Religion News Selection

November 6 – 13, 2022

A selection of religion news stories from Australia

(Research: Greg Spearritt)

 

ABUSE

Parents told the best protection is prayer after school child-sex abuse claims (Sydney Morning Herald)
Nov 2 – The principal of a small faith-based school in south-east Melbourne has responded to concerns over a string of alleged child sexual abuse incidents involving students by telling families that the best protection for their children is to pray and perform religious rituals.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

A misty paradise, a nightmarish cult and an unlikely whistleblower (Sydney Morning Herald)
Nov 1 – Google Gloriavale and up comes a website describing a Christian paradise on a misty stretch of New Zealand’s West Coast.

EDUCATION

How Citipointe Christian College’s ‘sexuality contract’ brought queer students out of the shadows  (ABC News)
Nov 1 – Emmey Leo lived a lonely, secret life at high school.

Labor takes step towards new religious discrimination laws with review of exemptions for schools (The Guardian, Australia)
Nov 4 – The federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to review the country’s religious exemptions for schools in federal anti-discrimination law, in the first formal step towards new religious discrimination laws.

INTERNATIONAL STORIES
Catholic Church

Pope Francis joins world religious leaders to call for end to ‘childlike’ warmongering  (ABC News)
Nov 4 – Pope Francis has called for the world’s religious leaders to counter “childlike” whims of the powerful to make wars at an interfaith summit in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.

Other

‘It’s do as I say, not as I do’: the lurid fall of evangelical pariah Jerry Falwell Jr (The Guardian, Australia)
Nov 1 – Jerry Falwell Jr once said there was nothing that then president Donald Trump could do that would endanger support from him or other Christian evangelical leaders.

‘He was chosen’: the rightwing Christian roadshow spreading the gospel of Trump (The Guardian, Australia)
Nov 6 – “There is a man by the name of Donald,” the voice on the recording says.

ISLAM

Lebanese Muslim Association in Sydney facing calls to allow women to become members (ABC News)
Nov 5 – Muslim women are calling for a greater say running the Lebanese Muslim Association, accusing the influential New South Wales body of ignoring women’s concerns.

RELIGION & SOCIETY

Meet the Pastor celebrating queer Christians in the Church (ABC News)
Nov 1 – After coming out in their early 20s, Steff Fenton spent more than a decade in the Anglican Church, advocating for a space for queer Christians.

‘I disagree with the sort of God they represent’: Christian leader targets religious discrimination (Sydney Morning Herald)
Nov 1 – Being persecuted for her beliefs is something the trailblazing former Uniting Church minister Dorothy McRae-McMahon knows all about.

What is Satanism? And where does social justice fit into this controversial religion? (ABC News)
Nov 6 – What do Satanists believe?