Scary article (and this one)
about the Young Liberal Movement of Australia in the paper yesterday. I had already seen it but Ross pointed it out to me as well. It lists recent motions by the Young Liberals

calling on the Liberal Party to remove the long held policy of mandatory gender equality in […]

Interesting article in the Guardian by Richard Dawkins about “intelligent design”:
“It sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? Such a modest proposal. Why not teach “both sides” and let the children decide for themselves? As President Bush said, “You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.” At […]

Jim Wallis of Sojourners hits it on the head:
Pat Robertson is an embarrassment to the church and a danger to American politics.
Robertson is known for his completely irresponsible statements - that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were due to American feminists and liberals, that true Christians could vote only for George W. Bush, that the […]

On one of our older threads discussing the Hillsong question, there was a comment last night from Geoff Bullock which I thought was worth its own space:
Yes, it’s the “real Geoff Bullock” whatever that means. After all, the real me has nothing to do with Hillsongs, Houston or the things I have written, composed or […]

Okay, this is a post marker for all those that watched ABC’s Australian Story on Brian and Bobbie Houston, the senior pastors of Hillsong. If you saw the show and want to comment, please do so in this thread.
A couple of our thoughts:

One of the Houston boys is pretty cute
Lots of really nice houses
Bit […]

A small paragraph in an article on the government playing down the commitment to Family Impact Statements is very revealing. Steven Fielding, the new Victorian Family First senator says:
“I would think that most of the decisions, if not all, in Canberra either affect families or the spending of . . . families’ money.”
The sale […]

This remarkable article in the Australian details the Kevin Rudd led Labor task force to respond to the evangelical political muscle and details a post-election meeting of Labor MPs:
It took place in the office of foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd, who hosted the first meeting of Labor’s faith, politics and values working group.
Its brief […]

Barney Zwartz in a typically vanilla analysis of the debate, describes some of the more recent participants in god politics as representing the silent majority:
Jim Wallace, the former head of the SAS who founded the Australian Christian Lobby, agreed yesterday that Christians had become a key constituency. “I set out four years ago to make […]

More Hillsong news in the media this morning. The Age chooses the low road in this piece, using Peter Costello’s brother Tim Costello as the “independent critic” of Hillsong. Predictably, Tim takes a soft line on this point:
Critical of Hillsong in the past for its emphasis on linking a belief in Jesus to […]

So the Hillsong steam train has pulled into the station, and with the increased profile of religion in politics over the past year or so, the conference has generated a fair amount of mainstream press exploring the political overtones of the conference.
According to this article, Bob Carr as Labor state premier of NSW, five federal […]