Faith-based schools and religious lobbyists have been warning about the dire consequences if their schools were to lose access to federal exemptions to anti-discrimination laws. Yet, as the head of the Australian Law Reform Commission pointed out this week, religious schools have already been operating in some jurisdictions without access to such exemptions. And they've provided no evidence for how their schools have been negatively impacted! Seems like some exaggeration going on.

The topic of Christian nationalism didn't pop up at the US Presidential Debate today. But there have been more ominous signs this week, with Oklahoma becoming the latest state to impose the Ten Commandments on public schools.

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28 June: Religious schools failed to provide evidence of how their operations in jurisdictions without exemptions to anti-discrimination laws have been negatively affected, the head of the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has said. In an interview on ABC this week, the ALRC’s president, Justice Mordecai Bromberg, said he was surprised by claims that religious schools would cease to exist if the Albanese government adopted the commission’s recommendations. Read the full article

27 June: All Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments in their curriculums, effective immediately, the state’s chief education officer announced in a memorandum Thursday. At a State Board of Education meeting, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters said the Bible is “one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of our country.” Read the full article

27 June: More than 10,000 people have signed a petition calling for the Victorian Parliament to retain the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the commencement of proceedings in the state’s Legislative Council. Last month, in response to a push by some parliamentarians to end the recitation of prayer in the Victorian Parliament, Melbourne Archbishop Peter A Comensoli joined other faith representatives in calling for the practice to continue. Read the full article

26 June: The Australia public and military personnel are losing confidence in the Defence Force’s religious chaplaincy capability following a number of controversies, the Rationalist Society of Australia has told the government. In the latest public controversy involving Defence chaplains, widows grieving the loss of their partners in an Army helicopter crash have made allegations of inappropriate behaviour by a chaplain. Read the full article

26 June: A "Jewish manifesto" has said political parties should "defend the right of Jews" to practise infant circumcision despite serious human rights concerns. The manifesto, from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, says the religious practice of cutting the foreskin off the penises of newborn male babies "must be safeguarded". Read the full article

25 June: Several Louisiana families backed by human rights groups have lodged a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the state’s new law forcing public schools to display the Ten Commandments. The suit was filed with the US district court in Baton Rouge on Monday at the start of what is expected to be an epic legal battle that could end up before the US supreme court. Read the full article

24 June: The Catholic Church has used its membership on the new New South Wales Faith Affairs Council to demand answers from the state government as to why it has allowed equality legislation to progress in parliament. Documents obtained by the Rationalist Society of Australia under freedom of information laws show that Monica Doumit, of the Archdiocese of Sydney, asked the Faith Affairs Council to question the government in regards to its handling of Independent MP Alex Greenwich’s proposed legislation. Read the full article

24 June: A decade-long fight for the Catholic Church to continue offering burial services across Sydney ended with the passing of crucial legislation by New South Wales parliament on 21 June. It provides certainty and clarifies the purpose of the Catholic Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust as providing burials for all and addresses the growing burial space pressures of Sydney’s faith groups. Read the full article

19 June: Donald Trump warned that Christianity in America would be left “in tatters” if Joe Biden were re-elected for a second term as he called on Saturday for evangelicals to vote for him in record numbers. Speaking at a conference of influential evangelical leaders in Washington, Trump accused the “radical left” of “silencing” Christians, endorsed the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools and at one point said he had “wounds” all over his body from political persecution. Read the full article

Elizabeth Dangerfield: According to all the advice on how to win friends and influence people, I should start this essay by explaining how the following words will change your life forever. But, in reality, there is only a simple message at the heart of this essay. It is that the really important question we need to answer is ‘How do things work and happen?’, and not ‘Why is it so?’ Read the full article

Cameron Shackell: Forty years after his death in Paris on June 25, 1984, many of Michel Foucault’s once radical ideas now seem self-evident. Even critics like Noam Chomsky, who derided Foucault’s moral theories as “incoherent”, find themselves in a world wallpapered with Foucauldian terms like “discourse”, “power-knowledge”, “biopower”, and “governmentality”. Read the full article

Jill Filipovic: Conservative Christians would use their unlikely champion’s return to office to impose their own regressive values on America. Like most theocratic movements, the resurgent religious right is more interested in power than moral righteousness. Their new god, Donald Trump, has the audacity to depict himself as a Christian martyr. Read the full article

Monica Doumit: The NSW Greens hit peak levels of hypocrisy and humour this week as they made a last-ditch effort to stop a resolution of the cemeteries matter that has been dragging on for years. There were three main lines to their attack. The first was the scare campaign that the Catholic Church is “set to earn billions of dollars” from the passage of the Catholic Cemeteries and Crematoria Trust Bill 2024. Read the full article

Lucy Hamilton: The Triple Conference took place in Albury in March. Conspiracists and hustlers appeared alongside the well-meaning and self-important to inform a small audience of largely white-haired elders about the North Korean conditions overtaking Australia. We are dark in politics and spirit. Read the full article

Ralph Leonard: Leading human rights barrister Susie Alegre, whilst not a total catastrophist, is certainly no AI utopian. She argues that the rapid development of AI technology is a threat to human rights... Though Alegre does concede that AI can be used for good, such as it being used to unlock hidden words in a burnt scroll from ancient Rome or helping to restore missing pieces of a Rembrandt masterpiece, she still views its potential as something that ought to be contained rather than unleashed, lest it colonise the authentic human experience. Read the full article

Alex O'Connor: A strange reverse phenomenon is emerging: a class of thinkers who, unable to rationally assent to the actual truth of Christianity, and yet disillusioned with the politics of “new atheism”, and fearful of the various religious and pseudo-religious ideas that have filled the vacuum it created, find themselves in the tough spot of being hungry for the fruit but unable to believe in the existence of the tree. Read the full article

Rev. Dr. Michael Jensen: Worst of all, I hear Christians advocate for a kind of Christian takeover of government — as if this is what is needed to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ. I say that this is confusing earthly politics (call it Politics 1.0) with our allegiance to Christ (call it Politics 2.0) Read the full article