• Elizabeth Dangerfield wrote about Australia’s reliance on volunteers and charities for delivering essential services for the most vulnerable in society.
• Hugh Harris made the case for General Religious Education over scripture classes in public schools.
• Jaime Simpson and Kathleen McPhillips examined Victoria’s parliamentary inquiry into abuse and coercive control within cults and fringe groups

Volunteers and charities often pick up the shortfall between what is actually needed and what governments provide to aid people in dire need. They provide both solutions for acute problems and chronic debilitating situations. Many organisations delivering services are religious charities. While they may do the best possible job they can in difficult situations, they deliver services from particular perspectives which are not neutral – laudable, though, their efforts may be.

If you ever sought an illustration of how a narrow phalanx of special interests can elbow aside popular opinion, then look no further than the continued presence of scripture classes in Australian public schools. Yes, in taxpayer-funded institutions founded as free, secular and compulsory we still witness the weekly incursion of untrained, ecclesiastical volunteers delivering lessons indistinguishable from Sunday School.

The Victorian parliament has launched a long-overdue inquiry into abuse and coercive control within cults and religious fringe groups. It is a welcome acknowledgement of the damage that can flourish under the guise of faith, and the unquestioning obedience to authoritarian leaders in religious groups. The inquiry will hear victim-survivors can suffer a diverse range of harms, including sexual, financial and labour exploitation, spiritual manipulation, and institutional betrayal.

Commitment to rituals is also seriously declining. They have gone the way of: the formal dress and formal etiquette that once dominated our social behaviour; the mandatory wearing of hats and gloves; six o’clock closing; the unregulated marketing of quack medicinal compounds; and the compulsory broadcasting of God Save the Queen at the end of film screenings at cinemas. Non-believers do not demand that religious believers cease their religious practices in religious institutions. But they should be able to expect that religious rituals are not part of secular gatherings where they do not belong and really never have belonged.