small things in the world

Tim Costello (formerly of World Vision, presently of the Centre for Public Christianity): told Christians to calm down and suck it up

A little blunt, but I feel he's not wrong.

Also, he does support freedom of religion - that is, the right of Christian organisations to hire and fire people who don't fall in line with their religious belief systems and the behaviours they feel are in line with that belief.

Mind you, I doubt that anyone will ever lose their job for not tithing to the church, supporting refugees and immigrants, or being openly racist/sexist.

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The Anglican Parish of Gosford has an excellent dissection of the 'religious freedoms bill' and the legalist lines of 'religious freedom' on it's FB page. It largely concerns the legislation that's presently being prospected for opportunity around the national government.

It makes the agile distinction (frequently lost in panicked gospel-pearl clutching of Christian groups) between the right to say you believe what you believe and the disicplines that can be enacted upon one for saying so in a capacity of authority/power/public example.

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I think it's important to make the distinction between 'you can't talk about the gospel (or you'll lose your life)' vs. 'you can't talk about the gospel (or you'll get fined and lose your job)'.

A lot of the situations where Christians explicitly aren't supposed to 'proselytise' (frequently, yes, this translates to 'even mentioning Christianity or the bible as their preferred option') are in dynamics where they have professional power/superiority/authority over the person they're proselytising to. eg. teachers, health professionals, coaches, mamagers, counsellors, government employees with the authority to approvel/withhold civic privileges...

The lack of acknowledgement of the power imbalance is very much the same lack that is seen in white people when it comes to racism, or in men when it comes to sexism. The power differential is not explicit but it is there - in the same way that even a simple "hello" can be a threat by a man to a woman. And that's just the professional power imabalance. Now imagine the weight of a thousand years of dominant religiousity that mostly boiled down to WE CAN CONTROL WHETHER YOUR AFTERLIFE IS AS MISERABLE AS YOUR LIFE HERE IS OR IF YOU GET TO GO TO A BETTER PLACE behind you.

It's like a grown man twisting a seven year old child's arm behind her back and saying "but I'm not using any significant force so it shouldn't hurt". The power imbalance is intrinsic and significant and inescapable.

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With the revelation that Israel Folau's church thinks the doctrine of the trinity is wrong, and believing in it sends you to hell, John Dickson wishes that Christians had treated Izzy's issue with Rugby Australia as a general case of Free Speech, not a special case of The Eeeeeebil World against Christians Saying Anything.