Now is the Content of my Winter

The High Court has knocked down the Federal Government's funding for the School Chaplaincy program. Simply said, the Constitution does not permit the Federal Government to directly fund school programs. It must, and perhaps will, do it through the State Governments, if they agree. The unGodly commentators are rapturous, but so far not translated into glory. Crikey betrays its own particular bigotry by urging us to "Get God out of State Schools". How disappointing that a journal of commentary has to stoop to prejudice to make a point. Leave aside whether, if there be a God, we could keep him out by the authority of a human court, no matter how High. Once schools and Universities were places where a broad education was possible. Curricula are slimmer now than ever. Once you could do three foreign languages, including a few dead ones. Once you could be exposed to a view of the development of humanity that helped you to understand the role, for better or worse, played b...

About twenty years ago, René Girard said, "...in stable systems the persecutors don't realise that they're persecutors; they don't recognise themselves in the portrait that their victims paint of them when they start to complain." "I'm black and proud of it."  Nicky Winmar, 1993 Around the same time, sitting across the table in my office at World Vision was Kevin Sheedy, Coach of the Essendon Football Club. Even then Sheeds was a legend. We were talking about Nicky Winmar's famous response to being told by Collingwood supporters to "go and sniff petrol" and "go walkabout where you came from." To his credit, Sheeds had been appalled by the fans. I had been appalled by their defenders. "They just don't get it," I said. "The say 'I didn't mean it' and 'I wasn't saying it in a racist way.' Are they that blind?" Yes, blind. As Girard was pointing out in his interview on th...

[This post written before the reversal. Didn't change what I say here, but begged other questions about managing the message.] In the Olden Days, when I was working in World Vision Australia, the World Vision entity in the United States, a.k.a. World Vision (since it was the first one), was generally thought to be the most conservative in faith terms. So imagine my surprise when Christianitytoday.com ran this headline today: World Vision: Why We’re Hiring Gay Christians in Same-Sex Marriage. One former colleague shared the story with the status “Wow”. He beat me to it. Then I read the article and, with the perspective of on Old-Timer Insider, I thought I could see what they were trying to do. President Rich Stearns of the US World Vision is trying not to make a judgement. World Vision reckons this is a question for the church and denominations, not some para-church organisation like World Vision. They would rather follow than lead. But, as another FB commentator ...