Jon J,
What is your life experience with children? What positive model are you?

The fact that he was once a child himself and has grown to be man with some life experience surely must have some influence on his psyche.

David

Philo,

I have two children who are happy, healthy, reasonably successful and fairly bright. Both have chosen to be atheists, as far as I can tell through their own volition. And you?

I agree with Lawton's central point here. The one paragraph that jumps off the page in terms of it's foundational centrality to combating 21st century anti religious nonsense that so commonly abounds in our major media outlets, is this one. It is worth repeating:

"The phrase that’s really had the fourth estate agog in the past decade is ‘separation of church and state’. It’s become as irresistible to crusading social commentators as a solitary bush dunny to a swarm of blowflies. It’s so exquisitely utilitarian to the pursuit of blessedly God-free public discourse. Pertinent facts include that no such phrase appears in the Australian Constitution, which in fact protects religious expression. The Constitution enshrines a “principle of state neutrality” as distinct from “separation of church and state”. And that it’s U.S. origins have to do with keeping the government and any religious group organically distinct from each other, particularly in contrast with the British model of an ‘established’ church. None of this is any challenge at all, however, to members of today’s commentariat for whom the only history that isn’t all ‘crap’ anyway is the convenient kind".

Well said.

Thanks for ALL the comments. I'd have been on here responding sooner, but for some server issues preventing me from registering.

What I detect in several comments is some of the very conspiracy theorising I'm wanting to caution against. It's not helpful to make assumptions from outside a community about what goes on within it, much less about what the people within it are thinking. You may be very mistaken, and so a bit of humility helps us all. All of us have a set of values and goals that matter to us, but we don't deal with every social context the same way and we don't expect the same outcome. Life is far too complex for that. We adapt what we do and say according to what's appropriate or helpful, and we do it almost constantly, daily in the great variety of relationships we have.

So, whilst encouraging people towards personal faith commitment is a very high value for Christians, we don't spend the bulk of our time doing it, and in some social contexts we simply don't do it at all. In the case of anything done in state schools in the name of the church(es) the assumption is that we are guests on someone else's turf, on a narrowly defined basis. Essentially we are there to serve schools, students and indirectly families, by presenting and living Christian values. Parents are free to accept or decline.

Not imputing sinister motives to people we don't know is a sound social principle in all sorts of contexts.

LanceL, Monday, 30 May 2011 9:16:35 PM

Your whole preceding post is just special pleading for special conditions and special treatment.

'You may be very mistaken' is a common charge, even between or amongst christians, and in this case it may apply to your own approach to this.

Many people want to interact straight-forwardly - without the lens, hoops, or other metaphors for religious hurdles - so do not want the fog of religious terminology or dialogue that you plead special consideration for.