Religion & Society

On 15 August Melbourne School of Theology (MST) hosted the visit of Baroness Caroline Cox from the British House of Lords. Baroness Cox has been a fearless campaigner for many years, advocating on behalf of the marginalised and the persecuted around the world as part of her work for the Humanitarian Aid and Relief Trust (HART), which has an active branch in Australia. In her presentation to a sizeable audience at MST, Baroness Cox gave attention to the drift towards secular liberalism in western societies and resulting challenges to minority groups, including Christians. She pointed out that “one of the effects of aggressive secular humanism in the UK is that many Christians now feel they suffer from discrimination and intimidation.” The same is true in Australia. Baroness Cox also referred to the co-existence of aggressive secular humanism’s assault on Christian faith and the growth of Islamist ideology.  While noting that the majority of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, inclu...

This dialogue between Christians and Muslims could have happened in virtually any Western English-speaking country: Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, as well as the USA. In actual fact, it took place at a suburban mosque in Melbourne. A colleague and I took a group of 15 of our students for the purposes of exposure to Islam and meeting Muslims in the flesh, rather than just reading about them. On arrival, we were greeted by the local Sheikh, a Pakistani by origin, his son, who is born and bred in Australia, and another Sheikh who was visiting from Egypt We were all led into the prayer room where we sat in a large circle, with all eyes trained on our Muslim hosts. After introducing ourselves by name, the Sheikh and his son addressed us for 15 minutes, presenting the basic information about Islamic belief and practice: the Five Pillars and the Core Articles of Faith. However, this seemingly gentle introduction included a sting in the tail, as we were informed that the Bible we h...

It’s not every week that the Prime Minister of a Western nation stands before a church congregation and leads spontaneous community prayer. But on September 30, new Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison did just that. While visiting Planetshakers, a large Pentecostal church in Melbourne, Mr Morrison ascended the worship platform and led prayers for the victims of the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami and also for Australian farmers locked in the grip of drought-induced financial crisis. Refugee debates Scott Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister in late August after Mr Turnbull lost the confidence of his governing Liberal Party. Mr Morrison has served a number of roles in recent Australian governments, but was especially prominent in enforcing the “Stop the Boats” policy under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. This policy involved the detention on the Pacific Islands of Nauru and Manus Island of thousands of newly-arriving asylum seekers who had sought refuge i...

     In a dramatic turnaround, the LGBTI lobby in Australia is proving to be a significant source of support for faith-based schools, including Christian schools.      In 2010, the government of Australia’s southern state of Victoria rolled out the Safe Schools program. The purpose of Safe Schools, according to official government speak, was to develop a mechanism to limit bullying within Australian schools of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) students. This program included professional development activities for school teachers accompanied by materials and recommended activities for the training of students to eliminate discrimination against LGBTI students.      The Safe Schools program was the brainchild of the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at Melbourne’s La Trobe University. Its best-known advocate is Dr Roz Ward, a former faculty member at the University, who has been reported as declari...

I n the wake of World War II, as the world emerged from devastating conflict and entered the post-colonial era, some commentators predicted that rising prosperity would herald a new, post-religion age. The secularizing tendencies that were carving huge slices off religious allegiance in the West would be replicated across the world, according to this view. Such commentators also anticipated that religion, in its surviving form, would be rationalist, liberal and concerned with the here-and-now rather than the Hereafter. Read on here . This article first appeared in Renewing Minds: A Journal of Christian Thought , Jackson: Union University, Issue 2 (2012).

   A COURT decision in Malaysia on 29 January has challenged the application of sharia by Islamic religious authorities in this Muslim-majority country.    A panel of five judges in Malaysia’s highest legal tribunal, the Federal Court, ruled in favour of a challenge by a Malaysian Hindu, Indira Gandhi, to her ex-husband’s conversion of their three children to Islam, in 2009, without her consent.    Her ex-husband, K. Pathmanathan, left his Hindu faith that year to embrace Islam, adopting the Muslim name Muhammad Riduan Abdullah. His marriage to Mrs Gandhi broke up, and, shortly after his conversion, he changed the religious status of the three children to Muslim.    At the time, their eldest daughter was 12, their son 11, and the youngest daughter, Prasana, was barely one year old. Riduan Abdullah took Prasana from the family home, and disappeared.    A series of court battles ensued. In 2013, Mrs Gandhi brought the matter bef...

The world’s largest Muslim movement is in crisis. Tens of thousands of supporters of the vast international network led by Islamic theologian and philosopher Fetullah Gülen languish in prisons in Turkey and other countries. Gülen himself faces extradition to Turkey from the US to face charges of subversion if Washington accedes to the Turkish request. Ankara is now linking the release of American Pastor Andrew Brunson, imprisoned on trumped-up terrorism and espionage charges, with Gülen’s extradition. Read on here .