Rationale: Monthly digest for June

Published: Thu, 06/30/22

Welcome to the monthly digest for June

Hi ,

During June, secularism was very much in focus! Jane Caro sparked a national discussion on the place of religion in public schools. Hugh Harris, in response to attacks on Caro's piece, provided a defence of secularism.

If you’re enjoying reading Rationale, you can support the magazine and gain full access by signing up as a member of the Rationalist Society of Australia.

If you’d like to send a Letter to the Editor or submit an article for publication, please contact me via editor@rationalist.com.au.

Si Gladman
Editor

Highlights from Rationale

A country retreating from faith

By Hugh Harris

About 10 million Australians selected ‘No religion’ at the census last year. Some are lapsed Christians, some are ‘spiritual but not religious’ and some are out-and-out atheists. More investigation into the demographic should yield interesting results, which could inform public policy. Our increasingly diverse demographic calls for a liberal society in which the free exercise of religion and non-belief remains available to all. We should be advancing the case for a moderate secularism.

Read the full article

Give schools a real choice on secular school chaplains

By Luke Beck

If the nation’s education ministers want to make sure school youth workers/chaplains are hired based on merit and not on religion, they could make one simple change: get rid of outsourcing. Requiring schools to hire directly rather than through third-party providers will ensure job ads don’t include selection criteria about a person’s religion. Some public schools might well be happy to allow their third-party provider to refuse to hire Jewish, Muslim and atheist youth workers. However, a public school is rather unlikely to itself ever put out an ad like that.

Read the full article

MBJ's view on current affairs

See all of MBJ's recent work

Why God has no place in public schools

By Jane Caro

I know that chaplains are not supposed to proselytise. But, pardon my scepticism, in that case why must their employment depend on them being religious? And, surely, anyone paid by the public purse to help children grapple with difficult, sometimes existential, questions should be trained and qualified? If they are trained and suitably qualified, I don’t care if people who perform these roles have a personal religious faith or not. But they should be called school counsellors, not the very loaded ‘chaplain’.

Read the full article

What’s so offensive about secularism?

By Hugh Harris

Demonising secularism has become something of a sport for the religious right in the United States. Secularists are routinely painted as ‘aggressive’ or ‘militant’, often with allusions to 20th-century totalitarian regimes. Secularism becomes a Stalinist strawman rising as the enemy of all faith. In culture war rhetoric, truth is often the first casualty. Clearly, Australia is not immune. In his open letter to Jane Caro on the subject of the school chaplaincy program, John Dickson, founding director of the Centre for Public Christianity, provides an example par excellence of the strange sport of secularism bashing.

Read the full article

Political advertising: It’s time to stop the lies

By Luke Beck

At the federal level, it is unlawful to mislead people about how to fill in ballot papers. But it is perfectly legal to tell lies about anything else political. With no requirement for truthfulness in the political advertisements that they put out, political players continue to be held to a lower standard than businesses when it comes to advertising laws. The time has come for change.

Read the full article