Where Next For Religious Freedom For Schools When Progressive Oil and Orthodox Water Won’t Mix?

Progressive Oil and Religious Water Don’t Mix

Progressive Oil and Religious Water

The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, is discovering that secular progressive oil, and religious orthodox water do not mix. And in and admission that he has can”t mine these two substances, he has quietly shelved the hotly contested religious freedom legislation reforms in Australia.

And to be honest, I sympathise with him. He’s cast a glance around the rest of the world and seen some fairly divisive issues. In fact he’s not even had to do that. He’s still got a cold compress on his eye after the socially and culturally divided The Voice referendum last year.

The Prime Minister made this statement just last week, as the idea of clarity around the religious freedom reforms were shelved. He made this telling observation:

One of the things I’ve spoken about is the need for greater social cohesion. And the last thing that Australia needs is any divisive debate relating to religion and people’s faith.

The Prime Minister is finding it impossible to square this particular circle

I believe that our Prime Minister is a good and honourable man, and as someone who has quietly wend his way back to his local parish in recent years, the last thing he wants is a fight over religion.

A Hot Debate

But the problem of course is that we already have that divisive debate. In fact the reason that it is shelved is precisely because at Parliamentary level it was already too hot to handle. Oil and water. Squaring circles. All that stuff.

Neither the Government nor the Opposition could agree on what to take in or take out. And with the Greens slavering on the sidelines with anxiety-ridden – and untrue – claims of scores of gay and trans students being expelled, and of teachers being sacked all over the country on the basis of their true identities, this was always going to be a losing battle.

So no one is happy. And there’s reason for that. And it’s simply this: the two sides of the issue come from completely different visions of human flourishing, and of freedom of speech/association and public religious practice. In some senses it’s a case of two different systems of worship (in the immortal words of David Foster Wallace).

For all the cries about freedom, the Greens cannot countenance a truly pluralistic society in which differing – and often opposing – viewpoints are encouraged in the public square, and indeed funded.

And it’s not just the Greens. There are those within the ALP and (increasingly) the Liberal Party, who have no interest  – other than a hostile interest – in alternate ethical communities being given the right to practice what they preach. Unless of course it’s their alternate ethical communities.

This has placed faith-based schools in a bind. The legislation – one way or the other – would bring certainty as to what schools and other public institutions such as faith-based hospital care, were facing.

Intolerant Progressivism

We’ve already seen a hostile and progressive government in The Australian Capital Territory, take over a Catholic hospital, with no recompense and no argument? And the reason given? We can’t have ideology running health!  At least we can’t have religious ideology! Our own unseen ideology? Our secular blindness? That gets a hall pass.

It was interesting hearing a sermon yesterday in which St Basil the Great was invoked, the very man who – as a Christian – began a nascent public health system.  If you want to see where many of our great public services came from in the West, look upstream. You’ll see Jesus.

It’s also frustrating watching the mainstream media every time the religious freedom bill for schools comes up for debate. It’s as if the likes of the ABC, the Sydney Morning Herald, and SBS, have a conga-line of articles from students who feel “they were not allowed to be themselves” at school, at least in terms of their sexuality.

Every time this issue comes to the fore, it’s as if a “black ops” team has a series of hit pieces about the abuses of Christian schools ready to roll off the press.

Exhibit g(A)y

And it’s a load of nonsense. Perhaps we need a “white-ops” to counter this obfuscating and, quite frankly, baldly biased reporting. Though there are plenty of good press releases from Christian schools networks who show how things actually work. They don’t, funnily enough, get too much coverage in the mainstream media these days

So we get this from the Greens justice spokesman David Shoebridge, who – just by putting those two terms together – must be a barrel of laughs:

It would be an incredible betrayal of a key election promise if what Anthony Albanese is now saying is because Peter Dutton won’t sit down and agree religious discrimination laws that he will kill that entire reform. That is a betrayal of those students who deserve to be protected when they go to school.

Shoebridge is having a lend of us. More to the point: he is lying. Students are being protected when they go to school. That goes without saying. What Shoebridge doesn’t want – and he clearly hasn’t got the chutzpah to say it in the public domain -, is for Christian and other faith-based schools to continue to publicly adhere to their theological convictions and staff themselves accordingly.

A little word in your ear Senator: Being told something different to what you believe and practice is not denying a student protection. I know you live in a Canberra bubble, but some people manage to hear conflicting ideas to their own and survive.

The Gospel of the Psychological Self

The key issue here is that, if you’re constantly told that your psychological inner self is your true self, then mere information you inhale that may challenge that, or suggest an alternative, is seen as violence and damage.  You can read how this trajectory found its way to us via Carl Trueman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.  It’s a non-screechy, academic take on why we are were we are. I wonder if the Prime Minister might read it and get an “aha” moment.

Besides, I sat on the board of a network of seven faith-based schools for almost as many years, and I can tell you, while we had to discuss the issues around gay-identifying and trans-identifying students, it was never an issue that they would be asked to leave.

What was important was – in this order, that they were well educated in a good environment in which they could be disagreed with, yet treated with dignity and honour and respect. Like every other student.

But the Greens actually want uniformity and conformity in every aspect of life. They are, sadly, more and more authoritarian the more power they manage to get.

Fact: Most Christian schools have a majority non-Christian students and parents. Fact secular parents can’t sign up quick enough. Fact, many secular parents are confused and worried about the psychological and sexual morass being foist upon their children from an early age. Many don’t have the framework for explaining why it confuses and worries them. Just that they are.

Many are clearly leaving the public system because the public system is not functioning as well as it could. Another reason is choice. You see it’s not all about funding. For many parents it’s about choice. Which progressives seem to love, until they have it in their power to shut choice down.

Christian Schools are Popular – With Non-Christians!

But another reason people are sending their children to such schools is the pastoral care. For every student. I guarantee that the safest school for a near-diverse or a sexually-diverse student is not the public system.  I’ve heard that time and time again. And much of that comes from a commitment by the school to hold in tension two important issues: the gospel conviction of the school around matters of human flourishing, and the agency of the student who while disagreeing, submits to the school’s ethical framework.

What the likes of the Greens and other progressives want, is that such gospel clarity held in tension with societal charity, be eliminated. And the reason this is so is that they do not view the orthodox view of sexuality – either held privately or announced publicly – as anything but a great evil and injustice.  The orthodox Christian viewpoint is not just wrong – it is dangerous. It cannot be allowed to damage people. It must be eliminated from the public square and certainly should not receive government funding.

The nub of the issue is that the Prime Minister has discovered he can’t square off this particular circle.  He is trying – or was trying – to bring together two systems of understanding humanity and human flourishing that cannot be.

Of course there are faith-based schools that have jumped the shark on this issue, either because they no longer believe the orthodox view on sex and gender (which is really where this issue is being fought despite protests to the contrary), or they believe a certain amount of accommodationism will make it all go away.

And, sadly, they are not going to be the Christian voices that will stand up for their Christian colleagues in other schools that hold to the orthodox position. I have yet to see that happen.

It turns out we increasingly  cannot live with our deep differences. Actually, let me rephrase that.  I think Christians can. I think Christianity gave the framework for a pluralistic system to the world. They can cope with different systems running side by side.

And it will be side by side. You know, oil and water and all that. But it is only a Christian system that historically has been able to grapple with pluralism in a way that gives as much liberty to as many as it can. A system in which we can disagree deeply yet still make room for each other in government and public life. I do not believe that the progressive system, grounded as it is in a Marcusean way of looking at the world, can offer the same.

As the Sydney Morning Herald states (or laments):

But it means Labor leaves in place a controversial exemption in the Sex Discrimination Act that permits religious schools to discriminate against students and staff based on their gender, sexuality, marital or pregnancy status.

Of course you could call it religious “freedom”, but why do that when the word “discriminate” will do?

This is not for solving easily. Maybe not for solving at all. At least not in this election cycle.

My fear is that after the next election there will be a further push to break down the faith-based system. Or the election after that. Or the one after that. This thing is not for turning. Oil and water just do not mix. Even if most Australians wish they could.