Presenting an Alternative View or Trolling?

Over the past month I have enjoyed participating in some internet forums about the National School Chaplaincy Program.

I had several motivators in doing this.

Firstly, I wanted to see what the detractors were saying - to keep up with the issues they thought would bolster their case.

Secondly, I wanted to put some of the evidence in support of the program before people, to offer an alternative view and at times to correct misrepresentations.

I also wanted to hone my skills in clarifying what the issues were and then responding in a coherent way.

I have been involved in several public forums as well as participating in a discussion page on Facebook.

My involvement on Atheists Federation of Australia forum on School Chaplaincy felt a bit like jumping into a fish tank filled with piranhas. People did not want to listen to an alternative view point and took great delight in referring to the things of faith in the crudest of terms. Some contributors were clearly intent on total disrespect for anyone with religious world views. And after a while, I found that what they wanted to say was filled with generalisations as well as utterly repetitive. They tickled each others ears with the same things over and over again.

I then got involved with with a GetUp discussion page on the NSCP. I found some of the same contributors making the same kinds of comments, the same kind of sweeping generalisations, the same kind of reluctance to engage with evidence that contradicted their point of view and the same repetitive droning on. But at least they were polite about it.

I have more recently been following a page in Facebook called "The High Court Challenge to the Constitutional Legality of the NSCP". Every day they would post links to various newspaper stories that were generally antagonistic to school chaplaincy and there would follow a litany of oooo's and aaaahhh's as people would join the chorus of outrage at the state of affairs.

Now I have to admit that the evangelical stance of some other school chaplaincy providers in Australia is a great liability in this climate and one or two stories recently have been a bit like giving away an "own goal". But I have consistently tried to offer evidence that chaplaincy can be done well, and that the program is wanted by schools.

On Friday, however, the administrator of the page decided that my close connection with YouthCARE meant that I was no longer entitled to contribute to the debate. My connection to the page was closed down, I became invisible (all my previous contributions disappeared) and even though I can follow the page I can no longer directly contribute to it.

I guess that says it all, really, in regard to the willingness of opponents to listen to alternative points of view.

Have you had any similar experiences?

Government Funding for Religious Organisations

On 19 April, Scott Stephens published a blog on the ABC Ethics & Religion Web-site in which he advocates that Churches should say no to government funding. It is a well-reasoned argument in many ways, but I think it makes a significant omission, resulting in what could be a travesty of justice.

Religious organisations, particularly but not only Christian religious organisations, have a very long history of engagement in the Community Sector, delivering a wide range of social, welfare and community development services that benefit the whole community, not just the members of the particular religious community.

At all three levels of government in Australia there is a general principle that denies funding to religious and political organisations for activities that are either intended exclusively for their members and/or are intended to promulgate their particular religious or political views. It is an interesting paradox, in my view that a sporting club is not ineligible for government funding in the grounds that the services are only available to the members of the sporting club.

I think I generally support that principle.

However, there is a debate in the public and political sphere right now about whether or not Government Funding should be given at all to religious bodies. The focus is particularly on the National School Chaplaincy Program but the outcome of this debate has much wider ramifications than just the NSCP.

Secularists on the one hand want the public domain to be religion-free and any use of public funds to achieve outcomes of religious organisations is illegitimate, and the Religious "exceptionalists" (as Scott Stephens describes them) believe they are entitled.

I believe that both extremes in this debate are wrong: the "secularists" because they assume that once religion is removed from public-political life, and consigned to interiority (where they assume it belongs, if anywhere), the secular space that is left will be neutral, benign and inherently just; and the Christian "exceptionalists" because they think that God's providential care of the world can be mediated through political coercion, and because they do not believe that being on the payroll of the State is hazardous to the soul of Christianity itself.

I agree that both are wrong. The removal of the religious from public political life not only fails to create a neutral and benign space, it creates a space that does not reflect the nature of society. And the government funding can indeed be much more than providential because of the political obligations that are so often attached to such funding.

But to conclude, as Scott does, that religious bodies should deny themselves access to government funding, while perhaps noble and perhaps also a strategy that keeps the church in total control of its destiny, cuts across another important principle of contemporary democratic societies - the principle of equity and access.

I am unable to identify a source that would be specific about this, but a very significant part of the Community Sector is in the hands of religious organisations - Anglicare, the Salvation Army, even generic organisations like Mission Australia and World Vision which began out of a religious vision. These organisations make both a significant and valued contribution to the whole community. If Governments decided that they should no longer fund them because of their religious basis or heritage, it would amount to a scandalous example of discrimination on the basis of religion.

The dichotomy is wrong - the secular and religious. Indeed, if it were a valid dichotomy, the removal one from the public space would give the other an inappropriate advantage. the two live together, and indeed must live together giving each other the respect they deserve as each making valued and significant contributions to the welfare of the whole community.

What do you think?