29 March 2024

21 - 27 March

New Anglican Province role for Indigenous canon – The Melbourne Anglican

The body will be made up of Indigenous Anglicans who will represent and promote the interests of First Nations church members. 

The Reverend Canon Glenn Loughrey will take up the assignment as leader of a five-year Anglican Province of Victoria First Nations ministry, mission and justice project. 

Canon Loughrey said the landmark body would ensure there were pathways for Indigenous people in the church and that mission and ministry were conducted in culturally appropriate ways. 

Shift in religious identity reflected in regions as Christianity declines, faiths such as Sikhism grow – ABC News 

Pastor Dan Rooney has spent “a lifetime being in the church”, but several years ago he found he needed a new way to lead others in religion.  

He started holding non-denominational services, which have attracted a small congregation in Pinnaroo in the South Australian Murray Mallee. 

Australian census data from 2021 revealed Christianity remained the most common religion in the country, but the religious identity had steadily declined since the 1980s. 

It is a trend that Mr Rooney said was noticeable and that the Christian worshipping community was “getting smaller and smaller”. 

Bradley’s school years were the best of his life. For his twin, James, they were ‘hell’– The Age 

Twins Bradley and James Elliot-Watson were model students in high school: good grades, extracurricular activities, popular among their peers. But while Bradley recalls his teenage years at their religious private school as some of the best of his life, James, who is gay, cannot say the same. 

James was an obvious candidate for prefect when he got to year 10 – his teachers all told him so. Then, one lunchtime, he told a staff member he was struggling with his sexuality. The school changed its mind and within hours, he was summoned to the front office. 

Albanese is looking for a show of faith on the religious discrimination bill but common ground looks vanishingly thin – The Guardian 

It’s taken a couple of years but faith is back in politics. Not literally – let’s not get carried away – but as the subject of debate and in its varied forms: good, bad and religious. This is not a conversation that brings joy. Even those who have restarted the discourse kind of wish it would go away. 

Heading into the last year of his first term, prime minister Anthony Albanese finds himself grappling with the Morrison-era unfinished business of religious discrimination when he would rather concentrate on just about anything else. 

After a politically disastrous adventure on the proposed Indigenous voice, and at a time when most Australians care more about the cost of groceries and fuel, Albanese is extremely reluctant to spend political capital on what many will dismiss as another culture war. 

Ex-Louisiana deacon whose son was sexually abused by a priest is excommunicated from church – The Guardian 

 A Louisiana man who resigned as a Roman Catholic deacon after a priest at whose side he served sexually molested his son has been excommunicated from the church by his local diocese, a remarkably harsh punishment that his child’s abuser does not appear to have faced. 

Scott Peyton’s excommunication from the Catholic church at the hands of bishop J Douglas Deshotel came as the latter’s Lafayette diocese asked Louisiana’s supreme court to strike down a law that retroactively and temporarily eliminated filing deadlines for lawsuits demanding damages for childhood sexual abuse from years ago. 

Southern Baptists finally name new executive committee president – Christianity Today 

After more than two years of uncertainty and at times, chaos, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee has a new president. 

At a special meeting in Dallas, members of the committee – which oversees the work of the 13 million-member denomination in between its annual meetings – unanimously elected Jeff Iorg as its new president and CEO. The meeting was held in executive session, and Iorg’s election was announced in the early afternoon on Thursday. 

Iorg, longtime president of Gateway Seminary, a Southern Baptist school in Ontario, California, is well respected in Southern Baptist circles for his steady and low-key approach to leadership. In a press conference following his election, Iorg said he would focus on earning trust in his new role. 

Will Chinese Christians be able to celebrate Easter this year? – The Christian Post 

Celebrating Easter in China is becoming more difficult than ever. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rule, holidays regarded as “Western”, such as Easter or Christmas, are being discouraged or even outright banned. 

While Chinese Christians face restrictions on their religious celebrations, the Chinese government is actively promoting secular Spring Festival celebrations, requesting all state-controlled churches implement the “Sinicization of Christianity” campaign during their holiday activities. 

The stark contrast in the treatment of the holiday celebrations shows how the Chinese Communist Party employs constant control of the Chinese people in all aspects. They do this to not only assure its continued rule but also to amplify the “Chinese-ness” throughout the country to showcase its might both at home and abroad.   

The Explainer: The ‘Curse of Ham’ – how people of faith used a story in Genesis to justify slavery – Sight Magazine 

According to a report by an independent oversight committee released in March, the Church of England should pay £1 billion in reparations to the descendants of slavery – 10 times the previously set amount. 

The report was the start of a “multi-generational response to the appalling evil of transatlantic chattel enslavement”, said Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion of about 85 million Christians. 

His words summon the shocking spectacle of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Church of England owned vast plantations in the Caribbean, chiefly in Barbados, employing thousands of slaves. Slavery was thought to be entirely consistent with the Christian message of bringing the Gospel to the “savages”. The Christian leaders even branded “their” slaves “SPG” – the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 

Everything that matters: Marilynne Robinson’s book on Genesis teaches us how to talk about God – ABC News 

Australians love a long weekend, and our longest long weekend is this week’s. I don’t hear anybody complaining about having Friday and Monday off, but Easter itself — apart from a few chocolate egg hunts — goes little marked now in Australia,” writes Natasha Moore, a research fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity.  

Moore wonders how we can talk about old stories of Jesus’ resurrection with one another if, “they both are and are not current, where they both are and are not known? And why talk about them?”.  

American writer Marilynne Robinson disregards any such convention. A lot of her work seems “simply oblivious to the fact that not everyone would consider Puritan theology or the nature of heaven, say, pertinent to topics such as gun violence,” Moore writes.  

An Easter Easter egg – The Gospel Coalition 

I like a good Easter egg. Not a chocolate egg – I mean a secret meaning or symbol buried in a film or game or story,” writes Andrew Moody, author and adjunct lecturer at several Australian colleges. 

He references the Bible as an example. “There are moments of foreshadowing, and patterns, and double meanings that seem very Easter-eggy,” he writes. He goes into further detail, referencing the story of Abaraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac, and “his declaration that God would provide the lamb (Gen 22:8).” 

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