Religion News Australia
August 16 – 23, 2020
Religion news stories from Australia
(Research: Greg Spearritt)
INTERNATIONAL STORIES
Religious Violence
Manchester Arena bomber’s brother Hashem Abedi given 55-year sentence (ABC News)
Aug 21 – A man who helped his elder brother carry out a suicide bomb attack, which killed 22 people at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in the English city of Manchester three years ago, has been jailed for at least 55 years.
Holocaust denial graffitied at site of Nazi massacre in France (The Guardian, Australia)
Aug 23 – Vandals have scrawled graffiti denying the Holocaust on a wall in the village that was the site of the Nazis’ biggest massacre of civilians in France during the second world war.
Other
Yorkshire church to be adorned with Chronicles of Narnia statues (The Guardian, Australia)
Aug 20 – Narnia’s mythical creatures and talking beasts, which have enchanted children for 70 years, have found a new home at a 12th-century parish church in east Yorkshire.
Trump spreads false claim Democrats dropped God from Pledge of Allegiance (The Guardian, Australia)
Aug 23 – Before playing golf on Saturday, Donald Trump took time to spread a false claim about God on Twitter.
POLITICS
Liberal Party investigates branch-stacking claims (Sydney Morning Herald)
Aug 17 – The Victorian Liberal Party is investigating branch-stacking allegations after an internal audit found some members breached party rules by paying for other people’s membership fees.
Hard-right Libs in secret candidate plot (The Australian)
Aug 22 – A plan to promote religious candidates for preselection and place conservative warlords in electorates has been exposed.
RELIGION & SOCIETY
I mourn the loss of rituals for year 12 (Sydney Morning Herald)
Aug 19 – (Opinion: Daisy Turnbull) I remember two specific moments from the end of my year 12.
Penelope Seidler: ‘I still have his clothes hanging up’ (Sydney Morning Herald)
Aug 21 – Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Penelope Seidler.
As the Christchurch shooter faces sentencing, what has Australia learned about far-right terror? (The Guardian, Australia)
Aug 23 – In the weeks after the New Zealand Christchurch massacre, the attention of the international media turned to a small town on the New South Wales mid-north coast.
