Victorian Rights charter should be wound back, says government report

The Victorian Charter of Rights needs major modifications according to the government committe that has been reviewing it. The Victorian Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) has suggested that the contentious aspects of the charter should be removed. The Australian Christian Lobby welcomed the Changes while Isaiahone, a group of christians that argues for human rights, is less keen on the report.

The ACL would like to see the whole charter repealed, while Isaiahone believes that winding it back will hurt the vulnerable.

Victorian Charter to be diluted.

Black Stump is back

By Joshua Maule

The Black Stump Christian festival will wake from hibernation when the first chords ring out of Appin south west of Sydney in a fortnight.

Organisers expect upwards of 3500 people will attend the music and arts gathering being held on the long weekend at Cataract Scout Park. The festival was cancelled last year due to financial constraints.

"It's not going to be a bumper year, but everything's on track, and it's comparable to other years," says Chris West, event manager.

A shipping container kind of faith

Kaley Payne

As we sit in an African restaurant I can’t help but think it a slightly incongruous setting. Sitting opposite is a woman who just three years ago fled severe persecution in Eritrea.

While we eat our injera she talks about her experience through an interpreter. Before answering my first question, she asks to pray. And so, our heads bowed in the midst of meal orders, deliveries and menu queries, I get a taste of the extraordinary character and uncompromising faith of Helen Berhane.

Jesus stilled the storm in my heart

Lea Carswell
In March 2011 Tina Gunter (nee Damasco) was inducted into the Western Australian International Women’s Day Hall of Fame. In a surreal moment, the former heroin addict found herself standing next to WA’s previous Premier, Dr. Carmen Lawrence, being recognised for her work with troubled women through Perth’s Esther Foundation. the group that helped Tina forge a new future. Tina and Dave have recently relocated to Melbourne to concentrate on their flourishing youth mentoring ministry, called I Roll With Dave.

Religion after 9/11

The ABC's Religion Editor Scott Stephens and Bible Society CEO Greg Clarke discussed the changes since 9/11 on ABC radio. September 11 "reminded the world that religion mattered" says Clarke who connects the rise of the new atheism with the anniversary. bit.ly/n8ulq5

The Australians who go hungry every week

Joshua Maule

Indigenous Australians are going hungry due to extremely high priced food in remote areas according to Christian leaders.

Grant Hay, a pastor to a community of 200 Indigenous people at Point Pearce in South Australia, says the vast majority of residents do not eat well. Large families and remote locations, coupled with inflated food prices and low incomes, mean people are going without food for days at a time. "Some Aboriginal families have roughly 10 in their family," says Hay, who grew up in an Indigenous community in the York Peninsula. "That's probably a thousand dollars a fortnight they need to spend on food. But they haven't got a thousand dollars. So they say: ‘We'll buy about 400 dollars worth and if we run out we run out. We'll just starve for a week'."

Chaplains will still be chosen despite the government giving schools a choice

Karen Mudge

Chaplaincy providers believe that changes to The National School Chaplaincy Program, which will allow schools to choose a chaplain or a secular welfare officer, won’t negatively impact the demand for chaplains.

Schools Minister Peter Garrett yesterday announced that from 2012 the scheme will be expanded and that schools will be able to choose between a chaplain and a secular welfare worker.

John Piper on happiness, Christianity in America and fasting from preaching

John Piper gives a stunningly honest interview to John Sandeman. One of the leading evangelicals in the US, Piper was in Australia for the Oxygen conference in Sydney.

Eternity: At the Lausanne Conference you made a statement that went roughly “God is against all suffering, particularly eternal suffering”. Do you think you were heard by that conference or were you a bit of a prophet in the wilderness?

Piper: Let me say it precisely: I thought for two or three hours about that sentence. I created that sentence the afternoon before I spoke it. It wasn’t in my manuscript when I got there. And I knew that you can’t say “God is against all suffering” because he believes in hell.

ACL call for a better deal for Australia’s children

By Glynis Quinlan

The Federal Government has been called on to set up a Families Commission to provide national leadership in strengthening families following the launch of a new research report revealing the dire plight of many Australian children – with dramatic rises in child abuse and neglect and more than a quarter of 16-24 year-olds having mental disorders.

Christians in China suffer for supporting persecuted Church

DUBLIN, September 1 (Compass Direct News) – Last Sunday (Aug. 28) five members of a house church in Fangshan, Hebei township woke at 4 a.m. and traveled for two hours to a public square in Beijing in order to worship with members of the embattled Beijing Shouwang house church.
 
On their arrival at 7 a.m., waiting police sent the five back to their local police station, according to a report posted Tuesday (Aug. 30) on Shouwang’s Facebook page. Officials then urged them to sign documents repenting of their decision to support the Shouwang church. All five refused but were eventually released.

Best Little Whorehouse in Sydney

George Conger reports on the story behind Westpac's change of mind about financing a brothel.

When it comes to invective, no one beats the French.

The Italians and Germans are fine in their way, but when a Parisian philosophe reaches his stride — especially when denouncing American sexual mores — there is none better.

The Brigadier shows he is a good General

Comment by John Sandeman

Brigadier Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, looks like he is a winner in the battle over same sex marriage.

Australia’s great secular prophet of politics (and we mean it nicely) Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large of The Australian says “same sex marriage…is unlikely to prevail in the current parliament”.

Journos gather to fix a blind spot

David Wilson The gathering began long before the scheduled starting time. People seemed expectant.  There they were: the Religion Editor, the Religion Columnist, and the overseas guest who talks about Journalists and blind spots!  The scene was set for a rollicking evening of point and counter-point, with the invited guests, an audience of 35 people, later being given the opportunity to have their say as well.

Paul Marshall, the overseas guest is a Senior Fellow at Washington’s Hudson Institute.  He’s one of the Editors of the book Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion and he started the conversation by telling some stories illustrating the lack of understanding that Journalists have of religion and how it plays out in everyday news stories.  His conclusion, that these Journalists have a blind spot when it comes to religion in the daily news cycle, was              a conclusion well founded.

Yancey, A Writer For The Faith Fringe

Joshua Maule

For someone who has spent time in the "borderlands" of Christianity, Philip Yancey is not in short supply of companions. The words he's typed, the things he's said, have been received like a wellspring. Thousands have drunk them down. "A borderland - such as the no man's land between the two Koreas," he writes by email, "is an in-between, uncommitted state, one in which you don't want to linger. Yet I find that many people live in a borderland of faith."