuous crap.
Maybe it’s the Hamlet she just misquothed
Or the sixth glass of wine I just quaffed
But my diplomacy dyke groans
And the arsehole held back by its stones
Can be held back no more.”
I’m going to spend today reading the rest of the book. Flipping through the pages I see that the Education section begins with my friend Hugh Wilson’s explanation of how Queensland’s secular education system was nobbled.
Professor Graham Oppy talks about evolution and creationism in Australian schools. The fabulous Kylie Sturgess gives us an insight into the life of an atheist teaching in religious schools:
“It’s 1999 and I am told that, as an employee of the nation of Islam, one of my duties is to supervise the female students of the college while they participate in Dhuhr. I make sure that my brightly dyed Coke-bottle red hair (invisible in the course of everyday work) is even more firmly sealed under my hijab ….”
A section of culture and society comes next, including essays on euthanasia and abortion from Dr Philip Nitschke and Leslie Cannold . Jane Caro talks about atheism and feminism, while Karen Stollznow (now one of the hosts of the Point of Inquiry podcast) looks into spiritualism and pseudoscience.
The section on politics includes essays from politicians Ian Hunter, MLC and former senator Lyn Allison as well as prominent Australian journalist, Michael Bachelard and academic Russell Blackford.
The Philosophy section examines the possibility of a moral, spiritual and meaningful life as an atheist, while Tamas Pataki talks about religion and violence.
And, in the final section, Dr Adam Hamlin and Dr Rosemary Lyndall-Wemm take us inside the human brain in an attempt to explain the ‘religious experience’ in naturalistic terms.
Don’t miss this book – and please let your friends know about it. As Meg Wallace said to me last night – “At last! The Australian atheist Bible!” 😉
Chrys Stevenson
Related Links
Point of Inquiry – Karen Stollznow interviews Warren Bonett about The Australian Book of Atheism
Pre-order The Australian Book of Atheism at a discounted price from Embiggen Books.
Controversy has raged this week over allegations that some young women were sexually assaulted by two or more players of the Collingwood Football Club following Collingwood’s premiership win on Sunday, 3 October.
Two days later, footballer, Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt, made headlines after tweeting:
Girls!! When will you learn! At 3am when you are blind drunk & you decide to go home with a guy ITS NOT FOR A CUP OF MILO! Allegedly……
One sports blogger says, “I am sickened with these comments coming from a “respected” ex player. Everitt is virtually claiming that the girls have lied about a sex attack.”
That’s a huge misrepresentation of Everitt’s tweet. Surely noting that the attack is ‘alleged’ isn’t tantamount to saying that the girls were lying. And is Everitt wrong to suggest that it’s a really bad idea for a girl to get into a cab with a drunken footballer she’s only just met at 3am in the morning? Frankly, if he was giving that advice to any young lady of my acquaintance, I’d thank him for it.
The hysteria reached fever-pitch when Kerry-Anne Kennerley, host of Channel Nine’s Mornings with Kerry-Anne interviewed Everitt and weighed in with her own editorial comment, warning that AFL players “put themselves in harm’s way by picking up strays”.
The general response has been outrage that anyone would suggest, even obliquely, that the responsibility for rape, or sexual assault, could in any way be placed on a woman.
I have sat silently through the week, reading my fellow feminists’ comments on this issue and cautioning myself to keep my thoughts to myself lest I end up as pilloried as author, Helen Garner. Garner found herself accused of being anti-feminist when, in The First Stone (1995), she lamented the high cost of (unproven) allegations of sexual harassment and assault on an academic at Ormond College, University of Melbourne. By stating that the relatively minor allegations (lewd comments and a groped boob) might have been handled without resort to court action and the destruction of an academic career, Garner effectively declared hunting season open, and herself as the fox. It was an object lesson for those of us who don’t always agree with the feminist consensus.
But, as my regular readers will know, sitting silently whilst steam is coming out of my ears is one of those things for which I have the least talent, and, of course, the temptation to argue my case has become irresistible. It’s important to state that while my argument, below, does refer to girls in pubs and footballers, I am not referring specifically to the women or the footballers involved in the Collingwood incident as I have no knowledge of the circumstances pertaining to those allegations.
Firstly and unequivocally, I do not believe that any woman is to blame for being sexually harassed, sexually assaulted or raped. I believe that men have a clear responsibility (regardless of whether they are sober or drunk) to ensure that they have the full, informed consent of a woman before engaging in any kind of sexual touching or sexual intercourse. No means no – at whatever stage of the ‘action’ “No” is given. And a woman is who is high or rip-roaring drunk is obviously not in a condition to give informed consent. If a man fails to obtain such consent and they continue anyway – even if the signals given by the woman are ‘mixed’ – then the blame lies with the man. If men are unable to control their sexual inclinations whilst drunk, they should refrain from drinking in mixed company.
Further, I fully appreciate that sexual harassment is often perpetrated upon vulnerable young women in an unequal relationship to their harasser. It isn’t easy to stand up to your boss (especially if you really need to keep your job), or to your teacher or university professor who may retaliate with failing grades. But, these days, there are protections against unlawful dismissal and universities take allegations of sexual harassment far more seriously than in the past. My argument, unlike Garner’s isn’t that women shouldn’t resort to the law in what may appear to be minor cases of sexual harassment, but I do agree with her to the extent that there are options that may and should be pursued before taking that route.
That said, and as much as it pains me to agree with Spida Everitt and Kerry-Anne Kennerley, I think the hysteria over their comments is unwarranted.
There is a marked difference between responsibility and blame. If I absent-mindedly leave the house without locking the front door and my house is burgled, the theft is not my fault, and the burglar is equally as guilty whether he came in by an unlocked front door or smashed a window to gain entry. However, I must bear some responsibility for having been lax about the security of my home – and my insurance company may rightly take that lack of responsibility into consideration when considering whether to pay out on my claim.
No-one in their right mind would suggest that because the onus lies on burglars to control their urge to steal, we should assert our freedom and independence by leaving our houses unlocked. Why then do some feminists (men and women) become so enraged when it is suggested that young women need to take some responsibility for their sexual safety?
I think suggesting to young women who dress provocatively, drink copiously and fraternize flirtatiously with footballers on a bender that they bear no responsibility for unwanted sexual advances is not only wildly unrealistic, but downright dangerous. Yes, ideally, footballers (or indeed, men in general) should behave themselves and act with as much respect towards a drunken woman with her boobs hanging out as they would to a stone-cold sober nun in full habit. But, realistically, it’s just not going to happen. That doesn’t excuse the men’s bad behaviour. However, it does mean that young women must be taught to take some responsibility for their own safety.
I have long been an advocate of raising young women to be confident and assertive. We need to give girls the tools to keep themselves safe and, where possible, to avert unwanted sexual attention. We need women warriors, not wimps, and I don’t believe we achieve that by telling young women they are not responsible, at least to some degree, for their own safety.
The difference between assertiveness and victim-hood is nicely expressed in an example from Australian scientist and academic, Dr Marjorie Curtis.
A couple of my experiences may be of interest … The [London] Tube is well known for its gropers, and I remember an occasion where a man started groping me, getting bolder and bolder as time went on. I tried to move away but he wouldn’t let me. He was also making verbal threats. Luckily I was near the door, and when I arrived at my destination I leapt off the train at the last minute, and was relieved to see him being carried away by the train. I was absolutely terrified.
However, I was put to shame not long after when a friend encountered the same situation. She had more confidence than I, and grabbed the man’s hand and somehow managed to haul it over her head, saying, ‘There is a hand on my body. It is not my hand. I wonder whose hand it may be?’ The groper turned scarlet and shot off the train at the next station, to the applause of most of the passengers.
Her action turned a potentially nasty situation into a comic one, and probably put the groper off for life, whereas my cowardice merely left my groper confident that he had power over women, and could get away with quite unforgiveable behaviour.
Curtis’ account reminds me of a similar situation I had with an over-amorous boss when I was 20 years old. Soon after starting my employment, I found myself cornered in the photo-copying room with my boss leaning across my body, his hands pressing against the wall above my shoulders. There was no escape. I said quietly. “Mr Smith, if you make one more move I will raise my knee and kick you so hard in the groin that you will be black and blue for a month. Further, I will then call your wife and tell her why I am sending you home with bruised balls. Do I make myself clear?”
Smith said, “Oh, so that’s how it is, eh?”
“That’s how it is,” I replied.
“OK, now I know,” he said, “Thank you for making your position clear.”
I never had another problem with him and, in fact, some time later I received a generous raise in salary.
Now, it was certainly not my fault that Mr Smith decided to sexually harass me, but I did feel I had a responsibility to take assertive action to resist it. If you like, I felt a responsibility to ‘man up’ and be my own advocate. I refused to be a victim.
Similarly, a woman who decides to go out drinking with footballers should feel perfectly free to do so – and to dress as she pleases and drink as much as she likes – but at the point at which she is invited to accompany a footballer home (or to a hotel room/dark alley or similar), assuming she doesn’t want to have sex with him, she has a responsibility to herself to say, “Nah, I’ve had too much to drink, and so have you, I think I’ll just go home. Here’s my number, call me tomorrow when we’re both sober if you’re still interested.”
If we are going to argue that a drunken woman isn’t in full control of her faculties and therefore can’t take that level of responsibility, then don’t we also have to argue that a drunken man’s responsibility in making decisions is similarly impaired? That’s where the legal slippery slope begins. My argument is that drunkenness is no excuse – you may have diminished responsibility when drunk, but you always have the choice of whether or not to get so drunk that you can’t make reasonable decisions. Your responsibility, whether you’re a man or a woman, begins before you get smashed.
Let me recount another personal experience. I was just 15 years old when, to my parents’ horror, I started hanging out with bikies. On one occasion – I couldn’t have been more than 16 – I found myself, very late at night, in a disused quarry full of drunken bikies. I had put myself in that predicament. Nobody forced me. I had chosen to fraternize with bikies, I’d chosen the cute little see-through top I was wearing with a view to titilliating, I’d chosen to down a few drinks and I’d chosen to get on the back of a bike and go to the party. At one point, when the party started to get very rough, I felt a hand on my shoulder. A young bikie whispered in my ear, “Come on, things are getting out of hand, I’m going to get you out of here.” And he put me on his bike and took me home. Had I been raped that night I would not have been to blame, but I would have been, in part, responsible for putting myself in a situation where I was at risk. The young man who saved me, Graham, (I still remember his name), not only saved me, but protected his mates as well.
While men must bear the blame for sexual harassment, assault and rape, women cannot exonerate themselves from the responsibility of looking out for their own security and for advocating for themselves. Both men and women must also be pro-active in looking out for each other. In some cases this will not be sufficient, but in many cases it will. Sexually aggressive men are bullies and, often, cowards. The best way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them. The victims of bullying are not to blame for the bully’s actions, but they can learn to take responsibility for deflecting or avoiding the attacks.
I must add, at this point, that I am fully aware that many victims of sexual assault and rape have not recklessly put themselves at risk and I am well aware that once a sexual attack has commenced, only the victim, herself, can decide whether resistance or compliance is the best strategy to minimise her risk of serious injury or death. My argument here should not be construed as saying that every woman who gets raped has been reckless with her personal safety, or that every woman who is assaulted should fight back. Context is everything. Neither am I saying that because a woman is drunk or reckless it should be a mitigating factor in favour of the assailant. Absolutely, unequivocally, I am not arguing that at all.
But to paint women, universally, as the helpless victims of male sexual aggression is to infantilise us and, may I say, emasculate us. Women can have ‘balls’ and we need to encourage that in our young women. We need to teach men that ‘no means no’ but, equally, we need to teach women how and when to say no – and in most instances, that ‘no’ is going to be far more effective before you get into a cab with a drunken man you’ve only just met at 3am in the morning.
When I woke up this morning, I found my elderly mother already up and watching the television.
“One of your mob’s been burning Bibles,” she said, faintly amused.
“One of my mob? You mean an atheist?” I said.
“Yes. It was on the news.”
“An Australian atheist?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Well it wouldn’t be anyone I know,” I said, confidently. “Probably just some nutter.”
“Oh wait, here’s the news on now, come and watch.”
And there, on the television was someone I do know – Alex Stewart, a lawyer, and member of the Brisbane Atheists.
“Oh dear, Alex,” I thought, “What have you done?”
What Alex did was to post a video on YouTube, showing himself in the midst of a tongue-in-cheek experiment to determine which burned better; the Bible or the Koran.
The news, in recent days, has been full of an American evangelist threatening to burn copies of the Koran. This, apparently, was Alex’s response to the outcry. Alex’s method of determining the burning properties of the holy texts was to use leaves of the books as cigarette papers to roll what appeared to be joints.
“Oooh, I think I just tongued Jesus,” says Alex, licking a page from the Bible.
“I wonder what Mohammed, would have thought about this?” Alex muses as he rolls a page from the Koran.
“Is this profanity? Is it blasphemy? And does it really matter? I guess that’s the point with all this crap. It’s just a fuckin’ book. Who cares? Who cares? Like, you know, it’s your beliefs that matter … and, quite frankly, if you’re going to get upset about a book you’re taking life way too seriously. Where did I put that fuckin’ lighter?”
“The final point which I would like to make,” says Alex, “which I think a lot of people ignore, is that it’s just a book and, like, you can burn a flag, no-one cares, like, people get over it. So, with respect to books – like the Bible, the Koran whatever – just get over it. I mean it’s not as though they’re burning your copy – they’re burning someone else’s. That said, I don’t think it’s completely appropriate unless it’s done for a good purpose which, um, I’d say I’ve done today.”
A disclaimer at the end of the video clarifies Alex’s point in making the piece: Why get upset when someone disrespects your beliefs? It’s not like you lose the belief.
After watching the video I checked my inbox and found it bulging with emails from people asking, “Do you know this person? What do you think about this?”
I have to admit that my first reaction was that I didn’t like it. To me, it was unnecessarily provocative, slightly juvenile, and, above all, a monumental waste of Alex’s considerable intellectual gifts. In short, I was disappointed in Alex. Here is someone with the talent to be a future leader of the new Enlightenment and, instead, he opted for notoriety and 15 minutes of fame by taking a cheap shot which would inevitably make the rest of us look bad.
By mid-morning it became apparent that Alex’s stunt had gained national media interest. He was even the opening story on Kerry-Anne Kennerley’s advertorial morning show. By late afternoon, the video had been deleted from Alex’s YouTube channel. Tonight, I assume, Alex will be on the news and the current affairs shows – unless his employer has issued an ultimatum during the day.
One has to give Alex credit, at least, for having ‘cut through’ to gain national media exposure about issues of free speech, the limits of religious tolerance, and the right to blaspheme. He has given the country something to think about. He has launched a discussion that will reach beyond the halls of academia and into people’s living rooms. And, let it be said, Alex has made some very good points; principally, I think, the fact that someone burning a holy book is attacking only printed paper – they are not causing believers or their beliefs any actual harm. Alex has made himself an object lesson for Phillip Pullman’s oft repeated injunction: “… no-one has the right to live without being shocked. No-one has the right to spend their life without being offended.”
Importantly, Alex’s video is part of a wider topical debate within the atheist and skeptical communities. How do we best achieve our goals? Should we engage only in calm, rational and respectful debate? Or should we heap derision on ideas we believe are not only delusional, but dangerous? Christians are hardly polite in dealing with atheists – should we respond in kind?
Former JREF president, Phil Plait recently sparked intense debate in the atheist and skeptical communities with his “Don’t be a dick” talk at the James Randi Educational Foundation’s TAM8, convention.
“… there’s been some alarming developments in the way skepticism is being done,” says Plait, “ … the tone of what we’re doing is decaying. And, instead of relying on the merits of the arguments … it seems that vitriole and venom are on the rise.
… The message we’re trying to convey is hard all by it’s lonesome … [it’s] a tough sell.
… Right now in this movement … hubris is running rampant and egos are out of check … What I’m … concerned with is our demeanour … remember, the odds are against us, there are more of them then there are of us … we have to admit that our reputation amongst the majority of the population is not exactly stellar”
Plait asks his audience to consider how best to achieve the goal of ‘selling’ rationalism. He continues:
“The key, is obvious to me, at least … it’s communication … [therefore] our demeanour – how we deliver this message – takes on crucial, crucial importance …”
Using insults [and make no mistake, Christians and Muslims alike will find Alex’s video insulting], says Plait, is like using a loaded weapon.
“ … we need to be exceedingly careful where we aim that weapon … when you’re dealing with someone who disagrees with you, what is your goal? … it may rally the troops, it may even foment people to help you and to take action … but is your goal to score a cheap point, or is your goal to win the damn game?
.. When somebody is being attacked and insulted they tend to get defensive. They’re not in the best position to be either rational or self-introspective … in the skeptic movement we have our share of people who are a bit short in the politeness department … Taking the low road doesn’t help. It doesn’t make you stronger, it doesn’t make you look good, and it doesn’t change anyone’s minds.”
“In times of war,” says Plait, “we need warriors. But this isn’t a war … we aren’t trying to kill an enemy, we’re trying to persuade other humans. And, at times like that we don’t need warriors. What we need are diplomats.”
Before engaging with our opponents, he concludes, we must first ask ourselves, “What is my goal?” and then ask, “Is this going to help?” Secondly:
“… and not to put too finer point on it, don’t be a dick! … But, Seriously, OK, don’t. Don’t be a dick. All being a dick does is score cheap points. It does not win the hearts and minds of people everywhere and, honestly, winning those hearts and minds, that’s our goal!”
Plait’s “Don’t be a dick” speech sparked a rash of debate on the internet. Even Richard Dawkins joined in the fray, saying:
“ … Plait naively presume[s], throughout his lecture, that the person we are ridiculing is the one we are trying to convert. Speaking for myself, it is often a third party (or a large number of third parties) who are listening in, or reading along … I am amazed at Plait’s naivety in overlooking that and treating it as obvious that our goal is to convert the target of our ridicule. Ridicule may indeed annoy the target and cause him to dig his toes in. But our goal might very well be (in my case usually is) to influence third parties, sitting on the fence, or just not very well-informed about the issues. And to achieve that goal, ridicule can be very effective indeed.”
PZ Myers, perhaps one of the most successful, and tactless, campaigners for disbelief and skepticism backs Dawkins:
“I’ve been totally unimpressed with the arguments from the side of nice, not because I disagree with the idea that positive approaches work, but because they ignore the complexity of the problem and don’t offer any solutions … We don’t need to be trivially abusive, but on subjects we care about deeply, we should express ourselves with passion.”
Curiously, even Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, while not exactly condoning atheist attacks, concedes that the rhetoric of some evangelical leaders has been so strident they have invited an in-kind rebuke from non-believers.
“We have done a terrible job of presenting our perspective as a plausible world view that has implications for public life and for education, presenting that in a way that is sensitive to the concerns of people who may disagree,” he said. “Whatever may be wrong with Christopher Hitchens’ attacks on religious leaders, we have certainly already matched it in our attacks.”
I have two views on Alex’s video. My personal or ‘gut-instinct’ view is that I wouldn’t have done it, I don’t ‘approve’ of it, and I don’t think the cost, either to our community or to Alex personally, is worth the brief, if intense, amount of publicity it will elicit. But, my intellectual view as a historian and sociologist is somewhat less emotional and more tempered. I have learned that every social movement needs both intellectuals and radical agitators. No social movement has ever succeeded without both – and both usually work in tension with each other. The Civil Rights movement was advanced by both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer’s brilliant intellectual treatise on feminism was equally supported by ‘strident’ feminists burning their bras in the street. The Vietnam War was halted by diplomatic efforts and by university students marching the streets with placards. I’m also pretty sure that many quiet campaigners for gay rights were horrified and not a little concerned about their credibility when that movement exploded into parades featuring gay men in fishnet stockings and pink feather boas! But, in each case, the two-pronged strategy has worked.
So, while I would not have chosen Alex’s approach, I defend his right to take the path he has chosen. I also concede that my ‘gut-instinct’ in this case is very likely wrong. While I’m not the type of person to burn my bra, ride on a float in a skimpy outfit, argue with the bellicosity of Malcolm X, or march through the streets (I attended my first, quiet protest this year at the age of 51!), that doesn’t mean that those choices are not valid. Alex is not me, so Alex doesn’t have to conform to my choices or sensibilities. I accept that I don’t have the right not to be offended by Alex’s video. And I agree absolutely with his point, that those who take offence at something with does not materially effect either them or their faith, only gives fuel to the fire being stoked by their detractors. As one wit on Twitter posted today:
“News” : copies of The God Delusion burnt by Muslim/Christian groups.
Response from atheists – “Meh”.
I don’t like Alex’s approach – it makes me uncomfortable, and embarrassed. I fear for the consequences. I don’t like seeing Alex being called ‘an idiot’ on television. Although the wisdom of his actions may be debatable, he is far from an idiot. But, despite my misgivings, Alex has my support and I trust that he will similarly give others in the movement, who may make choices he doesn’t agree with, the benefit of the doubt, and support them in their choice to take a path he wouldn’t.
NOVEMBER 2010 RELEASE – AVAILABLE ALL GOOD BOOKSTORES INCLUDING ABC SHOPS, READINGS BOOKS & BOOKTOPIA, OR PRE-ORDER NOW FROM EMBIGGEN BOOKS.
Over 18 months ago, Warren Bonett and I were having dinner in a pub at Noosa. He said, “I’m thinking of doing a book on Australian atheism.”
I said, “Great idea! I’ll help.”
I hurried home and drew up a long list of possible contributors and Warren pretty well did all the rest!
I can remember Woz and I swapping excited emails as amazing people we’d admired from afar said, “Yes, we’ll contribute!”
I don’t think either of us had any clue just how much work it would involve and Warren – with help from his partner, Kirsty Bruce, Karen Stollznow and our friend, Jode – has done the vast bulk of the work while also running his science-based bookshop Embiggen Books at Noosaville (also online).
There were worried weeks when we wondered whether it would find a publisher and then jubilation when Henry Rosenbloom, the founder of Scribe, contacted Warren personally to accept the book.
Weeks of editing followed and, now that the book is in its final stages, Scribe has announced a publication date of December 2010. Scribe is touting The Australian Book of Atheism as its ‘anti-Christmas’ book. The book is an anthology of essays from around 35 Australian authors including:
Me (on the history of Australian atheism) and many more.
My chapter took months to research and more months to write and polish. Ambitiously (OK – over ambitiously) it covers the history of Australian atheism and freethought from 1788 to the present. I was astounded at the amount of material I uncovered – some of it hilariously funny and some it heart-breakingly sad. I finished the chapter feeling that this country’s heritage and national identity owes a good deal more to irreligion than to Christianity.
And now, in just a few short months, our book will be on the shelves of Australia’s major book stores! I really can’t describe the excitement to see this little idea, hatched over a couple of glasses of wine in a pub, come to fruition!
I do hope my readers will add it to their ‘Mythmas’ list.
Pre-orders can be made now, for a discounted price at Embiggen Books.
Chrys Stevenson
Update
19 August 2010 – The chapter list for The Australian Book of Atheism has been released. I’m very proud to be in with the first chapter and amongst such prestigious company. Take a look! Pre-orders available now – publication late November/December:
Chrys Stevenson [Historian], Felons, Ratbags, Commies and Left-Wing Loonies [The history of Australian atheism]
Max Wallace [Australia New Zealand Secular Assoc], The Constitution, Belief and the State
Clarence Wright [Lawyer], Religion, and the Law in Australia
Robyn Williams [The Science Show, Radio National], A Part-time Atheist
Dr Colette Livermore [former Sister of Mercy nun], Atheism: an explanation for the believer
Tanya Levin [former Hillsong member, feminist, author People In Glass Houses], Above Rubies
Hon. Lee Rhiannon [former MP, Senate candidate], Growing up Atheist
David Horton [BA, BSc, MSc, PhD, DLitt – biologist, archaeologist], Agnostics are Nowhere Men
Tim Minchin [entertainer], Storm
Hugh Wilson [Australian Secular Lobby], Public Education in Queensland
Peter Ellerton [Australian Skeptics, Winner of the 2008 Prize for Critical Thinking], Theology is Not Philosophy
Professor Graham Oppy [Philosopher of Religion], Evolution vs Creationism in Australian Schools
Graeme Lindenmayer [Rationalist Society of Australia], Intelligent Design as a Scientific Theory
Dr Martin Bridgstock [Senior Lecturer, Biomolecular and Physical Sciences], Religion, Fundamentalism & Science
Dr Philip Nitschke [Founder/Director Exit International], Atheism & Euthanasia
Alex McCullie [blogger, CAE tutor on Atheist Philosophy], Progressive Christianity: A Secular Response
Dr Leslie Cannold [Bioethicist], Abortion in Australia
Jane Caro [Author, Social Commentator], Why Gods are Man-Made
Dr Karen Stollznow, Spiritualism & Pseudoscience
Rosslyn Ives [Council of Australian Humanist Societies] Life, Dying & Death
Hon. Ian Hunter MLC, Prayers in Australian Parliament
Lyn Allison [former Senator], Ever Wondered Why God is a Bloke?
Michael Bachelard [Journalist], Politics and The Exclusive Brethren
Dr Russell Blackford [Philosopher, co-editor 50 Voices of Disbelief], Free Speech
Dr John S Wilkins [Philosopheer], The Role of Secularism in Protecting Religion
Warren Bonett [Editor], Why a Book on Atheist Thought in Australia?
Dr Robin Craig [Geneticist, Philosopher], Good without God
Ian Robinson [Rationalist Society of Australia], Atheism as a Spiritual Path
Professor Peter Woolcock [Humanist, Ethicist], Atheism & the Meaning of Life
Dr Tamas Pataki [Philosopher], Religion & Violence
Dr Adam Hamlin [Neuroscientist], The Neurobiology of Religious Experience
Dr Rosemary Lyndall Wemm [Neuropsychologist], The Neurology of Belief
More
Here, courtesy of Embiggen Books, are some wonderful videos of presentations by Warren Bonett, editor of the Australian Book of Atheism, and Russell Blackford one of the authors.
Gladly’s Book Recommendations
Gladly’s looking forward to a very large pot of honey once those royalties start rolling in! If you can’t wait until December to read a great book on atheism, try these books which you can order online from Embiggen Books.
If Alex’s Wildman’s suicide (discussed in my previous article) raises concerns about the National School Chaplaincy Program, consider the teenagers who are probably most at risk in our schools. Research studies reveal that one-third of all teenagers who commit suicide are gay. Considering that gay teens only comprise one-tenth of the school population, this means that they are 300 percent more likely to kill themselves than heterosexual youth.
So to whom do we entrust these vulnerable young people? Evangelistic, fundamentalist Christians. As Adele Horin wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald:
“… Religious institutions remain the last bastion of bigotry. They have resisted the evidence from health and legal professionals that homosexuality is a normal part of human sexuality. They have instead maintained a hardline interpretation of a few scattered references in the Bible.
… Church leaders should be spreading a message of love and acceptance of gays. Instead, they are part of the problem.”
The Australian Coalition for Equality’s spokesperson, Rod Swift, says his organisation has concerns about the abilities of chaplains to counsel young people dealing with issues of sexuality. But are those concerns misplaced? Let’s look at what one of the organisations which supplies chaplains to Australian schools thinks about homosexuality.
GenR8 Ministries says they ‘utterly reject and repudiate’ the assumption that homosexuality should be regarded as ‘acceptable sexual behaviour’. Instead, they are in favour of ‘a healthy and wholesome society in which young people are brought up effectively to their full humanity.’
What? Rewind that. Are they really suggesting that homosexual people are not ‘fully human’??? Is that the message their chaplains give to young people who come to them with issues about sexuality?
GenR8 opposes efforts to:
“enforce favourable attitudes to groups with sexual practices that are proscribed in, not only our authoritative Scriptures, but in the teachings of other major religions.”
They note that:
“Homosexual activity as with heterosexual fornication and adultery are serious sins in Christian theology and Biblical teaching, and we are committed to teaching this.”
This attitude, of course, contravenes the policies of Australia’s public education departments and GenR8 are well aware of this. GenR8 Minisitries freely admit the conflict in values:
“There is increasing awkwardness in teaching Christian sexual ethics when schools have secular humanist policies that clearly conflict with this teaching.”
They go on to complainthat:
“… to be asked to collude in wrongdoing of such a kind as this that does so much damage to the people involved themselves as well as giving the worst kind of messages to young people trying to consolidate their sexual identity and form healthy relationships with proper sexual discipline is totally unacceptable to us.”
Chillingly, GenR8 note that they do not oppose homosexuality, per se, only homosexual acts which they regard as ‘fornication’. They add that the idea of same sex marriage is ‘repugnant’. Their view, clearly expressed, is that sexual activity outside of marriage is unacceptable, and that gay people should never be allowed to marry – and therefore, should never be permitted to express their sexuality physically.
Given this, we can expect that the advice given to a troubled gay teen by a GenR8 chaplain would be either:
a) change or deny your sexuality (or, indeed, ‘pray the gay away’) or,
b) accept your sexual ‘inclination’ but look forward to a celibate life with no prospect of physical intimacy with a life partner of your choice and, of course, no children.
Can you imagine the psychological torment such advice inflicts on a sensitive teenager?
Former Jesuit, William Glenn a graduate of a Catholic high school which embodied these kinds of attitudes describes his experience as a gay teen:
During puberty’s final onslaught I came to believe that I was evil. And more: that I was sick, sinful and unacceptable in the eyes of the world. All our culture’s words and notions and judgments came home to roost in me, a 16-year-old gay boy, whom the world, let alone his parents, could not know. But finally, and primarily, I came to believe that I was unacceptable as a human being in the eyes of God. The more I prayed to be changed, which was the concentrated content of my prayer (deeply aware that I had not chosen this but believing it was visited upon me because of my sinfulness), I regarded my not changing as God’s judgment on me. [I was] abandoned .. to despair because the person I had become could effect no change, could not desist from either my feelings or my desires, no matter how hard I fought them or prayed to be delivered from them. In the end, I was utterly alone.
But, according to GenR8, this isn’t really a problem because:
“The issue has not yet emerged to our knowledge in relation to our chaplains – perhaps partly because they do not have a formal religious teaching function and are not to proselytize.”
Strange, then, that the 2009 National School Chaplaincy Association (NSCA) report (quoted by the Australian Psychological Society) , found that 40% of school chaplains say that they deal with issues of student sexuality. But GenR8 are Christians – they wouldn’t lie, would they?
So, how do chaplains deal with students who have issues relating to sexuality? I don’t doubt that many are sensitive and accepting but I also have no doubt that many are not.
In a letter to the Atheist Foundation of Australia, for example, a former student of Victoria Point High School alleges that the chaplain was distributing “Jack Chick” style anti-homosexual pamphlets to students.
In Western Australia, ‘Anita’ – a teacher with two teaching excellence awards – alleges that, until recently, her school had “a chaplain from the Church of Christ who handed out anti-gay leaflets”. That same chaplain, says Anita, refused to provide pastoral care for a gay student:
“He did not counsel a gay student who’d had a knife held to his throat. That same student came back to school the next day because his mum had taken it to the police who said they [couldn’t] do anything about it… He headed back to school and was beaten up that day by the other students…”
When Anita suggested that some measures should be put in place for LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual) students the chaplain sarcastically replied, “Why don’t you do something for left-handers?”
Shocked, Anita said that she would:
“… when he could tell me about left-handed people who are not allowed to be open about being left-handed, who are beaten up at school because of it, thrown out of their homes, labelled as pedophiles and rejected by their families…”
Anita’s championing of gay students was not a hit at her previous school, either. She tells the story of being paired with the chaplain in the staff’s ‘Kris Kringle’ (similar to Secret Santa). Of their exchange of gifts she says:
“I received…a cactus in a little pot with a blue ribbon on it… A banana and two kiwi fruits … A cucumber with a red condom on it with a Father Christmas face on it … And a cheap shitty Christmas stocking …”
A chaplain in regional WA confessed that, even if she knew a student was gay, she wouldn’t take any action unless it became ‘an issue’. This is chillingly reminiscent of the Alex Wildman case, with the school waiting until it was too late to intervene with an ‘at risk’ child. Given that research evidence shows clearly that gay students are most at risk before they come out to anyone, the approach of waiting for students to come out before providing support could be deadly.
The WA chaplain defended the lack of proactive support for gay students. She feared that if she talked about homosexuality, the kids might want to try it. She felt that talking about the subject might somehow ‘glorify it’. But research at Deakin University has found that the only effect of pro-active education about homosexuality was to reduce teenage students’ homophobic attitudes and behaviours. Teaching kids about homosexuality in no way made them more prone to experiment or to become more sexually active. Of course, we could expect a trained counsellor or psychologist to know that. We can’t expect an unqualified chaplain, whose church tells him that homosexuality is a sin and can be ‘cured’, to either be familiar with, or to accept, such research.
Julia Gillard’s announcement that a re-elected Labor Government would spend another 220 million of tax-payers’ dollars to expand the current National School Chaplaincy Program by more than 33% should outrage every parent. How much more responsible it would be to spend that $220 million – or more – on full-time, qualified counsellors for our kids. It’s not as if the chaplains are a complement to counsellors. School counsellors, it seems, are nearly as rare as hen’s teeth! Take a look at the results from a 2008 study of the ratios of counsellors to students in our public schools.
ACT – 1 counsellor to 850 students
NT – 1 to 2500
NSW – 1 to 1050
QLD – 1 to 1300
SA – 1 to 1994 (at best)
TAS – 1 to 1800.
But, is our government committing more money to counsellors? No, they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on unqualified people with a religious agenda! As my friend, Sean the Blogonaut (a teacher himself) says, “Who would you prefer to work with your troubled teen? A qualified counsellor or a retired motor mechanic?” (the only professional qualification of a chaplain of Sean’s acquaintance).
What price do we put on our children’s welfare and mental health? This should be a national scandal! What would be the reaction if adults needing psychological assistance were told by Medicare or their private health fund to visit their local minister or pastor instead – because it was cheaper?
The National School Chaplaincy Program must be stopped. It is nothing more than a means by which politicians are attempting to buy votes from right-wing Christians. It has nothing whatever to do with the best mental-health outcomes for our children.
Julia Gillard’s announcement shows that she is willing to sacrifice Australian children’s welfare in return for Christian votes. That is, quite frankly, sickening. It now appears that the only way to stop this ill-advised and dangerous program is the High Court action which will challenge the scheme on constitutional grounds.
It was announced, this week, that high-profile Sydney barrister, Bret Walker, SC will lead the legal team engaged for this land-mark constitutional challenge. The importance of having the case represented by such a leading figure in Australian law cannot be overstated. Walker is one of Australia’s leading barristers. He has been president of both the NSW Bar Association and the Law Council of Australia and Governor of the Law Foundation of NSW. He is Editor of the NSW Law Reports and Director of the Australian Academy of Law. It is exciting that such a high profile, well-informed, legal luminary believes that Ron’s case is strong with a high chance of success.
Walker will be supported by barrister, Gerald Ng, and the law firm, Horowitz and Bilinsky. The next step in the legal process is approaching, and further details will be released when it occurs.
In the meantime, if you have read this series of articles –
Part Three: Gay Teens at Risk from School Chaplaincy
and you share my concerns about the National School Chaplaincy Program, I urge you to dig deep and donate to the High Court Challenge team.
Chrys Stevenson
8 August 2010: The Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, will today announce an allocation of $222 million to boost the number of chaplains in schools by more than one-third, which would mean about 3700 schools will be covered under the voluntary scheme introduced by the Howard government.
First time comments on this blog are moderated, but will be approved as soon as possible.
Further Action
If you oppose the National School Chaplaincy scheme, please donate to the High Court Challenge against National School Chaplaincy. A paypal facility is available on the website.
Ron Williams, a parent from Toowoomba, is bravely taking on the government and arguing against this scheme on constitutional grounds. He has recently announced that high profile lawyer, Bret Walker SC will lead the legal team. Walker will be supported by Gerald Ng, Barrister, and the law firm, Horowitz and Bilinsky.
Note – money raised for the High Court Challenge goes into a trust for the payment of legal fees, not to Ron Williams and his family. For a small (or large) investment, this is a chance to be a part of Australian history.
Gladly’s Book Recommendations
Gladly’s favourite book store for online purchases is Embiggen Books. If you’ve found this article interesting you may enjoy this further reading:
Australia’s national school chaplaincy program was introduced by the Howard government in October 2006 and continued and expanded by the Rudd Government. Provided at enormous cost to Australian tax-payers, the result is that over 2,000 state schools currently employ chaplains, providing the chaplains and their churches with direct exposure to approximately 720,000 children (Overington, 2008).
My first article in this series argued that it is a pointless exercise, for all concerned, to place evangelical Christians into schools and then tell them they can’t promote their theistic beliefs. This article will deal with another misleading claim of the National School Chaplaincy Program – that is, that chaplains do not counsel students. In this article, I will argue that chaplains do counsel students and that this is tantamount to playing Russian roulette with children’s lives.
First, it is important to note that chaplains require no formal secular academic qualifications. Scripture Union, one of the major bodies contracted to supply chaplains to schools explains:
“Most Chaplains aren’t trained, qualified professional counsellors. It would be a misrepresentation to describe them in that way. Even if some Chaplains do have formal counselling qualifications, it would be sending the wrong message to stakeholders and the public about what Chaplains are and do.”
Of course, the government and the organizations which supply chaplains claim this isn’t a problem because chaplains are not permitted to offer ‘counselling’ to students. Really? I contend that this is a matter of semantics – and Scripture Union reveals why.
“There are legal ramifications that come into play when you use the terms ‘counsellor’ and ‘counselling’.
Obviously, there will be times when Chaplains will be involved in talking one-on-one with students, staff and/or parents about issues and problems that they’re facing, but Chaplains should be involved in nothing more intensive than high-level pastoral care.”
So, chaplains don’t provide counselling – they provide ‘high-level pastoral care’. And in what areas is this ‘pastoral care’ put to use? According to the Effectiveness of Chaplaincy Report (2009), chaplains have been called in to help with children’s anger issues, grief and loss, bullying, peer pressure and self esteem as well as self harm and suicide. Even more concerning, according to the Rationalist Society of Australia, is anecdotal evidence suggesting that the more devout the chaplain, the less likely they are to refer students to professional services.
In another document, Access Ministries quotes a chaplain saying: “At the moment…., in the last week I’ve got two Grade 5 kids on suicide watch.”
“The language used is important. The term ‘counselling’ should be avoided. ‘Pastoral Care’” or ‘pastoral conversations’ are much better terms to use when describing this element of a Chaplain’s role. This is not intended to be ‘sneaky’ [really?] but rather to accurately describe and represent the Chaplain’s role.”
So, let’s get this straight. Chaplains are not allowed to evangelise or counsel students. Apparently, what they are allowed to do is to have ‘pastoral conversations’ during which they are prohibited from offering advice or offering prayer or religious faith as a solution. So, what exactly do they do during these ‘pastoral conversations’? Pat the student’s hand and mutter “There, there”? Whistle Dixie?
“I find it difficult to imagine a chaplain who is engaged with students and young people who have problems – and that’s where they will largely be used – to not be involved in counselling.”-
“Most school chaplains spend much of their time in pastoral work. They counsel young people who are referred to them, or those who come to them voluntarily”.
Note that in this quote the words ‘pastoral work’ and ‘counsel’ are used interchangeably.
Let’s be honest about what taxpayers are investing in with the National School Chaplaincy Program. We are placing untrained, unqualified people with a religious agenda into our public schools to support and, yes, counsel, at risk kids. Consider this job description by a chaplain who worked at Balwyn State High School :
“Teenage suicide, depression, grief associated with separation or divorce or death, questions of sexual identity, illness, abuse, physical disability, drug use and teenage pregnancy are issues which the school chaplain confronts day in day out.”
Later promoted to a supervisory role, she continues:
“We as supervisors constantly worked with moving stories of chaplains supporting students who were pregnant and needed to make hard choices about whether or not to have the baby, with chaplains journeying with students who come out as gay, or who struggled with their own attitudes to homosexuality, chaplains ministering in a time of community grief after an accident had led to the death of one or more of their students, or a range of other pastoral situations.”
Nobody doubts these people are well-meaning, but I might be equally well meaning if I attempt to extract someone’s appendix with the intent of making the pain go away. The fact remains that my total lack of training in medicine means there is every likelihood I’ll kill them instead. Good intentions are no defence.
Experts agree that what is needed in schools are not chaplains, but trained counsellors. Speaking on behalf of the NSW Teachers Federation, Angelo Gavrielatos said:
“At a time of ever increasing social pressures on children, what is needed is an enhancement of professional school counselling services. Currently the school counsellor to student ratio stands at about 1:1000 in NSW schools. This money for the NationalSchool Chaplaincy Program would be better spent on additional school counsellors to achieve a more manageable caseload.”
The Parents & Citizens Council agrees. President, Elizabeth Singer, complains that schools are being forced to turn to school chaplains because of inadequate funding and teacher training for crucial development programs. She says:
”Funding has not been available in another form that they [schools] could use so they have had to turn to chaplains. … ‘We have received complaints from families that schools are having to rely on chaplains to meet the social and emotional needs of the students. In government schools there is a feeling that this should be delivered by secularly trained people.”
“On a number of occasions since the establishment of the NSCP, the APS has been contacted by members who are concerned about chaplains who have been employed in schools to provide mental health counselling to students. This has occurred either instead of or in replacement of school psychologists.”
The APS complains:
That the government is supporting a scheme which allows unregistered and unqualified school chaplains to work outside their boundaries as spiritual and religious personnel;
That there is clear evidence that school chaplains are engaging in duties for which they are not qualified;
That there is clear evidence that church organisations and ministries are supporting school chaplains in their boundary violations;
That the NSCP promotes a combination of religious guidance and mental health service provision, which is in contrast to mainstream evidence-based service provision;
That the government is complicit in encouraging dangerous professional behaviour by funding school chaplains independently of other services carried out by professionals who are both qualified and registered.
Let me reiterate here: teachers don’t want the scheme; parents and citizens don’t want it; and the people most qualified to deal with our childrens’ mental health say the program is dangerous.
The upshot of this misguided policy is that school communities who would prefer to have financial assistance to employ a trained counsellor – or to extend a part-time counsellor’s hours to full-time – are prohibited from doing so. And trained counselors who are qualified and willing to work as ‘chaplains’ but are not associated with a religious organization are also disqualified.
For example, I have been told that Vermont secondary school in Tasmania declined to have a school chaplain because they wished to maintain a secular school. Instead, they wanted to apply the government funding to a youth counsellor with no affiliation to a church. This was denied. Surely this is religious discrimination? As social worker, Tarnya, posted on an internet blog:
“I am a Social Worker and have completed a masters paper in spirituality in state schools. I have worked as a school counsellor for more than five years, yet under John Howard’s scheme I am ineligible to apply for the recently announced positions of chaplain as I do not have a Christian affiliation which is deemed suitable by Scripture Union (the employing body).”
Bioethicist and teacher, Chris Fotinopolous, explains the problem confronting schools:
“There is no doubt that mental illness places a strain on already stretched school welfare resources. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2004-05, 7 per cent of children aged under 15 years were reported to have some form of mental or behavioural problem as a long-term health condition, with rates rising from very low levels among children aged under five years to 10 per cent of children aged 10-14 years.
But, because of the direction of funds to the NSCP, rather than qualified counselors, Fotinopolous says:
“… government schools are impelled to accept $20,000 a year for the implementation of a chaplaincy program not because they see a need for religious observance in schools, but rather as a means of securing desperately needed welfare assistance for students at risk. Considering these statistics, no school could be blamed for accepting federal funding for welfare assistance, but the Government does deserve criticism for attaching desperately needed funds to a church-led school welfare program.”
So, what is the harm? What can happen when, instead of funding a full-time trained counsellor in a school, the government provides a part-time counselor and a full-time chaplain?
Let’s consider the case of fourteen year old Alex Wildman, Alex, a student at Kadina State High School in Lismore, was the victim of long term, relentless bullying and physical abuse by his peers. Yet, despite having spent a ‘significant’ amount of time with Alex over several months, the school chaplain admits that he “… never picked up that he [Alex] was being harassed.” Notably, the school counsellor had no dealings with Alex during the sixth months he was at Kadina and the school acknowledges that “No real attempt was ever made to encourage Alex to see the school counsellor”. Perhaps they believed, misguidedly, that with the chaplain working with the child, there was no need.
The extent of Alex’s problem only came to light when Alex was punched repeatedly in the face by a fellow student. The chaplain’s response was to approach Alex on assembly the next day and ask if he was OK. Alex replied, “ I’m fine … it’s all cool now…” and, apparently, the chaplain took him at his word.
The next day Alex hanged himself.
Let me make it perfectly clear, I am, unequivocally not blaming the chaplain for this incident. I do, however, blame the government that made this teenager’s first line of support a person who obviously had insufficient training to pick up on the signs of a child in danger. The chaplain is as much a victim in this as anyone. He was put in a position for which he was clearly unqualified. He failed to see the signs that a trained counselor may have noticed. He failed to ask the questions that might have encouraged Alex to share his concerns.
Of course, I can’t guarantee that if a full-time counsellor had been employed at the school, Alex would still be alive. But it is sobering that, after examining the circumstances of Alex’s death, the coroner made particular note of the need for a full-time professionally trained counsellor at the school.
National School Chaplaincy is a dangerous programme which short-changes our children and plays Russian roulette with their lives. Sure, chaplains are cheap in comparison to trained counsellors, youth workers and psychologists – but is this really an area where we should be skimping on cost? I understand, absolutely, the claim that chaplains provide a valuable resource by being ‘out there’ interacting with the children rather than sequestering themselves in their offices. But that is not an argument for school chaplaincy – it’s an argument to change the way counsellors work in schools.
In the next instalment of this series, I will argue that the group most at risk from this ill-advised scheme are teenagers who are, or think they may be, gay.
Chrys Stevenson
Update – 8 August 2010: The Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, will today announce an allocation of $222 million to boost the number of chaplains in schools by more than one-third, which would mean about 3700 schools will be covered under the voluntary scheme introduced by the Howard government.
First time comments on this blog are moderated, but will be approved as soon as possible.
Further Action
If you oppose the National School Chaplaincy scheme, please donate to the High Court Challenge against National School Chaplaincy. A paypal facility is available on the website.
Ron Williams, a parent from Toowoomba, is bravely taking on the government and arguing against this scheme on constitutional grounds. He has recently announced that high profile lawyer, Bret Walker SC will lead the legal team. Walker will be supported by Gerald Ng, Barrister, and the law firm, Horowitz and Bilinsky.
Note – money raised for the High Court Challenge goes into a trust for the payment of legal fees, not to Ron Williams and his family. For a small (or large) investment, this is a chance to be a part of Australian history.
Gladly’s Book Recommendations
Gladly’s favourite book store for online purchases is Embiggen Books. If you’ve found this article interesting you may enjoy this further reading:
“You can put a silk hat on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
“A leopard can’t change his spots.”
“Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.” – Douglas Adams
Australia’s national school chaplaincy program was introduced by the Howard government in October 2006 and was continued and expanded by the Rudd Government. Provided at enormous cost to Australian tax-payers, the result is that over 2,000 state schools currently employ chaplains, providing the chaplains and their churches with direct exposure to approximately 720,000 children in state schools. (Overington, 2008).
A key plank of the program is that chaplains are not permitted to evangelise.* It is passing strange, then, that the major bodies contracted by the government to supply chaplains to schools are evangelical – and expect their chaplains to conform to that religious tradition.
To me, the fundamental flaw in the national school chaplaincy program is that the government is specifically hiring evangelical Christians to go into state schools – and then telling them not to evangelise. It’s like hiring a fox to look after the hen-house under strict instructions it’s not to eat the chickens: the directive is neither fair to the chickens nor the fox.
Let’s consider, as a case study, the Scripture Union, a major supplier of chaplains to the nation’s schools. Scripture Union Australia’s aims, mission statement and working principles are all strongly centred on evangelism. Further, chaplains employed by the Scripture Union are required to adhere to its core principles and beliefs. The Scripture Union, for example, believes – and expects its chaplains to believe – that:
“… the Old and New Testament Scriptures are God-breathed, since their writers spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit; hence are fully trustworthy in all that they affirm; and are our highest authority for faith and life.” (Scripture Union – Aims & Beliefs)
Given this commitment to the literal truth of the Bible, one can only assume that they consider the call to evangelise as a holy commandment. Growth Groups, an interdenominational group in the UK explains this divine imperative:
“The call to evangelise is clear from Scripture. In Matthew 28:18-20 Jesus gives His disciples the “Great Commission”. In Acts 1:8, He tells them that they will be His “witnesses” (Acts 1:8) and the remainder of the book of Acts tells the story of how they spread the gospel to the ends of the earth.”
“We acknowledge the commission of Christ to proclaim the Good News to all people, making them disciples, and teaching them to obey him.” (Growth Groups)
Of course, Tim Mander, CEO of Scripture Union Queensland, and spokesperson for SU Australia, insists that all chaplains work under Education Department guidelines. Mander tells us, reassuringly, that:
“One aspect [of the school chaplaincy program] is that the chaplain cannot proselytise or evangelise and we respect and adhere to that.” (Percy, 2008)
Curiously, this directly contradicts a directive from a Scripture Union International policy paper which says, in part:
“We believe that our mandate is to bring children and young people into the life of established churches by programs that serve them in environments in which they feel comfortable.”
“We believe that, in the case of families that are not Christian, the evangelism of the whole family rather than of children in isolation is still our objective. However, if this cannot immediately be realised, we believe that God still calls us to evangelise children themselves.” (Scripture Union International, 2005)
While the Scripture Union says they resist approaches that treat children as ‘targets’ of evangelism – how can this be reconciled with their stated mandate to evangelise?
The truth is that they can’t and don’t reconcile these conflicting directives. It is clear from reading anything written by the Scripture Union that their entire raison d’être is to be a recruiting agency for Jesus. This is their primary purpose in our state schools and there should be no mistake about it.
Of course the chaplains’ missionary zeal is circumscribed, somewhat, by the government’s guidelines – but only while they are dealing with the children within the confines of the school grounds. That’s why there is an all-out effort to encourage the children to participate in out of school activities where they are removed from the scrutiny of parents and teachers and the ‘grooming’ process can be continued.
“The good news is that God is doing some incredible work through the ministries of SU Queensland. School chaplaincy, camps and missions are exposing thousands of young people and children to the good news of Jesus every year.” (SU News, June 2006)
“In Australia, SU operates in every state and territory and mobilises around thousands of volunteers each year to engage young people and families in holiday programs at beaches and in urban or rural townships, camps, secondary and primary schools, through sports, recreation, outdoor education and school chaplaincy.
SU’s ministry brings us into contact with hundreds of thousands of children, young people and families per year making SU one of the largest mission movements to children and youth in the world. But what drives us is a desire to see lives transformed. We are serious about making a difference.” (Scripture Union Australia – About SUA)
“With urgency. We intentionally make opportunities to present life-giving messages that invite children to respond positively to Jesus. Our approach is urgent because children will, by their nature and because of the world in which they live, turn away from God unless they are evangelised and nurtured.” (Scripture Union International, 2005)
“Last year alone, over 2500 kids went on SU Queensland camps where many committed their lives to Jesus for the first time.”
Don’t tell me that those children – many of whom are now recruited through SU’s chaplaincy programme – weren’t ‘targets’ for evangelism.
Of course, it is up to parents whether to allow their children to be involved in these out of school activities. But, as Ron Williams of the Australian Secular Lobby explains:
“Chaplains go on excursions and on school camps, so if you want your children to have no exposure to the chaplain, you’ve ‘volunteered’ for them not to go to the museum or the bush camp.” (Williams in Potts, 2010)
SU’s mission is clear. Groom the children within the schools, win their friendship and the trust of their parents and then invite them to a fun adventure camp. Get the unchurched and non-Christian kids to put pressure on their parents to let them attend. Once you have the children in your care, and beyond the jurisdiction of the Education Department and their parents, work on them to ‘give their lives to Jesus’.
Now, some may take exception to the use of the word ‘grooming’. After all, isn’t that what pedophiles do? Yes it is – and I use the word deliberately.
While I am not suggesting that chaplains (in general) are grooming children for anything more than religious conversion, it is impossible not to see the similarities between the two approaches.
The first stage is to identify a child who is vulnerable in some way – often the same kind of ‘at-risk’ child that may be ‘targeted’ by a chaplain. One of the best ways to do this is for the pedophile to spend a lot of time in places like ‘your child’s school and playground’ – exactly the place where the chaplain identifies children who may be open to conversion.
The second stage is to win the trust of the child and his parents in order to gather as much information as possible about the intended victim. Similarly, we have the kindly chaplain listening to the child’s problems, playing sport with them in the playground, maybe visiting the parents to discuss the child’s welfare. We also have the use of the intimate and familiar term ‘Chappy’.
In the third step, once the pedophile knows a little about his victim, he steps into that child’s life to fill a need. For example, a lonely child might receive extra time and attention, and a child who feels unloved might receive unconditional affection – exactly the kind of attention provided by a chaplain.
The fourth step in the grooming process is to lower the child’s inhibitions about sexual matters. Of course, the chaplain (generally!) doesn’t do this, but taking a child on a camp where all the ‘cool’ counsellors pray publicly and give testimonies about how Jesus made them happy and successful and confident may certainly lower a child’s inhibitions about following a religion.
The fifth stage for a pedophile is the overt sexual abuse of the child, often resulting in marked changes in personality and behaviour. Again, the correlation with chaplaincy is the successful religious conversion of the child – an event specifically designed to result in marked changes in personality and behaviour. Indeed, a stated aim of the evangelical Christian is to ‘change lives’. And what else can we expect when a child is finally convinced to accept the premise that they are a sinner whose only chance at redemption is to live in the humble service, and in accordance with the moral (or immoral) precepts, of a supernatural deity?
In light of the above, consider the following video from SU Australia. There is no denying that, in many respects, it is a ‘good news’ story, and I am absolutely, unequivocally not implying that the chaplain or any of the camp counsellors are pedophiles. The correlation here is the process which is employed. This process becomes very obvious in “Jarred’s Story”:
The evangelistic agenda is carefully avoided in the Jarred video, but for more insight into the SU Connect camps mentioned in the story, consider this:
“Keanu Schubert is 16 and lives in one of Brisbane’s headline suburbs. Now in Year 11, Keanu came to Connect in Year Nine – “pretty much a mess”. “There was not a lot of good stuff happening,” said Keanu. “I was close to doing things no one should think about.” One the first expedition Keanu made friends among boys he described as his school enemies. Part of his transformation included hearing about Jesus and becoming a disciple. He’s now connected to a number of church youth groups in the Springwood area.” (Journey Online – Queensland Uniting Church, 2008)
Further, training literature from SU Connect provides advice on how to engage children into talking about the Bible by using movies such as “The Matrix” or by talking about football. (Knowle Parish Church – Leaders Resources)
Make no mistake – religious conscription is at the very heart of everything Scripture Union does. My issue is not that the children are being helped, but that they are being helped at a price by people with an agenda. Indeed, sounding very much like a fox who’s been given the keys to the hen-house, SU’s CEO, Tim Mander admits:
“To have a full-time Christian presence in government schools in this ever-increasing secular world is an unbelievable privilege. Here is the church’s opportunity to make a connection with the one place through which every young person must attend: our schools.”
You can almost hear him salivating at the prospect of all those young, unsaved souls.
Now, with all this talk of foxes in hen-houses and wolves in sheep’s clothing and pigs in top hats, I must call a pause here to say, perversely, that I don’t think that the chaplains, themselves, are bad people. In general, I believe, they are kind, sincere, enthusiastic, loving people with a genuine desire to help the kids in their care. I also don’t dispute the fact that, in providing a friendly ear and some much needed attention for at-risk kids, they may fulfill an important role. I don’t question, at all, the value of having someone in the school who has the time to play sport and ‘hang out’ with the kids and listen to their problems. I don’t question that taking ‘at risk’ kids on adventure camps does wonders for their self-confidence and discipline. What I question is why religion is brought into this process. Why are evangelistic Christians, (often with no formal qualifications), who have an agenda which clearly goes beyond friendship and support, providing these services? If our children need counseling and advice from adult mentors, surely these should be qualified people who have no agenda other than to assist the children in their care. If school counselors are less effective than chaplains because they’re not out in the playground with the kids – get them out in the playground!
State schools should provide a religion-neutral environment for children with parents of all faiths and no faith. It is not sufficient to say that the Christian chaplain is ‘non-denominational’. The act of placing an evangelical Christian chaplain into a school and telling them not to evangelise is unfair to both the chaplain and the children. It places the chaplain in the position where they have to answer to two masters. When ‘God’ is telling you to spread the gospel and that children who are not ‘saved’ will burn in hell for eternity, and the Education Department is telling you that you mustn’t ‘target’ children for conversion – which ‘master’ do you think a good, evangelical Christian will listen to? If you sincerely believe that, without conversion, a young person you care for will suffer eternally, how could you not find ways to defy government protocols or at least find ways to circumvent them? And, indeed, this is exactly what chaplains do. As we have seen, even if they have to take care what they do and say within the school, they use their position ‘strategically’ (SU’s own word) in order to entice the children into out-of-school activities where they, or other Christian agencies they work with, are not constrained by Education Department policy.
For Christians reading this article, consider how you would feel if, instead of placing Christian chaplains in state schools, the government decided to employ Muslim counsellors whose role was to get close to the children, identify those ‘at risk’ and then encourage them to go to Islamic adventure camp where they were encouraged as part of a ‘long term programme’ to convert to Islam and accept the Koran as the true word of God. Would you be arguing then that there is ‘no harm’ in bringing religion into state schools?
Chaplains are not evil, but they have no place in state schools. You cannot place an evangelistic Christian into a state school and expect them not to create opportunities to evangelise. They are compelled by their religious beliefs to do so. Chaplains should not be put into that position and parents should not have their beliefs (or lack of belief) undermined by someone within the school whose primary aim is to entice their children into adopting a particular narrow, fundamentalist, literalist, Christian ideology.
It’s not fair to put a fox in a hen-house and tell him he’s not to eat the chickens while he’s in there. You cannot expect him not to follow his innate compulsion to eat chickens. Even if you happen to find a fox with remarkable self-control, a clever fox will simply invite the chickens to step outside – perhaps for a ‘really fun’ adventure camp – and eat them then. He is then able to claim, quite honestly, that he complied absolutely with the directive not to eat the chickens in the hen-house. The fox is not evil. You can’t blame the fox for doing what a fox does. The blame lies squarely on whoever decided that it was a good idea to put a fox in a hen-house and direct him not to act like a fox.
Chrys Stevenson
This is Part One of a three-part series of articles. See also:
8 August 2010: The Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, will today announce an allocation of $222 million to boost the number of chaplains in schools by more than one-third, which would mean about 3700 schools will be covered under the voluntary scheme introduced by the Howard government.
Clarification from Australian Secular Lobby
*”A key plank of the program is that chaplains are not permitted to evangelise.”
Although this is generally true, Hugh Wilson of the Australian Secular Lobby provides the following clarification:
It depends which programme you are talking about. DEEWR prohibit proselytising, but are silent on evangelising, but EQ prohibit both, so a NSCP chaplain in an EQ school cannot do either. The ASL discussed with DEEWR what they meant by ‘proselytise’, because the word is not defined by them. Within the private school section of DEEWR , there is a vague description of ‘proselytise’, and that comes out closer to EQs evangelise. The new policy is here and says, in part:
“instruct volunteer and/or paid chaplain that s/he is not to evangelise or proselytise at any time in the delivery of chaplaincy program”
Evangelise: Engagement and dialogue with a student/s with intent to attract to a particular faith group.
Proselytise: To solicit a student for a decision to change belief system.
First-time comments on this blog are moderated but will be approved and published as soon as possible.
Further Action
Yes! You can do something. If you believe that the National School Chaplaincy Program is contrary to Australia’s secular principles and that chaplains (however well-intentioned) should not be placed into state schools, please support the High Court Challenge to the National School Chaplaincy Program being mounted by Ron Williams .
“NSCP federally-funded state school chaplains across Queensland may: conduct Christian prayers on all-school assembly; at significant school ceremonies; hold lunchtime prayer/Bible study sessions and engage with students in the classroom, playground, school excursions, school camps and sport. Chaplains oversee and conduct Religious Instruction classes and on-campus church-designed and run programs including Hillsong ‘Shine’ which connect children with evangelistic off-campus clubs, programs and camps.
Contact with concerned parents in every Australian State and Territory reveals that occurences of the federally-funded National School Chaplaincy Program being utilised as a Christian evangelic ministry are common within the nation’s state schools.
After years of correspondence and meetings with state education and DEEWR executives as well as personal meetings with two Education Ministers and their Directors General, in 2009, a frustrated Mr. Williams sought advice regarding a possible High Court challenge to the constitutional legality of the Commonwealth providing treasury funds to the National School Chaplaincy Program. In February 2010, Horowitz & Bilinsky accepted the case.
This matter concerns more people than the Williams family from Queensland. It concerns all Australians, of all faiths and none, who support the secular ‘wall of separation’ concept concerning church and state. This ‘wall of separation’ is required to safeguard our multicultural, multi-faith and non-faith liberal democracy that has become the hallmark of the civilised 21st century nation Australia rightfully claims to be.
Mr. Williams has established a trust account for the purpose of accepting donations to defray the considerable costs related to this s.116 ‘wall of separation’ constitutional challenge. Mr. Williams has instructed his solicitors that all funds deposited to the account are only to be applied for costs and disbursements associated with the High Court proceedings.
Considerable financial support from the broader Australian community will be required by Mr. Williams in order to meet his expected, and unexpected, legal costs. Whatever your faith position might be, this is a significant legal exercise aimed at ensuring Australia really is a secular nation-state, as our forebears clearly intended it to be.
Please secure a stake in your nation’s secular future by donating as much as you feel comfortably able to.”
Please note that funds donated go directly into a solicitors’ trust fund to be applied only to legal costs. The money does not go to Ron Williams personally.
You could also write to or email your local Federal Labor candidate and/or the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard with your objections to the National School Chaplaincy Program and noting that the extension of this program will be a consideration in your decision on who to vote for at the forthcoming election.
Gladly’s Book Recommendations
Gladly’s favourite book store for online purchases is Embiggen Books. If you’ve found this article interesting you may enjoy this further reading:
A recent Facebook post referred to overweight people as ‘fat lazy slobs’. It wasn’t directed at me, personally, but I admit to taking offence. As a larger than average person I was outraged.
I thought, “You know nothing about me, and yet you think it’s perfectly acceptable to make judgments about me and my lifestyle based on my size.”
As it happens, I am not lazy, I am definitely not a slob and I don’t spend my days lying on the couch watching Days of Our Lives while whacking back litres of Coke and chowing down on chips and chocolate.
There is a whole life story and medical history that lies behind my weight which is no-one’s business but mine and I certainly wasn’t about to share it with some stranger on Facebook. But it got me thinking – how often do we judge (or worse, condemn) people on face value without really considering that everyone has a ‘back story’? Indeed, those back stories can often turn our first impressions upside down, revealing the danger of judging people based on very little knowledge. The truth is that people are very rarely exactly as they seem.
My mother met her best friend, Joan, on their first day at primary school. Today, they are eighty-six, still friends, and they still walk hand in hand down the street as they did as teenagers during the war.
We love her dearly, but Joan can appear rather grand. She lives in an expensive, art-filled, inner-city apartment, having returned to Australia after many years living on Central Park, New York as the wife of an eminent university professor. She speaks casually of world travels, United Nations luncheons and fundraisers at the Museum of Modern Art.
Recently, I mentioned that I was looking for a rug for my study.
“An oriental?” asked Joan.
“Well, that kind of thing …” I said vaguely (thinking I might pick up something at a Rugs a Million sale for around $150).
“Well do take care, dear” she warned, “some of the orientals nowadays are [shock!] machine made!”
I had to curb my mirth as I told her I very much doubted I’d be able to purchase a hand made oriental rug on my meager budget.
My point here, is that anyone speaking casually to Joan may dismiss her as a wealthy, elderly socialite who has never known anything but luxury. They would be wrong. Joan’s husband was an eminent anthropologist and she was a vital contributor to his fieldwork amongst the Walpiri people of Central Australia and the Enga tribe of Papua New Guinea. She knows what it is to ‘rough it’. She has patched up Aborigines wounded by axe fights, she has grubbed for yams in New Guinea, she has slept in a yurt in Kazakhstan and lived in a village in Andalucia. She might appear to be a ‘lady who lunches’, but she is so, so much more.
Many years ago, I was a member of a social club which met once a month for lunch. It was an eclectic bunch and one never quite knew who would turn up, but it made for some interesting conversations. One day we were joined by a very large, very scary looking bikie (biker for my American friends). He strode in, wearing the obligatory leather vest with his club ‘colours’ emblazoned on the back, an impressive “Vietnam Vet” belt buckle, long grey hair tied in a pony tail and an intimidating face full of whiskers. Despite first appearances he turned out to be a gentle, articulate and highly intelligent man with an incredible back story.
Zev was an Israeli, seconded to the Australian Army during the Vietnam war, suffering horrific experiences including being ordered to fire on what turned out to be their own troops. After Vietnam, Zev settled in Australia, but, like many vets, struggled with post traumatic stress syndrome. Zev, it turned out, was also a keen Bible scholar and, as an Israeli, spoke and read Hebrew. He grinned as he told us how much he enjoyed the occasional visits from Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“Surprisingly, the sign on the door that says, “Big, ugly, hairy bikie lives here,” doesn’t deter them,” said Zev.
But when I open the door and they actually see the big, ugly, hairy bikie you can see I make them a bit nervous.”
They’re so used to being turned away, I reckon they think they’re safe, but I say, “Oh hello! Oh? You want to talk about the Bible? How fascinating! Do come in! Sit down! Make yourself at home!”
And then they start quoting from the Bible, and I go and get my big Bible off the shelf and I say, “Your Bible says that? Really? That’s strange because that’s not what my Bible says!” and I begin to read to them, chapter and verse …. in Hebrew.”
“As I see their eyes glazing over, I say, “Oh, you don’t speak Hebrew? How very strange? I would have thought if you really wanted to understand the Bible you would at least have learned the language it was written in!”
“By that time, they’re inching forward in their chairs muttering about having to get going and I say, “Oh don’t go! Please stay! We’re having such an interesting conversation!”
How easy it would be to dismiss a big, ugly, hairy bikie as one of society’s rejects. Why is it a surprise to find a Hebrew speaking, Bible literate, intellectual war-hero hiding behind all those whiskers?
Zev now works tirelessly as a lobbyist for better conditions for Vietnam Vets. Next time you see a bikie and are tempted to think of the stereotypical drugs, alcohol and bikie wars, remember that everyone has a back story and you don’t know theirs.
Finally, a story from very close to home. Recently we hired a handyman to do some gardening and landscaping chores around the house. A very tall, self-effacing, quietly spoken chap, Gavin* worked so diligently and efficiently and for such a fair price we kept finding stuff for him to do. Over several cups of coffee we found that Gavin, too, was much more than he seemed. How easy to underestimate someone who does gardening and odd-jobs for a living. How easy to think they’re ‘just a normal bloke’, hardworking, but with a rather pedestrian life-style and outlook. So, we were mildly surprised to hear our willing worker say quietly, “Oh, by the way, I’m in the local paper this week – but you probably won’t recognize me.”
And so began a story which revealed so much more about the value of friendship and love and laughter than we could ever have imagined would come from our lanky, rather dour, handyman.
Some years ago, Gavin’s nephew’s wife had begun to earn some much needed money by making teddy-bears. Having something of an entrepreneurial mind and a kind heart, Gavin decided on a scheme to promote the business. He invested thousands of dollars of his own money into the idea and, when it was realized, he was keen to show it off to a friend. Arriving at his friend’s house, he was told he was out, so he revealed all to the friend’s wife who said, “Brilliant! He’ll be home soon. Let’s surprise him! You go and get set up in the bedroom and when he comes home you can come out and show him your idea.”
So, at length, the friend comes home, the wife stays out of sight, and Gavin steps out into the living room, transformed into a 6’8” bear with a wooden leg and an eye patch. His poor friend was so discombobulated by the sight of this beast in his living room his reflexes took over and he delivered a thunking right hook to the bear’s face!
“Of course,” says Gavin, laconically, “the head is so heavily padded it didn’t hurt a bit, and I reckon I could have taken him, even with the bear suit on, but of course, I didn’t.”
The story of Gavin’s bear being decked by his mate became one of those iconic stories that are retold and laughed about for years. These are the moments that add depth and character to our friendships.
But time moves on and, eventually, Gavin moved to Queensland, taking up work as a handyman and gardener while he cared for his elderly mother. When he heard that his mate, back in Adelaide, had terminal cancer, he was struck by the question we are all faced with at some stage in our lives, “What can I do to make a difference?”
The first thing he did was jump on a plane and go to see him. During his visits they talked about Queensland and the little town where we live and his mate said he’d love to see it – but, of course, Gavin knew that simply wasn’t going to happen. Gavin returned home, glad he had visited, but still convinced there must be something more he could do.
And so he conceived of the idea that, if his mate couldn’t come to visit him, he’d send him some photos of our village. And then, remembering their history with the bear, Gavin decided on a plan. Co-opting the support of some locals as guides and photographers, Gavin morphed into Secret Agent 008 ¾ Super Sleuth Incognito – the 6’ 8” bear – and set out on a tour of the village. He visited the pharmacy, the library, the coffee shop, the post office, the park, the pub and the supermarket – meeting the locals and posing for photos all the while. And then, when he was finished, he sent the photos off to his mate.
They were met with great hilarity and, as each new visitor came – undoubtedly with their own concerns about what to say to a dying man – the photos came out, broke the ice and eased the conversation. The photos provided a catalyst for laughter and conversation and the effort involved in taking them spoke more about the depth of the friendship than two Aussie blokes could express in words. A week or so after the photos arrived, a mutual friend rang Gavin and said simply, “Mate, you did a good thing.”
And so, we have a fat lady who is emphatically not a lazy slob, a wealthy matron who has roughed it in the deserts of Australia and the jungles of New Guinea, a bikie who is a Hebrew-speaking Bible scholar and a gardener who also happens to be a 6’8” bear. None of us, I’d venture to say, is exactly as we seem.
Wouldn’t it be wise – indeed rational – if we reserved our judgments, condemnations and dismissals of people based on first impressions and accepted that looks really can be deceiving. Surely we need to look no further than ourselves to know that if there is a ‘secret life of us’ there is also, very probably, a secret life behind just about everyone we meet.
Chrys Stevenson
* Not his real name. ‘Gavin’ prefers the bear to ‘speak’ for himself and prefers that his ‘owner’ remains anonymous. More photos of Secret Agent 008 3/4 Super Sleuth Incognito can be seen here.
Gladly’s Book Recommendations
Gladly reminds me that we happen to know a rather diminutive and very scholarly looking bookshop proprietor whose ‘back story’ includes working as an exotic dancer and cycling 20,000km across Australia for charity. His partner, currently playing the role of a slightly harrassed and terminally tired mother of a one-year-old happens to have an incredibly impressive profile on IMDB as a film editor, with credits including Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge and Nim’s Island (starring Jodie Foster). They’d both be very grateful if you’d buy some books from them so that, 15 years from now when they’re luxuriating on their 60′ yacht in the French Riviera they can say, “Don’t hate us because we’re rich – we used to be impoverished bookstore owners once, you know!”
Congratulations on becoming Australia’s first female Prime Minister.
I wish I could greet your ascension to the leadership with the same elation I felt when Kevin Rudd won the 2007 election. Sadly, Rudd taught me not to expect too much of politicians. Indeed, I started out feeling like a kid who’d got a bike for Christmas, only to find out it had two flat tyres, no steering, and a bell that didn’t so much ring as babble incoherently in Mandarin.
Kevin Rudd came in promising to be one thing, and delivered another. He was all wrapping and no present. You haven’t had time to promise anything substantial so, at this stage, I’m not expecting much. But, mustering a little optimism and pretending for a moment that I’m a small kid writing to Santa, here’s my wish list for your Prime Ministership:
The kids next door in the USA and France have this neat thing called the separation of church and state. I know you’re probably not going to get us a real shop bought, constitutionally guaranteed separation, but do you reckon you could run the government ‘as if’ we had one?
A lot of us kids are sick of being bullied by Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby. Just because he used to lead the SAS he thinks he can tell us all what to do – whether we’re in his gang or not. I think he must have been stealing Kevin’s lunch money because when Jim said, “Jump!” Kevin said, “How high?” As you appear to have bigger balls than Kevin, could you please tell Jim he doesn’t represent the views of the majority of Australians and that his nasty, divisive, discriminatory views are no longer welcome in the ALP?
Can you please get rid of school chaplains? If kids need counseling they should have the same access as adults do to trained professionals, not evangelists who are in the school grounds recruiting for Jesus. If parents want their kids to have access to religious counseling, maybe they should start taking the family to church instead of sleeping in on Sundays like the other 93% of the population. Remember that separation of church and state thing? Let’s keep our schools secular.
Would you mind very much withdrawing funding from Exclusive Brethren schools which isolate children from the broader community, teach girls to be submissive and discourage young people from going to university? As an independent woman with the benefit of a university education, how can you countenance spending tax-payers’ money on such schools? Exclusive Brethren girls and boys don’t choose their religion – they’re born into it. There is no freedom of religion when you are not allowed to know there’s a choice!
Perhaps it’s too much to ask, but if a law is worth having, surely it should apply to everyone. If everyone else is required by law to pay taxes, why not churches? If everyone else is required not to discriminate on the basis of gender, sexual orientation or religion, why do we allow exemptions for religious institutions? Fair’s fair, Julia. Let the religious institutions claim exemptions for their charitable work, but not ‘as of right’. And there’s an advantage to this – it means the government won’t be financing harmful cults like Scientology, the Christian Fellowship Churches or the Exclusive Brethren. Where their stockings were once stuffed full of tax-payers’ dollars, they’ll wake up to find, like other naughty children, all they have is a few bits of coal. Win!
A letter to Santa really isn’t complete without a thought for those less fortunate than ourselves. Julia, would you please stop the tradition of making political capital out of treating asylum seekers like criminal scum? Instead of ‘talking tough’ and locking these poor people and their families up behind razor wire indefinitely, how about trying to educate the Australian public about their plight? Maybe you could use some of the money you’re saving by taking down the mining tax ads?
And finally, Julia, if I promise to be very, very good and vote for you at the next election, would you please boot out Senator Conroy and his ugly plans for an internet filter. We’re not in China or Iran and, as much as we all want children protected from the seedier side of the internet, we all know this filter is not the way to do it. One of your smarter elves, Senator Kate Lundy, knows about this. Give her a hearing. Better still, give her Conroy’s job.
Signing off with not much hope ….
Chrys Stevenson
Comments on this blog are moderated but will be approved as soon as possible.
Recently, Toowoomba resident, Ron Williams, announced that he is launching a High Court Challenge against the government’s National School Chaplaincy Program on the basis that it is unconstitutional. Is this move heroic or quixotic – and, does it really matter? **
** Update 1/1/2011 A Writ of Summons and Statement of Claim was issued out of the High Court of Australia on Tuesday December 20, 2010. A date for the hearing is expected to be set after the High Court resumes on 31 January. For more details on the specifics of the writ and/or to make a donation towards legal costs please visit: High Court Challenge
In 2006, former Labor NSW premier Bob Carr slammed the Howard government’s plan to put chaplains into state schools as “profoundly wrong” and “really frightening”. “It abandons the principal of the separation of church and state. Taxpayers should not be asked to fund religious promotion. That should be left to members of churches to fund themselves,” Mr Carr told The Daily Telegraph.
But, while our political leaders tend to give lip service to the principle of church/state separation, they know full well that, since the defeat of the Defence of Government Schools High Court Challenge in 1981, the Australian Constitution provides no barrier to politicians pork-barreling in favour of religious institutions in exchange for votes. In the case of the school chaplaincy program, the cost to Australian tax-payers will top $207 million.
Carr’s opinion on the government funding the National School Chaplaincy Program echoes that of Edmund Barton, Australia’s first Prime Minister and one of the authors of the Australian Constitution. In the debates leading up to Australian Federation in 1901, Barton’s view on using tax-payers’ money to fund religion was unequivocal:
“I cannot support for a moment any system of education which in the name of denominationalism or under any other name, draws funds from the coffers of the State manifestly for the propagation of creeds and dogmas widely divergent. Taxpayers ought not to be called upon to support a system of that kind. It ought not to be compulsory upon any man to support that which he believes to be untrue, but that is inevitable under a system which subsidises what to different minds must appear as truth and error in the various and discordant dogmas and beliefs. …
If, as tax-payers, we are asked to support religion we say, “No; you must leave that to our consciences as individuals, and not impose it upon us as tax-payers.” That is really the opinion which the people have expressed with regard to the teaching of religion to the adult population, and I say it is inconsistent to deal with the teaching of youth on any other principle at variance with it.”
Barton was speaking here, principally, about state funding for religious schools, but I think we can fairly extrapolate from his comments what his attitude towards the National School Chaplaincy Program would be. Curiously, at the time, Barton would have felt no compulsion to push for secular education in Australian public schools – it was already in place. Between 1872 and 1897, each of the Australian colonies introduced Education Acts which guaranteed “free, compulsory and secular” education in government funded schools and ceased (in most instances) to provide tax-payers’ money to religious schools. Let me make this clear. Australia moved into Federation with an already clearly established secular public school system.
There is no doubt that our founding fathers intended that Australia should have a wall of separation between church and state. Australia’s first draft Constitution was written by Tasmanian attorney-general Andrew Inglis Clark in 1891 and eighty-six of his ninety-six draft clauses remain in the modern Australian Constitution. Clark traveled to America in 1890 to undertake research and his draft drew heavily on the United States Constitution. The people Clark chose to consult with on his visit are significant. One was Moncure Conway, formerly a Unitarian but, by then, an atheist and freethinker. Another was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes – an agnostic. Neither is likely to have counseled Clark against a Constitutional separation of church and state!
We must view the intent of the Australian Constitution in its international historical context. Secular education was established in France between 1881 and 1882 and further strengthened in 1886. Contemporaneously, between 1872 and 1893, after years of bitter disputes between religious denominations over who should control the public education system, every Australian state passed an Education Act removing state aid to Church schools and guaranteeing ‘free, compulsory and secular education’ (Queensland’s secular education was rescinded in 1910 and has never been reinstated).
At the same time that Australia was moving towards Federation, France was also involved in debates leading to the institution of their 1905 law which established the principle of laïcité – the separation of church and state. Unambiguously, the French law states “The Republic neither recognizes, nor salaries, nor subsidizes any religion”. The drafting of our Constitution must be seen within an historical context in which the American Constitution and the move towards a French secular state would have been highly influential on contemporary ideas of state-making.
Accordingly, Clark’s draft Constitution, submitted to the 1891 Constitutional Convention, included the following clause:
46. The Federal Parliament shall not make any law for the establishment or support of any religion, or for the purposes of giving any preferential recognition to any religion, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion.
This clause specifically sought to appeal to those who did not want an established church and those who had no religion. Despite attempts by religious delegates to water down the separation of church and state at the 1896 convention, delegates voted firmly in favour of a secular state, as they had done in 1891. There were further debates on this issue at the 1897 convention with both Protestants and Catholics seeking to minimize secularization. Defending the separation of church and state, Edmund Barton said:
“The whole mode of government, the whole province of the state is secular. The whole business that is transacted by any community, however deeply Christian, unless it has an established church, unless religion is interwoven expressly and professedly in all its actions – is secular business as distinguished from religious business.”
The historical record shows clearly that, despite numerous proposals and heavy lobbying against it, the various constitutional conventions maintained strong majority support for a strict separation of church and state. The separation of church and state was finally enshrined into the Australian Constitution at the 1898 Convention. While a compromise with the churches was reached with the invocation to ‘Almighty God’ in the Constitution’s preamble, Henry Bournes Higgins, a Victorian barrister, pushed for the inclusion of the clause which now appears in our Constitution as Section 116:
“The commonwealth shall not make any law prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, or for the establishment of any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.”
Again, in the context of contemporary debates, it is clear that Higgins’ aim was to support the Seventh Day Adventists’ argument against the Council of Churches’ push for secularization to be minimized. The Seventh Day Adventists argued that:
Each [church and state] has its particular sphere and … the realm of one is in no sense the realm of the other…[W]e are opposed to anything and everything tending towards a union of religion and the civil power.
Fast forward now to 1963 when Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, determined that the only way to win the Catholic vote was to give in to their lobbying and promise limited financial assistance for Catholic Schools. While support for private schools was initiated by Menzies and subsequent Liberal coalition governments, it was Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s Labor government which began to directly fund private schools – again as a means of winning over the Catholic vote. By blurring the lines between state/church separation, this provided the wedge which has ultimately led to the de-secularization of our state schools.
In 1973, the Whitlam Government, with the support of the Coalition parties, institutionalized government funding for private schools. Bob Hawke’s Labor government continued and expanded the practice which was further expanded when the Howard’s Liberal coalition came to power in 1996. It is now being further exploited by the Rudd Labor Government. Edmund Barton, Andrew Inglis-Clarke and Henry Bournes-Higgins must be spinning in their graves!
Our founding fathers framed our Constitution and fought against pressure from the churches to make Australia a modern, secular nation in which freedom of religion was protected by being set apart from the workings of the state. Anyone reading the views of those involved in the process of drafting and defending the Constitution must fairly conclude that this was their intention. However, because of the defeat of the 1981 Defence of Government Schools challenge against government funding of religious schools, the flood-gates were opened to allow state funding of all kinds of religious activities of a kind that would never be allowed in America or France. This was clearly never the intention of those who framed our Constitution nor the conventions which routinely voted in favour of a secular state.
The seeds of what is now the National School Chaplaincy Program were sown deep in Queensland’s bible belt. The original scheme was initiated at a state level by the Queensland Labor Government in the lead-up to the 2006 state election. Toowoomba is a hot-bed of Christian fundamentalism and, at the time, Premier Beattie needed his candidate, Kerry Shine, to defeat self-declared moral crusader, Lyle Shelton. That Beattie chose to announce funding for school chaplains in this particular electorate shows clearly that it was conceived as a $10 million carrot to induce Toowoomba’s religious right to elect Labor candidate, Shine.
In the same year, similarly motivated by the Christian vote, John Howard and his education minister, Julie Bishop, launched a $90 million plan to support chaplains in state schools. This later ballooned to $165 million. During the ALP’s electoral campaign in 2007 it also announced that it would not only continue to honour Howard’s commitment to the National School Chaplaincy Program, but expand it at a further cost of a $42.8 million. Importantly, the Rudd Government said that secular counselors may be supported, but only if a religious counselor was not available. This is a clear case of discrimination based on religious belief.
Constitutional lawyer, Stephen McLeish, suggests that the National School Chaplaincy Program breaches Section 116 of the Constitution in several ways, primarily by funding a program that directly promotes religion and the religious over the non-religious, and which privileges the Christian religion above minority religions. According to the lobby group, Stop the National Schools Chaplaincy Programme, the scheme also breaches agreements incorporated into Australian Law through the operation of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986. In short, Howard and Rudd cheerfully ignored our constitution and our international commitments to human and civil rights along with their own publicly stated support of church/state separation in order to purchase the Christian right votes with hundreds of millions of our tax dollars.
For those of us who value secularism, it is clear that something must be done. But what? Every successive government, it seems, is intent on tearing down another brick in the wall of state/church separation. Should this remain unchallenged? There are some who argue that nothing can be done. Indeed, there are some who argue that another High Court challenge, if lost, will make it even harder to argue for church/state separation in this country. But does that mean that such a challenge should never be made?
There are some who say that a High Court challenge is doomed to fail and that a winnable case cannot be made. And yet, there are others who say that the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP) violates the Australian Constitution in a way that funding religious schools does not, and so the fact that the Defence of Government Schools case was lost does not mean that a case based on the NSCP will be argued, or lost, on the same basis.
Some say that public opinion must precipitate legal change and there is no such popular push, at this stage, for Constitutional change or reinterpretation. But how many Australians actually realize that Australia has no legal guarantee of church/state separation? And what will bring it to their attention and engage their interest in this omission? A high profile court case with the attendant media coverage is a sure-fire way of raising public consciousness about this matter. And, even if the case is lost, politicians will be forced to admit openly that Australia has no separation of church and state. Perhaps this is what is needed to precipitate a popular push for Section 116 to be reworded.
Ron Williams is a musician, a video producer, a university student, a husband and a father of six. Together with his friend, Hugh Wilson, Ron formed the Australian Secular Lobby in 2006 after finding (to his horror) the Queensland Education Act provided no guarantee of a secular education for his children. Ron attracted international media attention in 2008 when he lodged a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Commission after his five year old daughter, Kathleen came home from school crying about the animals that were soon to drown in the ‘rain that God made’. On investigation, he discovered, that despite his express wish that Kathleen receive no religious instruction, she had been exposed in her classroom to a movie and a craft project based on the story of Noah’s ark and that her classroom boasted a bookshelf full of children’s biblical titles.
Ron also withdrew his two oldest children from their school when it employed a chaplain.
Ron thinks that secular education in public schools is something worth fighting for and he has spent the last four years doing just that. Now, he has decided to take on the government with a High Court challenge against the National School Chaplaincy Program. Despite the naysayers who believe such a case cannot be won, Ron has an experienced and reputable team of lawyers and legal academics supporting him and the case will be argued by a high profile barrister (appointed, but yet to be named). Who among us would have the courage to take such a step to defend a principle we believe in against such trenchant opposition?
Imagine yourself, with virtually no financial resources, challenging a government with boundless access to taxpayers’ money and the best legal minds in the land. Of course, those of a religious bent might take comfort from the tale of David and Goliath. (Those of us who eschew religion, might look instead to the triumph of Daryl Kerrigan in the movie, The Castle.) The odds of winning might be remote, but the little guy can defeat the big guy with guts and determination. There’s a chance you might win and everything will be OK. Sure, but what if you knew that even if you win, the court may not award you costs, so even in victory, you might still be sending yourself and your family into a financial black hole. How strongly would you need to feel about an issue in order to take that risk?
Now, let me ask you another question. While you may not be willing, or able, to take such a risk, how far would you be prepared to go to support someone who is? If you can’t even rouse yourself to send them a cheque for the price of a meal at a mid-priced restaurant, then you, I fear, are one of the ‘silent majority’ who are prepared to ‘do nothing’.
I wonder how many of us who espouse passionate convictions about social and political issues would actually be willing to risk everything in order to stand up for them? And, if we balk at stepping off the precipice for our principles, are we at least committed enough to chip in for a parachute for someone who is willing to do it for us?
Whether Ron wins or loses and regardless of whether you accept the logic that Ron would not risk his family’s future on an unwinnable case, I think his cause deserves the financial support of every single Australian who believes in the principle of the separation of church and state. The question is, how highly do you value it, and what are you prepared to sacrifice to see this case proceed to court?
Whether Ron Williams is heroic or quixotic remains to be seen, but, does it really matter? Win or lose his quest will gain much needed exposure for the lack of a formal separation of church and state in this country. Either way, I think Ron deserves our encouragement and practical assistance. Sometimes windmills just have to be tilted and the very least we can do is chip in for a horse for a knight brave enough (and eccentric enough?) to do it.
Donations can be made by PayPal (and other means) on the High Court Challenge website. Please note that all funds donated go directly towards legal costs and not to Ron, personally.
“If children in state schools need counselling, surely funding should go towards providing qualified counsellors, not those who bring only their blue card and religious bias to the table. What will be next? Will Medicare favour faith-healers, over doctors on the basis that they’re “more economical” and “just as effective”? If not, why are our children any less deserving of unbiased, professionally accredited counsellors?”
If you’re interested in this subject, you might enjoy the following books from Gladly’s favourite bookstore – Embiggen Books.
Much excitement! I received my advance copy of “The Australian Book of Atheism” last night. Boy, it’s big! Even more exciting, we’ve just heard that it’s been reviewed in Bookseller + Publisher, the bible of the Australian book trade, and awarded a 5 star (out of 5 star) rating!
The wonderful, amazing Tanya Levin (author of People In Glass Houses: an insiders story of a life in and out of Hillsong) is typically funny, moving and profound in her story of being brought up to be a ‘Kingdom woman’ in Sydney’s Hillsong Church.“I’m becoming aware
“It’s 1999 and I am told that, as an employee of the nation of Islam, one of my duties is to supervise the female students of the college while they participate in Dhuhr. I make sure that my brightly dyed Coke-bottle red hair (invisible in the course of everyday work) is even more firmly sealed under my hijab ….”
When I woke up this morning, I found my elderly mother already up and watching the television.
Dear Julia
Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear 