Philo

No need to apologise for the ladies. You miss the point. The ladies were lovely ladies doing their christian duty. The problem is that this assumption is arrogant and disrespects me as a competent person. They assumed that because I was athiest, I needed comfort and they could provide it.

For me there is no problem when Christians keep their faith a private affair and don't feel the need to help me, we could live together, christian and athiest, we could support each other as they do at the christian organisation where my son works. There, a person's religion is a personal choice, and the work practices are based on scientific knowledge and understanding of the human mind.

Of course scientific knowledge is not complete; we have much to learn about how human nature develops. However, surely it is clear, after 2000 years, that what Jesus and his church have to offer is not the answer. But I expect that Jesus is and will continue to be part of the answer for some people.

Perhaps it is brain chemistry that means you can, and I can't, accept the logical inconsistencies in your theory of God.

So where to now?

In my view the "myth" which Tim restated has been fairly well dispelled for everyone except those determined to have chaplains in the schools regardless of how many lies have to be told to keep them there.

As far as I can tell none of the pro-chaplain group have attempted to explain the obvious contradictions between the previously stated goal and passion of SU and the current spin put out by those trying to retain a presence in state schools at the taxpayers expense. Rather the focus has been on announcing the benefits of such a presence (an passion for truth apparently not being one of them) or attacking all those horrid secularists(commo, etc).

Any of the christain supporters of Chaplaincy prepared to respect your god of truth enough to admit that SU and others have for a long time promoted their work chaplaincy work as an outreach program to unchurched children with the goal of winning them for Christ or is that truth a little too inconvenient?

R0bert

Sums it up nicely R0bert.

The communist slur in particular is a good one, given that a State peddling dogma could be accused of communism.

While defending the right of people to practice their religion in accordance with the law and in their own space is fair and reasonable, it is also fair and reasonable to defend the right to freedom from religion.

Defending open hypocrisy only fools the duplicitous.

Robert,
SU have several roles their primary role is religious education. Chaplains is just one, different to RE teachers. However the Chaplains in our Church have no association with SU.

Philo I don't know your church nor have any history of the claims made about the role of chaplaincy by those doing it within your church.

The article being discussed here is by the Tim Mander CEO SU Qld
"Welcome to SU QLD... We're the largest employer of school chaplains in Australia." http://www.suqld.org.au/home/

I and others have presented a good case that SU Qld does seek to use Chaplaincy as a route to feed kids into programs with an aim of "bringing them to Christ". That's based on material previously on SU Qld's website and in some cases previous history with Chaplaincy programs.

SU Qld's web site has had a recent clean up which has removed some of the more compelling evidence however there are enough records around to limit the effectiveness of that.

I was a long time ago a financial sponsor of school chaplians and it was made really clear at that time that one of the main aim's of the chaplaincy work was as a feed to evangalistic youth programs and local churches with a goal of converting them. SU's website until recently had very similar claims on it.

I've no doubt that some chaplains act in good faith, that some possibly do good work with some kid's. That does not in any way diminish the concerns about having largely untrained chaplians with a particular religious bent having access to children in public schools nor about having taxpayer money used to fund those chaplians.

For the record can you see the discrepancy between what Tim Mander claims here and what you know of SU's overall mission (taking into account Jesus words about letting your yes be yes and no be no)?

R0bert

The Tasmanian branch of the ALP recently passed a motion at its state conference to replace school chaplains with secular counsellors.

Wonderful news!