Christianity

Imagine if a dumb trend like planking collided with something much more dangerous than a balcony railing, like say religious fanaticism, and an entire nation caught the bug.

Welcome to contemporary America, where the fad of “Tebowing” is both sweeping and dividing the nation. Tee-what? Tebowing, named after hyper-religious Denver Broncos quarterback, Tim Tebow, is the act of taking a knee in prayer, usually while you’re actually doing something else. Like playing footy.

Tebow has been doing it for months in Broncos games, although he won’t be doing it any more this season, or not onfield anyway, after his team was thumped by the New England Patriots on the weekend. Apparently God prefers a patriot to a believer.

Continue reading "A football field is no place for nutty religious fanaticism" »

You hear many complaints nowadays about pesky, outspoken Christians.  Across the West, a fashionable attitude has emerged: Beyond the doing of charitable works, and perhaps the soothing of the bereaved at funerals, “religion” should be an entirely private affair. 

The so-called New Atheists are vocal advocates of this position.  One of them, Michel Onfray, has admitted that his atheism “leaps to life when private belief becomes a public matter”.  Onfray hates it “when in the name of a personal mental pathology we organise the world for others”. 

Here in Australia, there are many like him.  The talented journalist-author Peter FitzSimons is fond of ridiculing sportsmen, like golfer Aaron Baddeley, who publicly give thanks to God.  FitzSimons rarely misses a chance to snipe at all “delusional” believers, and, in a recent spray in the Sydney Morning Herald, asserted ludicrously that belief in God “is entirely inimical to educational principles”. (Read Brian Rosner’s spirited reply.)

Continue reading "Why God botherers bother" »

Many of us these days prefer to take our Christmas without the Christ or the Mas(s). It’s convenient to keep the name, though – the world’s not quite ready for Sockandjockmas or Drinkingwhitewineinthesunmas.

The hijacking of this pagan/Christian celebration by the irreligious is of concern to many – particularly when the predictable stories start to circulate about childhood institutions ‘banning’ Christmas in favour of the bland and Americanised ‘Happy Holidays’.

Last week Tracey Spicer revealed that a Sydney class had torturously removed all references to Christ from end-of-year Christmas carols. Utterly ridiculous, of course, an unnecessary and probably unrequested bending over.

Continue reading "Do they know it’s Sockandjockmas Time at all?" »

This is the final in our Adelaide Festival of Ideas series - the brainfest begins today. In this column Paul Collins talks about how important it is to recognise and protect religion pluralism.

Richard Dawkins and his atheist mates have done us a real disservice by caricaturing all religion as fundamentalist claptrap. The problem is that by pretending that all religions are the same, he obscures the important differences that have to be negotiated if we are going to live in a more peaceful and tolerant world.

This is especially true when we come to negotiate that most important contemporary divides between the West and the Islamic world. At the heart of this is the negotiation between Christianity and Islam, two faiths that really need to talk to each other for all our sakes. But this isn’t going to be easy.

Continue reading "Religions: Not same same, but different" »

One of the ugliest aspects of the culture wars is dogmatism, the inability of either side to respect the other’s point of view. Nowhere is this vice more prevalent than among protagonists in the so-called God debate.

It’s fine to be passionate about your belief (or unbelief).  But it’s wrong to demonise dissenters. 

Far too often today Christians are dismissed by their critics as deluded fundamentalists, relics of a past era who have jettisoned reason and common sense.  Just as frequently, Christians disparage atheists and agnostics – even fellow Christians with whom they disagree on one point or another – as unprincipled or immoral. 

Continue reading "Dogmatism derails both sides of religious debate" »

Fanatical Christians and fundamentalist atheists are like a couple of kids bickering in the back seat during a long car drive.

“You’re a poo poo bum head,” yells one – applying a Mao-strength Chinese burn.

“I know you are but what am I,” the other retorts – striking back with an eye-watering nipple cripple. And so it goes.

Continue reading "With or without religion, we’re all desperately human" »

The Bible is renowned for many reasons, but its capacity to elicit laughter isn’t one of them.  Profound, boring, thought-provoking, out-moded, terrifying, censorious … take your pick.  But funny it is not. The American intellectual Jack Miles claimed recently that the Bible “is morally serious to the virtual exclusion of charm”.

Such sentiments are understandable. There’s no disputing that the Bible’s concerns are, at core, as deep and weighty as they come.  Even so, there is humour to be found within its pages.  For the most part, however, it’s not of the side-splitting or slapstick variety.

Almost all the intentional humour is in the Old Testament. Sarcasm, irony, punning, wordplay, humorous imagery and exaggeration – each were liberally employed by the ancient Hebrew authors. Like all the best communicators today, they appreciated that humour is an excellent way to win over an audience.

Continue reading "The bible’s old stuff is way funnier than the new stuff" »

Why, on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, are its praises being sung by so many prominent atheists? 

Richard Dawkins himself, best-selling author of The God Delusion, has led the charge.  In an article published in the Christmas issue of New Statesman, Dawkins hailed the KJV as an “astonishing piece of English literature”.  He hoped to “encourage our schools to bring this precious English heritage to all our children, whatever their background”. 

Here in Australia there have been similar calls.  A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Julia Gillard got into the act.  “It’s impossible to understand Western literature,” she opined, “without having that key of understanding [of] the Bible stories and how Western literature builds on them and reflects them”.

Continue reading "Atheists shouldn’t damn the Bible with faint praise" »

Christians do support legal assisted dying.

This may come as a surprise to most readers, but it is true.  What’s more, 74 per cent of people who claim to have a religion strongly support the right of doctors to provide a lethal dose, according to a 2007 Newspoll. Newspoll - a reputable public opinion polling company, as distinct from newspaper polls that can give skewed results. Exclude religion and we find a massive 91 per cent are in favour of medically assisted dying.

Included in this support are four out of five Anglicans and three out of four Catholics.

Continue reading "The Christian lobby versus Christian compassion" »

This Easter the world seems full of believers. Religious and Royal.

Tomorrow, billions will celebrate the resurrection of their King, Jesus Christ. But this year, there’s another King-to-be who’s stealing the limelight.

Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave over the past few days (no offence, Jesus. Thank God for Mary Magdalene), you’d be well aware the wedding of the century is six sleeps away.

And with this wedding many hope there’ll be a resurrection of a different kind. The resurrection of the monarchy. There will be no heavy cross to carry. No rags. No bare feet. No beard. Quite the opposite. There will be carriages, horses with plaits, the Beckhams, trumpets and the world’s most celebrated modern couple – Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Continue reading "The King is dead. Long live the King!" »

It’s Maundy Thursday, the holy day that one Punch staffer thought for years was “Monday Thursday”; some weird hybrid day.

For many, Maundy (or ‘Holy’) Thursday is the start of a very sacred few days. For most, it’s the last day of work before we gorge, binge, and maybe later repent.

In the Christian tradition, today commemorates the Last Supper; so feasting – particularly if it involves bread and wine - is pretty much encouraged.

Continue reading "Carbon tax. Obesity. Libya. What Would Jesus Do?" »

Mathematicians have released a study that made for great headlines, including:

(A fairly tenuous link but a mention of religious songs, and I’ll take any excuse to listen to Tim Minchin)

Faith no more! From New Zealand to Canada, religion ``to become extinct’’ in nine countries.

Study Finds Religion May Be Heading for Extinction in Parts of World.

Researchers Predict the End of Religion.

Continue reading "Reports of religion’s death greatly exaggerated" »

This is a joint submission by Christopher Pyne MP, Shadow Minister for Education, and Alan Tudge MP. Federal Member for Aston.

As is often the case, the Gillard Government says one thing and does another.  If Julia Gillard thinks that people should know their Bible stories because they have “formed such an important part of our culture”, then she should make sure we have a national history curriculum that doesn’t try to hide and deny our western Christian roots. 

On Sunday, Ms Gillard advocated the learning of the Bible and said that “It’s impossible to understand Western literature without having that key of understanding the Bible stories and how Western literature builds on them and reflects them and deconstructs them and brings them back together.”

Apart from the Prime Minister’s jargon about deconstruction, all sensible people would agree with her statement.

Continue reading "God important to Gillard? You wouldn’t read about it" »

It’s hardly surprising that Johnny Lee Clary’s Australian tour has caused a stir. It’s not every day you get a former KKK Imperial Wizard dropping in and warning us that we’ve got problems with racism.

Here’s the story - where he says racism in Australia is reaching the fever pitch he saw in the Deep South- in case you missed it.

The story was light on details, so I called Reverend Elder Clary to see what he’s on about.

Continue reading "Australians are not racist, but…" »

In the lead-up to the 2007 federal election, ALP leader Kevin Rudd staked the middle ground in education by advocating a conservative agenda, embracing a back-to-basics curriculum and a return to traditional subjects.

During her time as Education Minister Julia Gillard also defined herself as an education conservative and described the ALP’s national curriculum as exemplifying a return to academic standards and rigour.

In one speech Gillard described herself as “a passionate believer in the benefits of a rigorous study of traditional disciplines”, and in a second speech she boasted, “What we’re on about is making sure that the absolute basics of knowledge, absolute basics of education are taught right across the country.”

Continue reading "Curriculum is substandard, PC, and ignores Christianity" »

It’s been a big week this week for the politically correct.

Tracey Spicer is worried her children are being indoctrinated into Christianity at school.

Some Coalition backbenchers are worried they can’t indoctrinate new citizens to Christianity.

Continue reading "It’s political correctness gone maaaaaaad!" »

It’s 9am on Christmas morning and I am standing in a queue in a rather ornate, grandiose building in Sydney.

I am among the many worshippers at the Church of Mary Immaculate in Waverley. And I am about to receive Communion.

Except I am a Jew, a traditional Jew who only weeks prior had a candelabra flickering in my window for eight nights in celebration of the miracle of Hannukah, when the Greeks tried – but failed – to annihilate the Jews and our holy temple more than 2000 years ago.

Continue reading "Holy Dilemma! A Jew does Communion and Christmas" »

Growing up, I thought of Pantera as a heavy metal band. That was before I read the Greek philosopher, Celsus whose anti-Christian writings are recorded by the Christian writer, Origen. Around a century after the composition of the biblical Gospels, Celsus wrote various works opposing Christian doctrine.

One writer describes Celsus as “the first Nietzschean”, such was his vehement objection to the traditional (and historical) teaching that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin, taught and ministered around Galilee to much acclaim, and was then crucified by Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, and seen alive again three days after his death.

Among Celsus’s claims about the fallacies of Christian history is the report that Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier called Pantera (Origen, Contra Celsum, I:32, 34). This is the first known mention of this view, so we can’t know how prevalent it was (it was later picked up in some Jewish writings). However, it is attractive to those who would like to ‘domesticate’ the Christmas story.

Continue reading "Pantera is not just a heavy metal band" »

Religious extremism seems to be on the rise, and the reaction against extremism is only getting more … extreme.

We in the Western world do so like to talk about banning stuff. All sorts of stuff.

But is banning radicals right and, more importantly, does it help?

Continue reading "How do you solve a problem like religious zealotry?" »

What is the point of a “non-judgemental” ethics centre? It’s a serious question.

In my naiveté, I had always assumed that the whole point of ethics was to arrive at some sort of judgement about what is right and what is wrong. But take a look at the secular St James Ethics Centre’s website and it would appear I was wrong.

The St James Ethics Centre - headed by Dr Simon Longstaff – bills itself as offering a “non-judgemental forum” to explore ethical issues.
It won’t investigate unethical behaviour. It won’t help you make an ethical financial investment. But the biggest problem is that a “non-judgemental” approach lowers the stakes. It means your standard of ethics can only be judged by whether you are being true to yourself or not.

Continue reading "Who’s teaching the ethics teachers getting their ethics?" »

When I was young Catholic, I remember being struck by the contrast between two different approaches to spreading the Gospel – that of the conquistador Hernan Cortes, who did so by the sword and cannon, and that of Francis Xavier, who did so by word and example.

In the lives of the saints, Xavier was a hero to me. It appears the Churches in NSW follow in the steps of Cortes when it comes to evangelical ‘realpolitik’. Not for their state the freedom to choose a faith or citizenship tradition.

They will simply not tolerate neutral ethics classes in competition with Christian scripture classes. The Government must ban alternative perspectives and prohibit parental choice.

Continue reading "Intolerant Churches punishing non-believers" »

I was once at a dinner party when a friend, who I think had read a Robert Fisk article that morning, began explaining an aspect of Middle Eastern politics. Unbeknown to her, one of the guests was something of an expert in the field, and was nodding politely at my friend’s newfound wisdom. I felt the need to jump in and save her from embarrassment.

I have something of a similar response to Brendan Brown’s appeals to rationality (Why an Atheist Prime Minister is better The Punch Nov 10). The article, picking up on the now familiar New Atheist shtick makes me want to point out some realities of history and philosophy that the writer seems unaware of. 

There are some bold claims here. We read for instance that, “even the most devout of Jesus’ disciples would admit that the Bible makes an underwhelming historical document.”

Continue reading "Ignorance is more concerning than religion" »

So, the Polish have beaten the Brazilians for the biggest Jesus yet. Yep, they’ve toppled the Christ the Redeemer statue, producing their own 36 metre high statue, and knocking off the famous one by adding a three metre high gold crown. Rumour is that Brazil is going to add an even taller Pope’s mitre in response…

I always thought the ‘Big Thing’ was a bit of an Aussie phenomenon. Our particular kitsch aesthetic means that anything that should be small (a prawn, a banana, a merino) is made into a tourist destination by being big.

But apparently it’s a global phenomenon: there are big things everywhere—there’s a big axe in New Brunswick and a big thermometer somewhere in California. I guess the concept of being ‘monumental’ rests on the idea that size matters. I can’t think of many small monuments.

Continue reading "The big merino. The big prawn. Why no big Jesus?" »

As a small group of Halloween-devotees in Martin Place this week protested that October 31 is not a national public holiday like Christmas, you can be sure that thousands of religious folk around the world are right now making the opposite demand: Halloween is evil and should be banned.

I have been asked many times, both as an Anglican minister and as director of the Centre for Public Christianity: Is Halloween evil? Should Christians oppose it?

My general feeling is that Halloween is no more ‘evil’ than Christmas. In fact, the two festivals have a bit in common.

Continue reading "Is Halloween evil?" »

It was a rainy Thursday night and my thirteen-year old cousin was pleading with me to take her to see the movie Easy A.

“Please take me to see it. Please, I’ll even wash your car,” a long pause followed.

After being scolded by her over-protective mother for taking her to see Vampires Suck, I was cautious.

Continue reading "Easy laughs: why Hollywood loves mocking Christians" »

Judging by the mardi gras of colourful wraparounds on Mary MacKillop that festooned our newsstands recently, Catholicism is alive and kicking off all that bad publicity about child sex abuse.

The Enlightenment came and went a few hundred years ago, but lots of Australians still believe in virgin births, the resurrection, and miracles. Ex-Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is among them.

The right to practice religion is quite rightly a cherished freedom in liberal Western democracies. So it’s a little puzzling that some in the Catholic and Anglican church hierarchies are unwilling to extend exactly the same kind of freedom to NSW children who want to learn about secular approaches to ethics.

Continue reading "What about the freedom of the non-religious" »

It took an Australian to go through with the whole religious text-burning threat. Brisbane lawyer, Alex Stewart, decided it was a good idea to burn pages of the Koran and the Bible and then appear to smoke them in his now infamous YouTube video. Probably a Queensland thing.

Different religions react differently to having their texts assaulted. Famously, British muslims in 1989 led violent rallies of protest at comments made about the Koran in Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. Copies of the novel, and effigies of the novelist, were burned across England.

Catholic archbishops burned Protestant Bible translations during the European Reformation. Jews burned New Testaments in Jerusalem in 1980 in obedience to teachings of the Babylonian Talmud.
There are some stunning book burnings in the Bible itself.

Continue reading "Book-burners are rattled by weapons of mass instruction" »

The power of the Christian right or the so-called ‘moral majority’ has always loomed large over politics in the United States. The impact here in Australia of a Christian voting bloc has generally held much less power and attention.

Yet in recent elections John Howard and Kevin Rudd did speak out publicly about their Christian faith and even attempted to lure the Christian vote. There has not been the same overt pitch for the Christian vote during this campaign. Yet, ironically, it may still have a profound impact on an election that appears to be on a knife edge.

Shortly after taking over the role of Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, declared that she did not have a belief in God. Last week ABC current affairs radio program AM aired a piece that focused on what Christian voters thought about the beliefs on our new Prime Minister.

Continue reading "Looking for God on the campaign trail" »

Quentin Bryce may have entertained the Masterchef crowd, but she declined to use the enormous Lord Hopetoun Bible printed in 1901 by the Bible Society for the inauguration of Governors-General.

However, no offence or protest was intended; in fact the opposite: she wanted to hold her own modest-sized Bible instead. The Acting Governor-General, Marie Bashir, opened an historic Bibles exhibition in Sydney last week because Quentin Bryce was in Fromelles where, among her duties, she returned a fallen WWI digger’s pocket-sized New Testament to his side.

The Bible is still very close to the centre of public life in Australia, even if there is occasional strident objection to the appropriateness of its use.

Continue reading "The place of the bible in modern society" »

Will Gillard’s atheism alienate the religious? Hell, yeah.

Most of them - the wedding and wake religious – won’t really care. We are, after all, a professedly secular society. But the big, the powerful, and the rabid will care.

Look at what happened last Easter. We had a bunch o’ bishops declaring atheism a lonely, evil, amoral state of being.

Continue reading "Gillard’s atheism will bother a lot of people" »

People often say that without God there would be no atheists. Presumably that’s meant to be some pithy truism that shows no one exists without God.

To an atheist, that’s about as meaningless, smug and lazy as saying that without Bigfoot, Sasquatch-deniers would not exist.

Swathes of people seem to put atheism in the ‘unthinkable’ category. It is a position they cannot empathise with at all – the most similar attitude that comes to mind is homophobia.

Continue reading "“I’ve never met an atheist”, and other tales of certainty" »

I can’t remember how I stumbled across it, but it has really threatened my Christian faith. It’s a book unlike any other, challenging my worldview and giving me nights of tossing and turning in a cold sweat.

The book is The Christian Mother Goose Book by Marjorie Ainsborough Decker, and it’s enough to make anyone an unbeliever. No doubt in good faith, Mrs Decker has ‘improved’ the nursery rhymes you and I know from childhood into ones she feels better communicate the Christian message. So, ‘Lavender’s Blue, Dilly Dilly’ begins:

Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly
Lavender’s green
Teach me to say, dilly, dilly
John 3:16.

Continue reading "Morris Gleitzman and Christian Mother Goose" »

The current debate over teaching ethics in NSW public schools would test the patience of Job. That phrase won’t make sense to most NSW pupils, and it is for that reason we need more time, not less, for teaching Scripture in our schools.

The Bible is clearly a central text for understanding Western (and not just Western) culture. And yet Bible literacy is in a woeful state, not only among students, but also among teachers and public figures. Recently, on the fabulous ABC TV music quiz show, Spicks and Specks, it took around a dozen pure guesses before any of the six panellists—all cultured people—could identify where a biblical character came from.

I remember super-smart Jewish doctor friends who asked me where in the Bible they could find the story of Noah. And don’t get me started on the biblical illiteracy of the current rock-star atheists, who can hardly tell their Scriptural right hand from their left (that’s from Jonah ch.4 verse 11).

Continue reading "Schools ethics debate is testing the patience of Job" »

I love it when Richard Dawkins comes to town. It’s like Christmas for people who don’t believe in Christmas.

Even though he’s since departed our fair shores, Dawkins’ wake of influence still ripples like the aftermath of an intellectual tsunami, and if anything you have to give him credit for almost single-handedly putting religious debate back on the map.

The debate that follows Dawkins across the globe is largely confined to the mission of getting rid of this pesky notion of a creator once and for all, by using the atheist mantra “celebrate reason” to expose all who entertain the divine as delusional, idiotic disciples of fairies or flying spaghetti monsters or whatever convenient and patronising analogy fits best. Needless to say, there’s a lot of love in the room.

Continue reading "“Probably” isn’t enough in the argument against God" »

It’s the time of year to make the claim that Jesus is gay. It seems to happen semi-annually.  A few years back, a Queensland academic made the claim that Jesus had sex with his male disciples and a special relationship with ‘the beloved’ disciple, John.

This year it was the turn of another John, Elton John, to raise the topic of Jesus’ sexuality, adding the new element that Jesus was a “super-intelligent” gay man.

The famous singer’s admiration of Jesus extends beyond his claim that Jesus was gay and smart: Elton admires Jesus’ compassion, naming the forgiveness of sins that Christ achieved on the cross as a key element of the Christian message, and something worthy of emulation.

Continue reading "Gays and Jesus: The Gospel According to Elton John" »

If Green Day sang that the Jesus of American suburbia is a lie, Chris O’Doherty (aka Reg Mombassa) offers a surreal Aussie equivalent: the Jesus of our suburbia is a regular guy, eating a pie, wearing a tie, with a third eye.

Mombassa was a member of iconic Australian rock band Mental As Anything before becoming one of Australia’s most recognisable visual artists and helping to establish the fame and fortune of the Mambo surfwear brand.

The release of Murray Waldren’s beautifully-produced biography of Mombassa, The Mind and Times of Reg Mombassa, highlights just how prominent Christian, or ‘neo-Christian’, themes are in his artwork.

Lauded as a pop culture artist, Mombassa self-identifies in a more religious fashion: “It’s like being a priest. To some extent, it’s a calling”, he tells Waldren. His “Self portrait with beard and plastic ring”, painted last year, is an obvious Christ-figure, with the ring as a halo.

Continue reading "The Australian Jesus of Reg Mombassa" »

Marriage equality is often portrayed as being an agenda of those who oppose the Christian faith and despise heterosexual marriage.

But as a married, heterosexual, evangelical Christian pastor and theologian I support the legislative amendment to allow same-sex couples the right to formalise their commitments in the legally-recognised covenant of marriage.

Privileging one theology over another

While personally I would gladly conduct and bless same-sex weddings, some of my evangelical brothers and sisters who cannot go that far still support this legislative amendment.

Continue reading "Why I changed my mind about same-sex marriage" »

Everyone has the human right to freedom of religion and belief. But often religion and belief can be used as grounds for discrimination and as weapons of division and hate. As a nation, we need to make sure that this does not happen.

Over the next three weeks there are two very different religious conferences being held in Australia. One is the Parliament of the World’s Religions conference in Melbourne, with the theme, ‘Making a world of difference: Hearing each other, Healing the Earth’. The other, this weekend, is the National Conference for all Concerned Christians in Sydney, themed ‘Australia’s Future and Global Jihad’.

Australia is a nation of many religions and beliefs. Some people say we are a Christian nation. More often than not, we are described as a secular nation. But which is true? And why, if at all, does it matter?

Continue reading "Are we really the secular nation we think we are" »

The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow with a local community church has opened a new exhibition that originally aimed to “reclaim the Bible as a sacred text”.

.

In a somewhat unorthodox way of achieving this end they have left a Bible open at the exhibition inviting people to write whatever they want in it.

“If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it,” asks the gallery.

Continue reading "Bible bashing is easy, but would artists touch Islam?" »

It’s everywhere: God, the Bible, sinners, commandments, the fires of judgement. The whole theological lot is currently centre-stage in pop culture, news media and university lecture halls across the nation. You can’t even escape religious discussion at the two-star-review end of the cinema.

And that (possibly lower down) is exactly where you find the new Jack Black comedy, The Year One. I haven’t endured such a dense smog of sexual stereotypes, fart jokes and poo-eating since Year 8 sailing camp.

But the film’s real subject matter is religion, ancient and modern and your need to be set free from it. Religion is not only ridiculous but also corrupt, and you must pursue your own destiny, whatever you think that might be.

Continue reading "Year One: a parody of biblical proportions" »