Boazy, you know full well that churches treat chaplaincy and RE programs as outreach opportunities.

You countinue to astound me with your willingness to distort and misrepresent to try and gain advantage for your own faith.

Not as bad as some of your fellow fundies but if your god is a god of truth then you have no part in him.

R0bert

The School Chaplaincy program was a naked ideological policy intitiative of the erstwhile Howard government, and should be given the boot ASAP - to be replaced by properly funded, resourced and qualified secular counsellors. The Scripture Union quotation says it all, really: for those of us who don't want our kids exposed to homegrown religious missionaries, the chaplaincy program is simply unacceptable because it is already being abused by Christian proselytisers.

Of course Boazy approves of it - he's one of them, after all.

It is a great shame that their are not many more 'missionaries' in our indigenous communities. Under them there was far less abuse, less alcohol and many were productively employed. Now under secular rule we have epidemics of drunkenness, child abuse and a complete welfare dependency. Well done secular worshippers. Clear fruit of failed secular humanism. The same is happening in our schools. No wonder private and home schooling is flouring.

Runner wrote:

"It is a great shame that their [sic] are not many more 'missionaries' in our indigenous communities. Under them there was far less abuse, less alcohol and many were productively employed. Now under secular rule we have epidemics of drunkenness, child abuse and a complete welfare dependency. Well done secular worshippers. Clear fruit of failed secular humanism. The same is happening in our schools. No wonder private and home schooling is flouring [sic]."

The missionaries trained females to be domestics and males to be stockmen. The opportunities of Aborigines were limited. In addition an alien faith was forced upon them. The current situation of the Aboriginal communities is in large part due to the destruction of their culture and the prejudice against them by the surrounding culture. Much of the destruction of their culture was the product of the missions.

I have noted the misspellings in the above.

David f, I fully agree with you.
The chaplaincy program is a breach of the separation of church-and-state principle. I hope the program will cause a lot of disputes.
It’s rather selfish of Christian supporters of this program to expect everyone else to fund their religious activities in public schools. Christian families can already use the services at their church if they want spiritual guidance or indoctrination of their children.

Chaplains don’t even necessarily have expertise in counseling; schools are better off employing proper counselors without vested interest or by funding other child protection programs.

Anyone who approves of the chaplaincy program in Christian communities should also be tolerant enough to support imams at schools in Muslim communities.

Yes, I really can't see any justification in not allowing secular counsellors to be funded under the same program.

To those who say the schools are free to take it or leave it, I'd make the point that they're only being offered chaplains - not other alternatives. If there's only one free 'specialist' you can get, and the only option is Christian, that's hardly fair to non Christians, who may want counsellors or heck, even an imam or a zen buddhist.

Tell me boaz, would you support government funded imams visiting schools as well, if they're 'optional' and were, in fact, the only option aside from nothing?