Today the Human Rights Commission announced it will be conducting the Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century project. I’ve skimmed through the discussion paper (available for download at the HRC website) and the review will explore this topic as it impacts all areas of Australian life – law, the arts, media, gender equality, education and more. However, I found it difficult to work out how the results of the review will be acted upon.
The discussion paper lists a number of prompting questions to get the ball rolling when putting together a submission. For example:
How should government accommodate the needs of faith groups in addressing issues such as religion and education, faith schools, the building of places of worship, religious holy days, religious symbols and religious dress practices?
Are there religious groups, practices and beliefs that you think are of concern to Australians?
Should these be subjected to legislative control, and should they be eligible for government grants and assistance?
I think it’s important that Christians respond to this review. One way or another, this will have implications for how we live as Christians, our capacity to influence our society and share our faith. If Christians don’t respond to the review, others will, and it will be harder for us to complain when we are adversely affected if we didn’t speak out at the appropriate time. This is one of those times – submissions are due 31 January 2009.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. Here’s a question to get the ball rolling. The race discrimination commissioner said this morning on ABC News:
“there is a balance to be struck between the freedom to practice a religion and not pushing those beliefs on the rest of society.”
How do we manage this tension?
This post is tagged
No Comments
Leave a Reply