Displaying items by tag: freedom of religion

Brian Houston set an example to follow for many church leaders recently when he issued a media release outlining his teaching on Biblical marriage and encouragement for Christians to vote against its redefinition. He reiterated the literal interpretation of the Apostle Paul’s position on homosexuality, and called for respect from both sides for the other, clarifying that disagreement based in faith convictions is not bigotry. He encouraged Christians to participate in the voluntary vote, and to refuse to be the silent majority, in effect surrendering to aggressive voices seeking to dominate the future of our society. Christians are already being discomforted by cultural Marxism‘s advance in Australia. Just ask Tasmanian Archbishop Julian Porteous how free he feels to teach on marriage after being punished by the process of an anti-discrimination complaint against him for doing so. Ask Bernard Gaynor how free he feels to privately blog about the injustice and offense of Christian vilification and public indecency at the Homosexual Mardis Gras after the court ruled his employer could unjustly fire him for disagreeing with their workplace anti discrimination policies.

Australia is a multi-faith society. The 2016 Census shows that, while the mix of beliefs has changed over the years, Australia remains a pretty religious place. In the last census, nearly 70% of Australians self-identified as religious. The number of Australians who have self-identified as Christian in the census has fallen from 88.2% in 1966 to 52.1% in 2016. The number of Australians identifying as being of another religion has grown from 0.8% to 8.2%, with Islam (2.6%), Buddhism (2.4%) and Hinduism (1.9%) being the largest non-Christian faiths. The number who self-identified in the category of “no religion” has grown from 0.8% to 30.1%. This category includes having secular beliefs, other spiritual beliefs or having no religion. This makes it hard to be sure what these Australians believe.

There is a ‘game’ played by dysfunctional people and described by psychiatrist Dr Eric Berne in his capital little book, “The Games People Play”. People often disagree with one another. A protagonist with an ax to grind and a lack of moral, civil or mental sufficiency, sets her or his victim up against external overwhelming forces. They may disagree with the victim and have no cogent or legitimate argument so they call in the police with their ‘authority’ and a gun on their hips, and the Courts that have the full panoply of process and procedure, backed by Laws made by the complainant’s friends. The Laws, the legislators, the police become complicit in gross acts of indecency and bring that Law and authority and panoply into disrespect when they do not punish such dysfunctional protagonists. And they are complicit.

The West developed largely as a result of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and it was known for centuries as the defender of free speech, as the defender of religious liberty, and as the defender of freedom of conscience, and so on. All that is unravelling right before our very eyes, and the West is quickly descending back into a new dark ages of repression and intolerance. It seems every time we open a newspaper or check out the evening news we have more cases of anti-Christian bigotry and the tolerance police in action.