Giggle v Tickle — further response on “special measures”

Associate Professor Neil Foster writes about back-and-forth arguments on Giggle v Tickle –

“The debate around whether a women-only app can exclude those born male is continuing. The decision of the Full Federal Court in Giggle v Tickle holds that it was unlawful for Sall Grover to exclude Roxanne Tickle from the ‘Giggle for Girls’ app.

I posted a critique of the decision on this blog. Professor Paula Gerber later argued, in a post on the ABC Religion and Ethics website, that the decision is correct. I then published a comment on the ABC site re-iterating my reasons for thinking that the decision is wrong, and critiquing Professor Gerber’s initial comment.

Professor Gerber then posted again on the ABC website (‘PG Response 1’), suggesting I was wrong to refer to possible religious freedom issues. I responded…”

– Read it all at Law and Religion Australia.

Reactions to the Church of England General Synod’s vote on Palestine

Here are two reactions to the vote in the Church of England’s General Synod –

Why the Church of England has got Israel wrong – James Patrick at Premier Christianity.

“Dear Archbishop Sarah,

In light of the controversial motion passed at General Synod yesterday, your five-day pilgrimage in the Holy Land just three weeks ago could appear to be a well-timed advertisement in its support. Even so, your concluding pastoral letter wisely steered clear of the worst excesses of the Kairos Palestine II document commended in the motion. KPII accuses Israel 30 times of ‘genocide’, and claims that the State of Israel is ‘racist’ and colonialist from its origins (1.3; 2.1; 3.3; 4.2), a listed example of antisemitism in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition adopted by the Church of England in 2018. It is no wonder that British Jewish and Christian leaders alike have expressed their deep concerns about this motion, which promotes incendiary accusations rejected by our own government. …”

A Shameful Day for the Church of England – Julian Mann at The Daily Sceptic.

“The atmosphere at the Church of England’s General Synod after it passed its shameful anti-Israel motionwas frighteningly complacent. From where I was sitting in the press gallery on July 13th the members in the chamber seemed to be very pleased with themselves.

But unless these largely middle-class Anglicans had returned home to an enclosed-order monastery after their meeting in the York University central hall, how could they fail to register the impact of the nuclear bomb they had just let off?  …”

Image: Church of England General Synod, 13 July 2026.

See also Ian Paul’s speech during the debate –

Tasmania: Ten Problems with the Greens’ Anti-Conversion Bill

At AP, the national online Presbyterian journal, Mark Powell shares his concerns about legislation which is being proposed for Tasmania –

“Can I ask that you would stop what you’re doing and please pray for Tasmania? As with what we have seen occur in many other states in Australia, the Greens are seeking to introduce an ‘anti-conversion’ bill and it should be of serious concern to everyone and especially to people of Christian faith. …”

– Read it all here.

Two Paths Forward: What ACC-19 reveals about the nature of the Anglican Communion

At The American Anglican Council, Canon Mark Eldredge considers the just-completed meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (of the old Anglican Communion) –

“The recent meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC-19) once again brought into focus a question Anglicans have wrestled with for years: What truly holds the Anglican Communion together?

News coverage of the meeting understandably focused on discussions surrounding the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals and the differing perspectives expressed by delegates from across the Communion, but beneath the procedural debates lies a much deeper issue. The real question isn’t simply whether the Communion should adjust its governing structures but whether genuine communion can exist apart from a shared commitment to the apostolic faith. …

We are told that there’s been ‘little evidence of widespread support for GAFCON’s plan to leave the Anglican Communion,’ even while the article [by the Episcopal News Service] acknowledges that Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, and other provinces have continued to absent themselves from Canterbury-led gatherings. Both realities are stated in the same sentence! I can’t help but wonder if the Episcopal News Service reporter was being willfully ignorant or not. The ‘little evidence’ of GAFCON support includes the absentee provinces that make up most of the world’s Anglicans! Whether one agrees with every aspect of GAFCON’s vision or not, the continued absence of these GAFCON provinces signals that the present tensions aren’t ‘little’ or temporary. They reflect convictions that developed over many years concerning doctrine, authority, and the future of Anglican witness, and they can’t be ignored. …”

– Read it all.

See also:

Should the ACC Endorse the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals? – Bishop Glenn Davies writes at The Living Church (this was published before ACC-19) –

“In December 2024, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order (IASCUFO) released The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: Renewing the Instruments of the Anglican Communion, with a Supplementary Report released in March 2026. It was two years in the writing, having been commissioned by the 18th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), in response to the 2022 Lambeth Conference Call on Anglican Identity. The reports will be considered by the Anglican Consultative Council at its meeting in Belfast in June 2026. …”

As part of his conclusion, Bishop Davies argues,

“Unfortunately, neither proposal meets the challenge of the hour. The changes to the 1930 Resolution, as outlined above, actually weaken the definition of the nature of the Communion as a fellowship of Churches bound by Holy Scripture, as successive Lambeth Conferences have affirmed.”

– Read it all.

Graphic – The ACC-19 logo, via the Anglican Communion website.

Anglican Consultative Council refuses to give up Ecclesiastical power

“Why are we not surprised?

The 19th Anglican Consultative Council, meeting in Belfast, Northern Ireland, voted 72–8 on July 4 to leave the Archbishop of Canterbury’s role as the spiritual and ecclesiastical figurehead of the Anglican Communion untouched. Delegates declined to adopt the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals — the most serious attempt in a generation to reckon with post-colonial reality — and called instead for three more years of ‘discernment and conversation.’

Three more years! When the ecclesiastical establishment wants to kill something, it does not shoot it; it studies it to death. The Windsor Report, the Anglican Covenant, the ‘listening process,’ Indaba — the graveyard of Anglican reform is littered with commissions, consultations and continuing conversations, and now the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals join them in the long grass. The ACC will not even take the matter up again until its next meeting in 2029, hosted by the Church of North India. By then the question may well have answered itself. …

There were voices in Belfast who saw it clearly. The Rev. Berthier Lainirina of the Province of the Indian Ocean warned the council that without structural change, his province and other orthodox churches might conclude they no longer have any place in the Communion at all, lamenting that delegates preferred to pretend all was well when it manifestly is not. …”

– David Virtue comments on the not-surprising lack of action by the 19th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, part of the old Anglican Communion.

Photo: ACC Members, Commission and Network Representatives, Staff and ecumenical guests at ACC-19.

Credit, Neil Turner, Anglican Communion News Service.

Why the Giggle v Tickle judgement is bad for women’s rights and a risk to religious freedom

“In her recent article, Paula Gerber argued the decision of the Federal Court of Australia in Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd v Tickle was ‘good for trans rights and women’s rights’. With respect, I disagree and would like to explain why.

I believe the decision is bad for women’s rights — especially the rights of women to enjoy single-sex spaces and activities — and may also be bad for the rights of those from religious groups to control their spaces and activities in accordance with their faith commitments. I suspect the decision may also be bad for ‘trans rights’ in the long term. …”

– The ABC’s Religion & Ethics has published this opinion piece by Associate Professor Neil Foster.

Canada steps up its war on the Bible

“The Canadian parliament has passed Bill C-9, known as the Combating Hate Act; it received Royal Assent on June 18 and the provisions come into force on July 18. Mark Carney, the liberal Prime Minister, considers that the legislation is ‘a huge step forward in our mission to build a stronger, safer country’.

Bill C-9 will usher in a ‘dark day’ for Canadians of faith. Conservative MP Brad Redekopp described the Bill as ‘a tool to enforce liberal DEI ideology while leaving fundamental freedoms dangerously exposed’. Such is the danger to the church that the legislation been dubbed the ‘Bible Ban’ Bill. …”

– Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack, retired Presbyterian minister in Scotland, wrote this opinion piece for TCW.

“Theology has consequences” — The Episcopal Church heads for Extinction

“It was over 30 years ago that the Wall Street Journal ran an analysis of the Episcopal Church that had the unforgettable headline, ‘The Episcopalian Goes the Way of the Dodo.’ …

This was a prediction made over three decades ago that the Episcopal Church in the United States would go extinct, and that was simply from a dispassionate look at the statistics…”

– in his The Briefing for 24 June 2026, Albert Mohler comments 0n the planned sale of The Episcopal Church’s headquarters at 815 Second Avenue, New York.

Related:

Presiding bishop authorizes marketing of Episcopal Church Center building in New York City – The Episcopal Church website.

“Celebrate Pride Month with pride resources” – TEC website.

The Church of England’s Problem with Antisemitism

“This week, the Archbishop of Canterbury is visiting Israel/Palestine and meeting with Palestinian Christians there, who have made a plea for churches in the West to support them and campaign for peace in the region.

For reasons I will explain below, I think this visit, like the earlier one by Rachel Treweek, Graham Usher, and Guli Francis-Dehqani (bishops of Gloucester, Norwich, and Chelmsford) are disastrous for the Church of England, for Jews in Britain, and for our relationship with the Jewish community. …”

– At Psephizo, Ian Paul shares his possibly controversial, but very interesting, commentary on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s current overseas trip.

Image: Ian Paul speaking at the Church of England’s General Synod in February 2024.

What is the Church of England for?

Carl Trueman offers a devastating commentary on too much of the Church of England –

“H. Richard Niebuhr famously denounced the liberal church of his day, summarizing its theology in a single withering sentence: ‘A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.’ What he did not note—but perhaps implied—is that such theology typically manifests in worship that is infantile, offering a pastiche of the wider culture’s predilections that would qualify as kitsch, if its purveyors had the wit to see it as such. The progressive church is always a poor imitation of what the world considered cool the day before yesterday.

Walking through the streets of London in early June, I encountered a first-class example of such third-class theological life…”

– Read it all at First Things.

(Thanks to Julian Mann for the link.)

Nothing in my hands…

From the Dean of Sydney, Sandy Grant,

“Dear Friends, sadly, diphtheria has been in the news again, due to the outbreak of this serious bacterial infection interstate. …

Diphtheria was a common cause of death in Australian children until the 1940s. Today, cases are rare due to high vaccination rates. …

The impact of diphtheria was brought closer to my consciousness when I served in the Parish of Kurrajong. The minister’s residence had a cemetery right next door.

The saddest graves were a family plot near the entrance. In it were buried George and Henrietta Jaffray, and four of their children. …”

– From the St. Andrew’s Cathedral Sydney newsletter for 4th June 2026.

In addition, he shares, “P.S. On a different note, here is one of the most helpful articles I’ve read all year… by a tradesman, not an academic.”

– Both at the link.

Photo: Cemetery of the former Presbyterian Church in Cranbrook, Tasmania.

How the World has Changed since Same-Sex Marriage

Mark Powell writes at AP, the national Australian Presbyterian journal –

“The challenge for Christians today is the same as it was for God’s people when they were in exile in Babylon. Whenever an orchestra of musical instruments were played, the people were told to bow down to the golden image, or else.

This is exactly where we all are again today. Except this time the image has every colour of the rainbow. Whatever is threatened if we don’t, it remains binding that we cannot bow down to their image but must continue to worship God alone. …”

– Read it here.

Macca’s long and winding road

“In a nation in the midst of a social disaster, an 83-old-year British pop star of whose moral influence any sensible person should strongly disapprove has created a masterpiece.

It was a strange experience for a conservative Christian like me to listen to Paul McCartney’s latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. He was one of the evangelists for the permissive society in the 1960s…”

– At TCW, Julian Mann shares some interesting refections on Paul McCartney’s journey. Maybe not to Christ (though you might pray about that), but disillusionment with where he’s been.

Who is really pro-woman?

Dean of Sydney Sandy Grant shares his latest Minister’s Newsletter –

“Dear Friends, here’s a claim to make you sit up and pay attention:

– Post-feminist Australia is anti-woman in a number of problematic ways.

– But Bible-shaped Christianity is pro-woman in regard to dignity and protection.

Let me unpack this… within the confines of an article that I’m trying not to turn into an essay!

Post-feminist Australia is anti-woman in a number of ways. For example, sex-selective abortion is legal in Australia. That means if you discover you’re having a baby girl, but you really wanted a boy, there is nothing stopping you seeking a ‘termination’ of a living, human, pre-born baby for no other reason than sex.

This is not hypothetical. …”

– Read (and, if you wish, take action using the links) at the Cathedral website.

The Most Neglected Element of Church?

From Tim Challies –

“There are some elements of public worship that receive a great deal of attention. These elements are taught, practiced, rehearsed, and perfected until they are as good as they can be. In most churches, this includes the music, of course, and often the preaching. … But either way, some elements receive the lion’s share of attention.

What elements often do not receive nearly as much attention? What elements are often not taught, practiced, rehearsed, and perfected until they are as good as they can be? …”

– Read it all here.

Related:

Wonderful help for reading the Bible in public.

Next Page →