Before we allow Euthanasia, look who the Dutch have killed

“Have Victoria’s politicians, half way to legalising euthanasia, looked at what’s happened in Holland?

Here are some very troubling cases – plus interviews with the brother of an alcoholic who had himself killed, and  a woman with tinnitus who also had herself killed just three weeks later. …”

– Last night’s Bolt Report on Sky News Australia looked at the disturbing Dutch experience of ‘euthanasia’. via The Herald Sun.

Provoking Discrimination

“Words come and go depending on the times. Recently I heard a man say that he thought with the fall of the Berlin Wall the word ‘Marxists’ would not be heard again. ‘Anarchist’, ‘anarchy’ are words we are familiar with but I am surprised to see a growing trend of wearing it as a badge of honour. And it is these kinds of words that help me appreciate a word like ‘discriminating’, ‘discriminate’ and ‘discrimination’. …”

– Bishop of Armidale Rick Lewers looks at the use of a loaded word.

The beauty of normal boring liturgy

“A visitor to our church came up to me at the end of the meeting last Sunday and said to me, ‘That was great, where I go to church we don’t normally do that.’

‘Normally do what?’

I asked, casting my mind over what element of the church service was out of left field or could be considered something unconsidered.

‘Read the Bible. Longer bits of it.’

‘You mean the Bible readings?’

‘Yes. Where I go, they don’t do that.’…”

– Stephen McAlpine has a challenge for your church.

Now teaching Christian doctrine at a church school is ‘extremist’. Move over Monty Python.

“Are you sitting comfortably in your ‘safe space’? Do you have your ‘trigger’ alarm ready? Then we shall begin. There is a shocking story coming out of darkest Kent. The Christian equivalent of an Islamist madrasa is being set up in a normal decent English school, teaching children hateful and extremist ideology.

These extremists have been spouting hate, abuse and according to one small group of parents, causing their children to be ‘exposed to potentially damaging ideology’.

One concerned parent shared their trauma with the press:

‘No one minds Nativity plays and Bible stories but considering most of the parents at the school aren’t practising Christians I think the feeling is that it’s all too much.’ …”

– David Robertson, minister of St Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, writes at The Wee Flea on the latest ‘anti-extremist’ development in the UK.

See also these comments from ‘Archbishop Cranmer’.

Lyle Shelton National Press Club Address

The Australian Christian Lobby has published an abridged version of Lyle Shelton’s address to the National Press Club in September 2017.

You can also watch the full address at the link. (Image: ABC TV.)

Anglican Communion News Service smears GAFCON and manipulates Archbishop of Canterbury

“You’d think, wouldn’t you, that you could trust the news reports which emanate from the official Office of the Worldwide Anglican Communion.

You’d hope, wouldn’t you, that the Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS) might issue factual statements of reliable and verifiable truth, as all good reporting should be, instead of tinted opinion with a tainted political agenda, as all journalism so often is. …”

– “Archbishop Cranmer” takes a close look at a story promulgated by the Anglican Communion News Service.

Related: ‘Archbishop Welby “taken aback” by Las Vegas prayer criticism’ – ACNS.

Review of NT discrimination law — guest blog

Associate Professor Neil Foster writes,

“The Northern Territory government has released a discussion paper called Modernisation of the Anti-Discrimination Act (Sept 2017). It invites comments by 3 December 2017. You can almost get the tone of the paper from the title! After all, who in this fast-changing age could oppose anything called “modernisation”? But there are a number of concerning recommendations and comments made from the law and religion perspective, and there are some real doubts whether the proposals properly reflect religious freedom principles.

My colleague Dr Alex Deagon from QUT has graciously provided a guest blog post in which he outlines his comments on two major concerns with the proposals to amend the Act. Those who are interested in the interaction of discrimination law and religious freedom should find them very helpful, and may wish to make their own comments in response to the discussion paper. There are other controversial proposals in the paper which may be the subject of future posts. …”

– Read it all at Law and Religion Australia.

“The Conversation” and impacts of same sex marriage

“Two pieces in the Australian online forum ‘The Conversation’ today make misleading statements about the possible impacts of the recognition of same-sex marriage in Australia, and warrant some response.

One article suggests that there is no doubt that churches will still be able to decline to solemnise same-sex marriages. The other is a ‘fact check’ on assertions about the mandatory nature of ‘safe schools‘ programs following such a change. In my view both pieces are likely to mislead. …”

– At Law and Religion Australia, Associate Professor Neil Foster responds to two articles published in The Conversation today. (The first article was also republished by the ABC.)

Faithfulness to Christ against the odds: the Anglican Communion and the global sexual revolution

“Global Anglican leaders will gather to meet in Canterbury in early October for a summit meeting. Most of them come from contexts where the Anglican church is continuing to teach and promote the biblical Gospel of repentance and faith in Christ for salvation, and the historic Christian understanding of sexuality and marriage. A few Provinces, with most of the wealth and power, are dominated by a leadership wanting to promote a different form of Christianity that is more acceptable to the secular West.

The last Primates meeting, in Canterbury January 2016, only made these divisions clearer. The majority of Primates resolved then to work together to continue the important work of the Anglican Communion, but required TEC to withdraw from full involvement, as they had violated the ‘bonds of affection’ by continuing to pursue their revisionist agenda, of which acceptance of same sex marriage was the latest example. But the TEC leadership, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion Office, interpreted things very differently. …

Primates from the Global South and their advisors due to attend the meeting in Canterbury should not be in any doubt that the ground has shifted since the fruitless efforts of years gone by to discipline TEC for their revisionist actions which have torn the fabric of the Communion. …”

— The Rev. Andrew Symes at Anglican Mainstream makes clear what next week’s Primates gathering in Canterbury is about.

Please do pray for the Primates, especially that they will be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ.

(Photo: The 2016 Primates meeting.)

‘No need to speculate’

Freedom for Faith, have published this video featuring Professor Iain Benson, an expert in religious freedom.

He speaks about the Canadian experience.

Other videos are being posted on the Freedom for Faith website.

Hypocrisy

“Hypocrisy just makes us mad doesn’t it?

Politicians speaking of tightened belts, while endorsing payments for themselves. There is the hypocrisy of some media figures speaking of truth and objectivity, while at the same time advancing a personal or political agenda with inaccurate or selective reporting.

There is the hypocrisy of some doctors supposedly committed to the Hippocratic Oath, while at the same time advocating killing. It makes us mad when we see examples of Police who are supposed to be guardians, caught in corruption or carelessness… and then there are examples of hypocritical clergy, preaching and standing for morality while living out the worst kinds of immorality.

Hypocrisy rightly makes us angry. We hate hypocrites. Hypocrisy makes us cynical. Hypocrisy makes us distrustful. I hate the hypocrisy that I see in those others around me, and the damage that it does… but there is a kind that I hate even more. …”

– Dean of Armidale, Chris Brennan, offers hope for hypocrites.
(Earlier, we incorrectly attributed this to the Bishop. Our apologies.)

Just who is raising objections?

“Five bishops in the Anglican Church of Australia have asked their church lawyers whether bishops can take part in consecrating another bishop of a church which is not formally part of the Anglican Communion.

Meanwhile bishops from Uganda and Sudan have been taking steps to support a movement in South Africa to maintain biblically faithful Anglican witness. The Southern Africa Mission held an ordination service of the Church of Uganda in Trinity Anglican Church Franchhoek near Cape Town on 10 September. …”

– Anglican Mainstream reprints an article written by Chris Sugden for Evangelicals Now.

Legalising assisted dying would be a failure of collective human memory and imagination

“Dying and death is not a new phenomenon: we have always become ill, suffered, were going to die and someone else could have killed us.

So why now, at the beginning of the 21st century, after prohibiting euthanasia for thousands of years and when we can do so much more to relieve suffering than in the past, do we suddenly think that legalising it is a good idea? I propose a major cause is a catastrophic failure of collective human memory and collective human imagination.

Let‘s look at the approaches taken on each side of the debate. …“

– An important article by Margaret Somerville, Professor of Bioethics in the School of Medicine at the University of Notre Dame Australia, in The Guardian.

Photo courtesy University of Notre Dame Australia. (h/t SydneyAnglicans.)

Why we should vote ‘No’ in the survey on same sex ‘marriage’

“Australia is in the midst of a critical decision about one of the major building blocks of community life: marriage and the family.

A great deal of money (including public money) and effort is being expended on the case for a change to allow people of the same sex to marry. To many it seems that the case for change is unassailable, in some measure because its advocates have been able to link their proposal to treasured notions of ‘love’ and ‘equality’. …”

– Moore College Principal Dr Mark Thompson shares his reasons at Theological Theology.

National Press Club speech by Karina Okotel

The Sydney Morning Herald has published the speech given at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday by federal Liberal Party Vice President Karina Okotel.

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