Representatives from various faith organizations in Victoria have come together to affirm their support for a multicultural and multifaith community. But does this community include women?

This is the photo from the news article at the Faith Communities website.

To be fair, the list of spokespeople includes one woman, Karen Toohey of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. Include her in your photo next time, guys. Here’s a better idea: invite more women and aborigines.

A few weeks ago, Jacqui Tomlins’s kids came home from school with a letter asking whether she would like them to undertake Special Religious Instruction (SRI). No, she doesn’t. She’s been asked before, but this year she decided to do a little research about just what SRI is and who is behind it.

According to Victorian legislation, education in public schools must be secular and not promote any particular religious practice, but that does not prevent the inclusion of general religious education, which means “education about the major forms of religious thought and expression characteristic of Australian society and other societies in the world.”

Interestingly, the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 then goes on to make a distinction between general religious education and special religious instruction, which  is “instruction provided by churches and other religious groups and based on distinctive religious tenets and beliefs.”

In practice, this means that a religious group, usually a Christian one named Access Ministries, approaches a school, offers to provide SRI, and the school must oblige.  Who is Access Ministries? According to Wikipedia, Access Ministries is the largest provider of Christian Religious Education (CRE) in Victoria and provides religious instruction to over 120,000 Victorian school children each week. The teachers are volunteers with little more than a few hours of training. And what exactly are Access Ministries volunteers teaching? Tomlins provides some insight.

I haven’t sat in on a class myself, but I’ve certainly spoken to teachers and aides who have. One told me about a lesson she’d attended where the volunteer described in detail and with sound effects (bang! bang! bang!) how nails were hammered through Jesus’ wrists and ankles as he hung from the cross. It was Easter and it was a Prep class – and the volunteer gave out chocolate eggs at the end of the lesson.

Another told me that the volunteer asked her group of ten year olds whether it was okay to murder unborn babies. And I’ve had half a dozen people tell me that SRI volunteers regularly espouse that ‘evolution is just a theory’.

The idea that SRI is benign, that it’s gentle and harmless, and there’s nothing wrong with a few Bible stories aimed at teaching kids some good basic values is extremely prevalent. I’ve heard it many times. And it’s quite possible that, in some cases, that is what you get – a few songs and some worksheets to colour in, but I’m sceptical and this is why.

The CEO of Access Ministries, Evonne Paddison told a conference in 2011 that both Special Religious Instruction (SRI) and chaplaincy provide an: extraordinary opportunity to reach kids with the good news about Jesus… What really matters is seizing the God-given opportunity we have to reach kids in schools. Without Jesus, our students are lost…What a commandment. Make disciples. What a responsibility. What a privilege we have been given. Let’s go for it.

Access Ministries want to make disciples of our children and they make no secret of that.

One reason school children are receiving exclusively evangelical Christian teaching in “religious” instruction is because most other religions don’t feel like they have a God-given mandate to recruit converts. According to a 2011 article from The Age on the backlash of forcing God back into public schools, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Baha’i, Greek Orthodox, Hare Krishna and Roman Catholic courses are also accredited, but Access Ministries provides 96% of SRI. It’s unlikely that minority religions or faiths where proselytism has no place will approach a public school to offer SRI. Additionally, like some Americans, some Aussies may feel that Christianity is part of Australia’s heritage and children should receive Christian education in public schools. Others may think it’s benign or be misinformed and not realize that their children are not receiving a broad look at the world’s religions. But I’m more interested in the politics of it. There are some key pieces of information missing from Tomlins’ excellent blog entry and The Age’s article, and other articles I’ve read on this issue: Why did the Victorian Education Department decide to allow SRI? Who was behind the decision? Is there a relationship between the Victorian Education Department and Access Ministries?

The classes are not compulsory, but children who opt out are not allowed to do other school work and are often forced to sit at the back of the class, or in quiet rooms and hallways. Recently, parents at three Victorian schools lost an appeal claiming their children were discriminated against because their parents chose not to have them attend religious classes.

Source: Without Jesus, our students are lost

Chrys Stevenson over at Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear looks at how the teaching of creationism is creeping into Australia’s state schools and questions why politicians continue deny it.

We know that creationism is entering Australian state schools’ science classrooms by stealth. We know that it is still taught, quite openly, in Christian schools. In schools where the science classroom has been successfully ‘roped off’ from creationist myths, the fundamentalists find other ways to undermine the science curriculum. This will continue as long as government ministers, like Plibersek, adopt denial as the most convenient way to deal with the rising problem of religion in schools.

We know that, throughout Australia, in both public and private schools, inside and outside of science classes, evolution is being undermined while a fundamentalist, literalist view of creation is being touted to students by whatever means and in whatever pedagogical venue the creationists can manage to infiltrate.

In the U.S., creationism as science raises a huge debate and that’s in a nation where religion plays an important role in politics and society. Australia thinks of itself as largely non-religious, secular, and multicultural. So, why is this happening and what’s being done about it? Even if we put aside the problem of teaching religion (aka Christianity) in state schools, how can Australia expect to cultivate tomorrow’s brilliant scientific minds while teaching creationism?

Source: Q&A: Plibersek strangely unconvinced about creationism in the classroom

I’ve been trying to follow more news about Paganism and Witchcraft in Australia. Today I came across this notice from the Pagan Awareness Network in Australia.

Passing of Rhys Owen

It is with great sadness that we mark the passing to the Summerland of Rhys Owen.

Rhys died Sunday 24th Febuary 2013, peacefully in hospital. He is now at peace.

The Funeral for Rhys Owen will be on Thursday the 28th Febuary 2013 at 10:00am at T.S. Burstow Funerals, 1020 Ruthven St Toowoomba, QLD 4350.

Please no flowers; however there will be the provision to make donations to the Toowoomba Oncology Department before and after the ceremony.

There will be a Memorial service held in Sydney for the people in Sydney who can not make it to the funeral on a date to be shortly confirmed.

Blessed Be, Merry Meet, Merry Part and Merry Meet again.

Unfortunately the notice doesn’t tell us anything about who Rhys Owen is. He may be well known to his local community, but it’s never safe to assume that every Pagan in Australia knows who he is or what his contributions were.

All I could find was that Owen, along with Kim Robertson, founded the Pagan Communities Project, which was established in 2004 and held its first Community Forum in Brisbane in February 2005. The Project’s goal was to build community and act as an Pagan organization that could achieve government recognition. According to a 2005 interview with Robertson, Owen was nationally known and had a lineage to  Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and, through her, to Dion Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light.

It also appears Owen was involved with the PAGANdash project, which seeks to use census information to find out how many Pagans there are in Australia. He wrote in 2006:

I urge you all to speak again to your friends and any pagan you may know before the census next week. This is a chance to signal to our community and to the wider community that the growing pagan systems are continuing to grow.

My condolences to Owen’s friends and family. May he rest in peace in the arms of his ancestors and gods.

If you knew Owen, I invite you to share stories and perhaps even a photo here. I’d love to know more.

Australia fancies itself a multicultural and largely non-religious country. So why do public school have religious classes? And what are the alternatives for children who opt-out of them?

This week, the Herald Sun reported that parents at three Victorian schools lost an appeal claiming their children were discriminated against because their parents chose not to have them attend religious classes. Although the case was unsuccessful, it has brought about some changes. Children now have to opt-in for the classes and there need to be alternatives for children who do not take them, but some parents remain frustrated. Continue reading →

According to PAGANdash, 32,083 Australians identified their religion as a Pagan in the 2011 Australian census. I have not been able to verify this figure, but let’s assume it is correct for the sake of discussion. It’s not a very large number for a country that’s roughly the size of the U.S. with the population of California.

Pagans already live on the fringes of society. We are a people with beliefs that not only vary greatly from those of the overculture, but whose values are often not in alignment with it. And then we have our own lunatic fringe. I’ve been in Melbourne nearly a year. I hope that the Pagans I’ve been in contact with so far are just part of that lunatic fringe and that there’s something more beneath the surface. Here’s what I’ve seen so far. Continue reading →