ANZAC Day.... what a shocker it is.

I wonder why people are so eager to pretend they never want to go to war again, and ANZAC Day is the expression of that?

Here in Toowoomba, our state schools, full of totally unqualified chaplains, care of Howard's immoral waste of tax dollars, are beginning to find their feet.

ANZAC Day at my son's school now has a chaplain praying on students at the all school assembly, just as they do on the troops, from all sides, as they get marched off to war.

What a sham!

Why is there is little concern for 'workers' killed at work, by chaplains and by the Australian public generally?

It can only be that deep down there is a reverence for war lurking still in our society.

Surely a dead truckie is as big a waste as a dead soldier?

Or a building worker pushed to increase profits who falls off the scaffold?

And anyway, what was WW1 all about?

Any 'evil' being chased away is not too evident from here, all these years later.

Was it a trade war maybe?

Whatever it was, the fools who made the peace afterwards set the scene for WW2.

So much for 'lest we forget', eh?

Aha, the pursuit of profit at all cost.

Now there is a real evil that no one wants to handle at all, least of all anyone from the all too numerous churches.

And I doubt we'll ever hear a school chaplain speak about the evils of profits, since they all belong to the Hillsong variety who sing the praises of consumption and obscene wealth.

Good on the author.

As for not having another day to celebrate... how about raising the status of the Eureka event?

At least that managed to bring some elements of democracy to Victoria and later the rest of the nation. Far more worth celbrating than the senseless death of men in a trade war diversion that barely mattered too much in the overall war.

**BOAZ**.

Usually BOAZ I find your remarks reasonably balanced. Though I often don't support your views, nevertheless you generally present a 'reasonable' arguement.

However, on this matter, you don't know what your talking about (with respect). There is absolutely no place for either God or ANY sort of religion on the battlefield, believe me !

Unless you've worn a set of greens, and been 'outside the wire', you and others really have absolutely no conception whatsoever what it's like !

Engaging an ambush; searching the dead for useful 'product' et al. Or trying to change a red hot barrel on the section's M60 GPMG after a 'cook off'. Trying to peer into the steamy, stifling and humid night whilst 'standing to' as a picquet at a FSB, where every tiny little sound is amplified (in your mind), and makes you jump !

Believe me brother, there's NO God out there. Unequivocally ! And I certainly don't want some 'god bothering' Chaplain crashing 'round us either. That'll get us all killed.

O sung wu. I was having trouble with the article head line myself. " A faith event" I thought it was a dodge the bullet event and survive.
I was born when 2000 strong Vietcong came full force at a hundred + Australians, and I just watched this tonight and I too would love to know where a priest would be, or what point it would serve.

So I don't think too many people would dis\agree on that one, but in the hospitals to comfort the dieing, I don't see a problem with that.

IMO If there not prepared to fire a weapon, well, I think you have already answered that one.

All the best

EVO

Thanks Alan. I missed the question mark in the title initially so hadn't read it until now.

I wonder about the basic premise of the intertwining of church (a broad term that does not take account a myriad of different Christian groupings) and military.

And I am not sure the silence is deafening argument is convincing, or true. Are there no Christian churches who have raised their voices about the plight of returned soldiers, soldiers who deserve much better treatment than to be thrown on the rubbish dump once they have done the bidding of the politicians? I don't know, but would have thought so.

The intertwining argument may be true of some particular individuals or churches. Indeed it may be true more generally. So when Christian countries fight the churches who support war find themselves invoking God, just as these on the other side do. But I would have thought that like all things in life, just as there are those churches or chaplains who support war in general or in particular there will be some churches or church members who oppose it.

I particularly liked your last two paragraphs. let me quote them:

"A faith event is not about parades and prayers. A faith event is about confession and the creation of four million Iraqi refugees and an untold number of soldiers disturbed and disabled. It’s about the condemnation of evil whether that of the suicide bomb or the cluster bomb; it’s about a rededication to peace, and not to out of control budgets for maiming and killing.

"Anzac Day services might be a lot of things, but they are not faith events."

Maybe you could clarify the second sentence in the penultimate paragraph since I don't quite understand the argument. Otherwise it is a sentiment I can broadly agree with.