christian discrimination
Phil just alerted me to this article from the herald sun reporting that an application by Mornington Baptist Church for an exemption from anti-discrimination provisions so as to allow them to advertise for jobs with community caring, a church charity has failed. The church wanted to advertise for applicants who were baptised, practising Christians “walking in daily fellowship with Jesus”.
The Australian Christian Lobby calls it “another attempt to slowly squeeze the Christian Church out of existence. The text of the decision is not yet available from VCAT - I will post a link to it in due course.
UPDATE - the reasons for the decision are now available on the vcat website here
November 28th, 2005 at 10:36 am
mmmm…I’m no expert, but loads of organisations have exemptions for this kind of thing, so it sounds strange/interesting that this church didn’t get an exemption.
I’ll wait for the decision before deciding whether it’s “another attempt to slowly squeeze the Christian Church out of existence”?? I’d suspect it’s more likely to be “another example of ACL being histrionic”
November 28th, 2005 at 11:13 am
Yeah, must admit that I was a little surprised too but will wait for the decision to comment further.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:31 am
I hope it doesn’t mean that the church has to ‘offer’ the job to ‘all’ applicants.
November 28th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
I’m sure it was a communist regime.
November 28th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
it’s gone up: here
I need time to read it properly, but it looks like a really interesting decision - I find it particularly interesting that the organisation didn’t have “religious purposes”…being on the board of several Christian orgs, I find it bizarre that you would establish an organisation wanting to employ only Christians, and yet have nothing in your mission statement, objects etc that said the purpose of the organisation was to promote the Gospel!
EDIT - edited to replace long URL with hyperlink.
November 28th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
Interesting. Of course the decision dismissed part of the application (insofar as it relates to volunteers) on the basis that they weren’t covered by the Equal Opportunity Act, so they could put whatever restrictions they want on volunteers. The refusal to grant the application related only to employees.
I suspect that the exclusion of a “preach the gospel” purpose may be linked to the indication early in the reasons that they were hoping to get tax exempt status. This is normally available to charity organisations, but not to organisations whose purposes are evangelistic. If this is the case, and they have excluded this purpose with the intention of obtaining a tax benefit, then it seems fair that they shouldn’t be able to discriminate on that basis.
November 28th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
Does the Church really need to put job ads in the secular media?
November 29th, 2005 at 9:05 am
the first obligation of organisation that is ‘christian’ is to spread the gospel.
That should come before any other considerations.
ipsp facto ( hey impressed with that Bec!!) only christians can be employed.
My guess is that the further you advertise the more likey you will get the person you need.
November 29th, 2005 at 9:19 am
Yeah Dan, I have to say that I feel similarly - it doesn’t seem fair that you should have it both ways. If you “compromise” your purposes in order to get a tax exemption, you can’t then expect to get the benefit of another exemption on the basis of those purposes you compromised!
Steve - your response?
November 29th, 2005 at 9:20 am
Homer do you think its possible that somebody who doesn’t currently call themself Christian, could get involved, and through loving and serving people, through helping the poor, come to a greater understanding of what it means to follow Christ-and perhaps even become a Christian?
I know a bit about this organisation, as they’re ten mins from my house, and know the kinda work they do. Whilst its not always evangelistic in terms of verbally saying anything about God-they put His ideas into practice brilliantly, and do some great stuff for their community.
November 29th, 2005 at 9:46 am
Digger I was only going on what was said previously.
Every christian organisation should be evangelising and that by definition can only be done by a christian.
November 29th, 2005 at 10:38 am
Digger I’m definitely with you.
I’m involved in an organisation that does a lot of stuff revolving around building community with people on the margins in the CBC. Some of them are on the street, some aren’t. We’ve never engaged in overt evangelism, b/c we figure that the people we connect with are more exposed to overt evangelism than anyone else!
It’s interesting that out of that approach, we’ve seen a lot of the volunteers become interested in Christianity, and a lot of the ‘patrons’ become interested in it or become more confident in their expression of their faith.
November 29th, 2005 at 10:41 am
That reflects our experience at Northern too. Many people come into contact with us by our compassionate ministries and some volunteer from the community to assist in running our op shop, food bank, english conversation, community lunch etc etc… and some of these are beginning to come to faith.
Very exciting! Must more than creating a holy place that only Christians can engage and work in.
November 29th, 2005 at 11:09 am
oops - that should be CBD, not CBC.
When people find out that I’m a christian, they often respond with “Really?! You don’t seem to be the kind of person who would be a Christian”.
I don’t find that insulting - because whenever I ask people to unpack that statement, they say things like “well, you have really progressive politics”, “you have a diverse range of friends”, “you’re fun to be with”, “you care about the environment and social justice”. So clearly the popular view of Christians is that they’re politically conservative, narrow-minded, boring, and don’t care about anything much!!
November 29th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
This is interesting. I have been investigating the equal opportunities issues relating to employing Christian teachers in a Christian school.
The law is quite specific - as stated in the ruling. The organisation must be formed “for religious purposes”. This affects Christian schools also.
It is without doubt that part of the purpose of the Church is to help ‘disadvantaged’ people in society, as the COACH program does. But this is not percieved as a “religious purpose”. In fact, promotional material, constitutions etc are sometimes carfeully worded to make it obvious that these organisations are NOT a religious organisation in order to access government, and some philanthropic funding (I know - I have applied for such funding)
You can’t have it both ways, word the documentation of the organisation to NOT sound like a religious organisation in order to get funding, and then try to get exemption from other laws because you ARE a religious organisation.
Our school articles clearly state that we are a religious organisation, and this has prevented us from accessing some funding. However, we are therefore able to claim that our successful employees must have a “Demonstrated personal Christian faith and commitment, with a proven reputation for integrity”.
Regards
Janet
November 29th, 2005 at 8:27 pm
Interesting Janet - but what are the marks/characteristics of “a proven reputation for integrity”? They send their tax returns in on time?Never go over 60kms?Member of the teachers union?Oppose the war in Iraq or the death penalty?How does one “prove”it and what are the processes by which the school accepts the “proof”?
November 29th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
Steve, in answer to your question, I am going to go all positivist on you and say “because it’s the law, and because people who legitimately have the power to make the law have put that law in place and if it is not obeyed then there are consequences for that”.
I think that your position is maintainable, but in answering why there is a law against discrimination, the answer has to be because the community elected people who decided to make that a law and have not chosen to object that it is a law, therefore indicating that it is within the boundaries of what is acceptable for society at large.
Why does individual self-interest militate in favour of anti-discrimination legislation? Because the vast majority of Australians are a part of some sort of minority and don’t want to be discriminated against. They will therefore support anti-discrimination legisislation protecting them in particular. They will also support anti-discrimination legislation that protects other minorities, because they acknowledge the risk that to oppose it would jeopardise their own protection.
November 30th, 2005 at 7:29 am
no Alan,
every person employed by a christan organisation MUST believe that Jesus is Lord ie he died for their sins on the cross and he physically rose from the dead.
Any other belief would and ashould eliminate people from working.
November 30th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
But Homer that doesnt answer the question of what/how is “a proven record of integrity” measured,understood,regulated?
December 1st, 2005 at 8:43 am
that doesn’t matter.
to put some business jargon in here.
Stay with the primary aim which is growing the kingdom.
If by chance you gaain a tax advantage so be it. If you don’t tough.