Religion News Selection
April 9 – 16, 2023
A selection of religion news stories from Australia
(Research: Greg Spearritt)
EDUCATION
Gay and sexually active students can’t offer ‘Christian leadership’, says Presbyterian church (The Age, Melbourne)
Apr 14 – An elite Victorian private school says it is moving with the times but needs to consider its overarching religious ethos, as the church that oversees it seeks to bar students who have premarital sex or are gay from becoming school captains.
INTERNATIONAL STORIES
Anglican Church
Justin Welby defends £100m fund to address C of E’s past links to slavery (The Guardian, Australia)
Apr 10 – The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has used his Easter sermon to say that £100m pledged by the Church of England to compensate for its complicity in the international slave trade is not “postcolonial guilt” but “the presence of the risen Christ alive in the church”.
Other
NASA’s first female Goddard Space Flight Center director swears oath on Pale Blue Dot (ABC News)
Apr 12 – NASA’s newly appointed director of the Goddard Space Flight Center has claimed two firsts before even starting her official duties.
‘The Saint’ leaves Italian town after case opened into statue’s ‘tears of blood’ (The Guardian, Australia)
Apr 12 – A woman nicknamed “the Saint” has mysteriously vanished from a small lakeside town near Rome where pilgrims have flocked for years to pray before a statue of the Virgin Mary that she claimed shed tears of blood.
Christians are in danger under Israeli government, says Holy Land patriarch (The Guardian, Australia)
Apr 14 – The head of the Roman Catholic church in the Holy Land has warned in an interview that Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has made life worse for Christians in the birthplace of Christianity.
As Charles is bestowed with mystical powers, so much for a secular coronation (The Guardian, Australia)
Apr 16 – (Opinion: Catherine Bennett) ‘God of love, we raise to you our Queen Consort”: for anyone who has longed to mention Camilla Parker Bowles to the most high but struggled to find the words, the Church of England is here, with a set of new prayers, to help.
RELIGION & SOCIETY
In politics and the economy, Christianity is increasingly suspect (Sydney Morning Herald)
Apr 10 – (Opinion: Ross Gittins) A question for Easter Monday: would Australia be better governed if our political leaders were practising Christians?
Force of nature: Why a walk in the park can do you the world of good (The Age, Melbourne)
Apr 16 – (Opinion: Warwick McFadyen) The branches of the oaks arch over me.
