When John Howard’s government announced funding for school chaplains in public schools, then Education Minister Julie Bishop (remember her?) claimed it was all about instilling “values” in the kiddies. Apparently, the fruits of the program have exceeded expectations:
GOD has cured at least one state school student of attention deficit disorder and another of asthma, according to interviews with chaplains employed in 2850 schools under a $165 million federal government program.
The Lord has also made it stop raining at a state school assembly in Queensland and performed other miracles to bring state school children to Jesus.
One chaplain was able to “fix the head” of a disruptive student by placing his hands upon the boy’s head, and praying for him.
These and other miraculous claims are included in a book about the national school chaplaincy program, which was introduced by the Howard government in October 2006.
We should appoint some of them to the Federal Parliament.
Turnbull could have used their collective powers to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse on Thursday night. And Wednesday. And Monday.
Now the jobs been left to Shanahan.
Surely any “supreme being” is just an ignorant arsehole if he/she/it isn’t willing or able to fix these “problems” without someone stepping in and requesting it first.
So much for being omniscient…
“We should appoint some of them to the Federal Parliament.”
James “End Times” Bidgood is already there.
Awesome stories. I just love it when the big guy upstairs comes through for the kiddies.
BTW has anyone seen the Howards in church since 24/11/07? Just curious.
I suspect that Rudd will continue with the program. No political mileage to be gained by abandoning it. Only political downside.
Might be different if the money was on the table and schools could decide how to spend it with no strings attached.
Ken, you’re an incorrigible cynic.
If this is true, then we should fund “medical chaplains” for use by self-professed Christians, and only allow evidence-based medical treatment to those who proclaim themselves skeptical of all religions. That’d change the proportion of people who claimed to be religious, if only by Darwinian mechanisms.
I’ve actually argued that religious education (in the form of a study of ALL religions) should be a mandatory part of a secular education. Knowledge about religious doctrines is the best immunizer against their acceptance.
Jesus.Fucking.Christ.
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On the worst Friday afternoon of his life.
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I can’t believe this. And where the goddam editorial point of view? This is News Ltd, they’re not, um, entirely averse to inserting their own two cents worth so where is the thing that says these people are acting like Medieval fucking peasants in a goddammed 21st century democratic state!!!?
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Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!!
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Surely Kevvie’ll put a stop to this. Oh wait. He’s a born again bonehead as well. And so his Slaphead the Useless. Look guys I don;t mind. You all want to be part of the Cult of the Weak – fine. Just move to the moon while you do it okay?
wpd@5. The most likely manoeuvre ,unless the government decides to despatch the whole plan as part of a necessary cost cutting budgetry measure, is to handball the thing back to the schools to choose.
Along the lines of… you can have a chaplain OR a student counsellor. An easy choice for the public schools because the bible bashers will divvy up their services for free …mostly to be avoided by savvy kids, anyway.
And most schools are desparate for someone to chase up kids who are having a hard time at home etc because the teachers already have enough to deal with, without parenting, as well.
Well they could appoint Marist or Christian brothers as “chaplains”. The ugly kids should be safe from the laying on of hands. (saved me)
Huggy
It is clear that Scripture Union has abused this programme to evangelize their faith. This was always going to happen, as the Howard government never put in place any oversight of the programme to stop it happening. Time to rebuild the barrier between Church and State by closing down this programme. The $165 million can be put to much better uses.
The ugly kids should be safe from the laying on of hands. (saved me)
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No you are lying. It’s not the Church’s fault. It’s all Vatican II and Bill Henson. They’re to blame.
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That’s what so great about the Cult of the Weak. It’s always someone else’s fault.
As Christopher Htchens would have repeated in this particular “context”:
I always knew Ratty was the anti-Christ!
These guys are so obviously insane that its criminal to let them anywhere near children, especially disturbed children. It is both abusive and disgusting, and they should be in court on trial for spiritual abuse.
The Chaplain funding was, is and will remain, a perfect an example of the Rodent’s moral mendacity – almost as if designed to demonstrate in dollars & cents his banal opportunism. “Anybody got an itch? Here’s a couple Mill to assuage it.”
To expect that an evaluation would be other than risible is to misunderstand the nature of religion.
It persists after millenia but may, at last, be approaching its natural limit – credulity was unaffected by its obvious impotence in the real world. How the user FELT though – now that’s the true fucntion.
SO what have we learned? Bugger all. Yet more funding for religious schools, to the great disadvanrage of the public student, was passed on the last day of Parliament.
I notice from this document that the Malek Fahd Islamic School was one of the recipients of National School Chaplaincy Programmes Monies.
In light of this revelation:
The questions needs to be asked whether the school chaplains appointed under this program to Muslim schools also succeeded in bringing children to Jesus.
Alternatively, is it recorded whether any chaplains brought children to Mohammed?
If there is no record of any children being brought to Mohammed, is this evidence of another Christian “miracle”? Or alternatively, were Muslim chaplains chosen on the basis of their inability to bring children to Mohammed?
When will politicians realize freedom of religion includes freedom from religion?
In 1976, just before an economics exam for which I had studied a total of zero minutes, I smoked a joint. I ‘miraculously’ passed. All hail the Great God Ganja!
Let me get this absolutely straight: the biggest miracle attributable to God from our school chaplains is that he stopped the rain for 20 minutes.
Clearly, it is a miracle of truly biblical proportions. That God, he’s always got his eye on the big picture.
A chaplain managed to get God to STOP the rain??? How many of the buggers will it itake to get him to START it where it’s sorely needed?
I dunno David, if this guy could have gotten on the hotline to request a 20-minutes suspension of rain yesterday it would have been right up there with the water into wine as a party trick…
You see, it started to rain just as I reached the top of Vesper’s Hill, near Mount Baw Baw. Let me tell you, it’s the only time I’ve ever wished to be going uphill instead of downhill on a bicycle
I can’t stop laughing, thanks guys. Of course the only other option it to cry/scream.
Paul – These guys are so obviously insane that its criminal to let them anywhere near children, especially disturbed children. It is both abusive and disgusting, and they should be in court on trial for spiritual abuse.
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Can you substantiate that? I wish you could, truly. But as recent history’s shown even widespread child abuse is but a glitch on the moral authority of the Cult of the Weak.
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These people are dangerous. And they should be taken seriously. Lunatics or no.
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In the United States any candidate’s personal religion is a matter of regular public scrutiny. You can’t get elected dogcatcher without being a freak for God. Somehow – thru well-worn paths in the politico-media machinery actually – people who profess values belonging to Europe in the ninth century have grasped moral authority; the right to judge. All it takes is for no-one to resist them until it’s too late.
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In America, it’s too late. Here it isn’t. But the water’s creeping up. We need a resurrection of certain values of the Enlightenment – ones based on facts and reliable knowledge obtained thereby. And we need enlightened Christians, Jews, Muslims etc to stand up to the batshit adherents of their faiths. And we need a strong ethos of central values pertinent to a democracy to usurp and religious attempt to become the glue that holds it all together.
Hi everybody, as a bi-partisan gesture, this is Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop using Mercurius’ account as a sockpuppet:
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Since they’re publicly funded, we will ensure that these Chaplains are held to the same accountability and performance measures that apply to regular teachers.
Parents have a right to know how many miracles are being performed at their local schools, and the right to choose a school with the best miracle workers.
As a bipartisan initiative, we will institute national miracle benchmarks, and any school Chaplain that fails to perform the requisite number of miracles will be targeted first for priority funding. Chronic under-performance of miracles will result in the school being excommunicated.
Furthermore, children that don’t undergo the required miracles at grades 3,7,9 and 10 should be held back until they have experienced these miracles.
To encourage the best and brightest miracle workers to remain in the profession, chaplains identified as superior miracle workers will receive bonus pay to allow them additional indulgences.
You know it makes sense.
Does anyone know what the government’s response to this book is? Are they going to stop funding the programme or not?
After four sessions of scripture classes at his public school, my five year old can sing the following song:
My god is so big, so mighty, so evil
There’s nothing my god can ever do
(repeat)
also, he knows something about dead people living in the clouds.
Robert Merkel wrote:
We should probably ask the school chaplains to pray for more effective road bike brakes. As per Mercurius above, we can make it one of the KPI’s (that’s Key Performance Indicator for those not familiar with big corp. garbage).
I’m like Mindy though – my kids go to the public school scripture classes (although for some reason, they wouldn’t allow us to rotate them through the anglo/RC/Evangelical ones). Apparently, you have to actually believe in the narrow sectarian version of whatever. What boils my beans is that the kids who don’t go aren’t allowed to learn anything else while the scripture classes are on. And they rejected by suggestion of running a humanist/agnostic scripture class. Apparently, there’s no way of qualifying whether you are able to teach atheism, but showing up at a church is enough to run a scripture class.
Not that it has anything to do with the chaplain stuff, but it’s very irritating.
Surely after the chaplains great success in schools, we should extend them to the health systems. Think what a great boom they would be to the doctor shortage. They would be great value as they appear not to need any support such as medicine, beds or expensive equipment.
Adrien @ 23,
Substantiation. (Not meant to offend Xtans, many of whom I’m well aware are really good value.)
1. Believing people can rise from the dead.
2. Believing in virgin births.
3. Believing you can turn water into wine.
4. Believing God is responsible for the rain.
5. Believing you can cure by laying on of hands.
Need I go on?
Thanks everybody. Wonderful funny stuff. Although Adrien’s perspective that in America “you can’t get elected dogcatcher without being a freak for God” is a warning of the potentially chilling consequences of allowing such codswallop to go unchallenged.
“The Lord has also made it stop raining at a state school assembly in Queensland”
Clearly that’s where the Victorian Government has been going wrong. We don’t need a de-sal plant, or to cut our water use to 155 litres per person per day. We could pay a whole lot of chaplains to pray for rain at a fraction of the cost of building the de-sal plant, and then we’d all be able to go back to having 15 minute showers with the old, non-water-saving showerheads. Hurrah!
My eight year-old daughter goes to a public primary school in the Adelaide Hills and from the moment they took on a chaplin, it started to turn into a religious school. The chaplin at the time my daughter started there “welcomed” her to the school by offering her a goodie bag with the following contents: 1 sugary drink, one small bag of sweets and a religious book. The parental consent was sought AS she was passing it to my daughter (and after she had given it to other children, sans any permission) and before I had a chance to examine the contents. If it had been discussed beforehand I would have said no, because I don’t give my daughter sweets and sugary drinks and because we are an atheist family – which this chaplin already knew because I told her in the first 30 seconds of our very first conversation. It was quite intentional and disrespectful of our beliefs.
In my daughet’s three years at this school they have constantly celebrated religious holidays (Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Easter, Christmas) putting them all in their religious contexts (courtesy of the chaplin’s visiting church pals) and, despite my repeated requests, have offered no learning whatsoever about other religions – or, indeed, acknowledged that atheism or even agnosticism exists. These STATE SCHOOL students are being taught that God exists – no if, buts or maybes – and that is the thing that really pisses me off.
If I wanted my daughter to be religiously indoctrinated I would have sent her to a religious school. State schools should either teach no religion or ALL religions, as well as explaining that some people don’t believe in any God at all (a bit of FSM wouldn’t go astray her either). Religion and the State just don’t mix – a quick look at all the countries where it does demonstrates very clearly how awful life would be if we let it happen here.
You mean your absence of beliefs, don’t you, Chinda?
Well that’s the problem with teaching kids atheism innit? The poor little dears might be confused that learning about religion involves talking about sky-fairies and life after death and red boogy-men with pitchfork to stick in your botty when you’re naughty, while learning about its absence involves, well, talking about reality more or less.
“Morning kids, and welcome to the part of religious ed where we discuss atheism. Now, did you all go to science class this week? Good. Maths? Excellent. Social studies? Sweet. Class dismissed, now go play in sunshine with puppies.”
Wait, they won’t be confused at all. They’d just be atheist.
Nice chindas63@32.
Though I might just say that a religious club was allowed to be formed in my sons public primary school well before the chaplaincy arrangement came into being. We, also, were pissed off when we found out, as were others. Eventually, we managed to lobby for the permission of parents before young ones could be god bothered. A bit bloody late and around the wrong way in my opinion.
The sickening part, similar to what you mention, was the use of sugary bribes and packaged games to draw kids away from the lunchtime play to jesusclub.
This is a bit off topic but I thought this might be the best place to mention it.
It was announced by the Labor government today that from July next year they will be cutting funding to Howard’s Work For The Dole program (the program he promised he would never bring in but anyway). Job placement groups will be paid almost half what they were getting to put unemployed people into WFTD programs. $2,810 per placement down to $1,222. The Opposition say job placement groups will shun WFTD programs and the Labor government is trying to make said programs obsolete.
I would’ve preferred if the slave labour racket was banned outright but at least it’s less dollars going into the dodgy Job Network system.
I thought public education was supposed to be free, secular and compulsory. Silly me!
FDB wrote:
Nuh uh. You can do a series of nice little lectures (with colouring in pictures, naturally) on The Golden Rule and make the other religious classes redundant. You can’t really just do readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic without a little moralising
Paul – Need I go on?
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Touché.
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Unfortunately that won’t prove insanity. For some reason if I say I turned water into whiskey I’d be crazy but if you’ve a got a lot of nice Gothic buildings, some really funky outfits and your boss is a guy with a lot of weird hats than it’s: ‘we respect that’
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And now, a minute of silence for the memory of L Ron Hubbard. The Great Practical Joker who demonstrated that we’re still a bunch of weak-minded and gullible chimps. (Tom Cruise get out of that closet – now!)
I remember getting confused about having to go to Religious Instruction when I was a kid, as my parents were aetheists. So, I asked my Mum what religion we were and she replied ‘ We’re heathens’. So that cleared that issue up nicely. I quite enjoyed all the stories about sky fairies and gentle Jesus. I thought it was a real bludge. But I was Jealous of the Catholics because they went off by themselves for RI. I thought they must have been learning something absolutely sensational.
True DR, I was being a tad glib (hold the front page!).
Actually, if I had my way religious ed would still be taught, but as a subset of an Ethics class, (right from year 1). It would be a class about religion rather than indoctrination in it, obviously enough.
I thought they must have been learning something absolutely sensational.
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Actually Catholic religious instruction isn’t too bad in my experience. Catholic dogma is normally imparted in more visceral ways. The classes allow latitude. My brother was thought a ‘conscientious agnostic’ probably because he regularly but politely expressed his view that it was all a load of cobblers.
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When they asked you what Church you were in Fine did you say: Heathens?
“Actually Catholic religious instruction isn’t too bad in my experience.”
Not so from my point of view. I was nearly held back in my second last year of school, despite passing all the other subjects, because a priest failed me in religion. Not a bad effort considering I had been top of the class, for the first two terms, in that subject.
The old swine miraculously saw through my thin veneer of ardent religious fervour.
FDB wrote:
Me too. The trouble is, our religious nutball hardcases think that’s rather to close to moral relativism and heresy.
joe2 wrote:
My only formal religious instruction was of the anglican kind when I was choofed off to get confirmed. Getting caught playing doctors and nurses with the fetching daughter of the local deacon during bible reading quiet time is not recommended kiddies. Stimulating and very, very educational, but not recommended.
Maybe, at the next Senate opportunity, Bob Brown could leverage Rudd into funding a koala for every school. This would be a talking koala, of course, who could discuss AGW with the kiddies.
The koala could talk about averting the end times.
The chaplain could swoon about bringing it on.
David – Alright getting caught isn’t good but do you recommend playing doctors and nurses with her?
Adrien, yes, I did actually.
Fine – Wish you had pictures.
No need to be pervy Adrien.
On Catholic religious Instruction.
The nuns had very large pretty pictures of people from olden times dressed like Jesus.
One of the brothers used to cry when he talked about Jesus – and spit.
When you were very young and impressionable and open to monstrous mind-fucks, you had to learn the Green Catechism by heart.( eg. Q. Where is God? God is everywhere.) (No wonder kids get paranoid.)
Apologetics (defending Catholocism from Atheists who are trying to destroy your faith) – If they don’t believe in Holy Mother Church – fuck ‘em.
I am getting carried away.
One final piece of gross ignorance – You went to Hell if you ever went inside a Protestant Church.
(And Night on Bald Mountain from Disney’s Fantasia scared the shit out of me – [worse than The Thing -b/w version]
Adrien wrote:
With her in particular? In retrospect, no. She was odd – definite change of behaviour during Sunday morning. Met her a few times clandestinely outside of that environment and she was normal (aka regulation uptight for a teenager). If my kids turned out that screwed up, I’d send ‘em to counselling. I think they call it Pastors Kids Syndrome now.
One other thing I don’t recommend is asking who Adams kids married. That one will get you red faces and book throwing. Apparently it definitely wasn’t Eve, absolutely no way and what kind of sick mind would harbour such a thought. There was palpable relief when I announced I would take communion once and spend my Sunday mornings mowing the lawn instead. I’ve told my kids to ask me those tricky questions instead of the red faced baboons they use in scripture class.
when I was a kid we had a pair of guinea pigs – the mum gave birth to two male offspring which proceeded to mate with her. Given the lack of other females in the Biblical story (as in my guinea pig cage) I presumed that that was the only option available to Adam and Eve’s sons, not that I ever believed the story was literally true.
Yeti, many years ago we had a goat whose male kids started trying to root her. They had to be turned into chops, of course. Probably should have done that with your guinea pigs – apparently they’re quite tasty.
One other thing I don’t recommend is asking who Adams kids married. That one will get you red faces and book throwing.
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Too late.
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I wasn’t as bad as my brother. I had a friend who got sucked in to evangelical Christianity and spent a tedious week-end trying to convert us. One half-hour with my brother and the guy thought he was the antichrist.
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What gets me about these people is that their ‘faith’ is so fragile that anyone who asks a single difficult question precipitates a psychic meltdown. Of course the real basis for his ‘faith’ was that he was too chickenshit to ask a girl out and his religion helped him dodge his lack of guts. Which, um, kinda sums up the business really.
Gee, I joined the CYO to meet girls.
And went to CYO sex education classes to find out what to do once I met the girls. (By that time the sin bit wasn’t fussing me that much.)
(Q. What is a Sin? A. A Sin is an offence against God.)
(I could go on about the difference between venial and mortal sins and how sex is a mortal sin and if you die with a mortal sin on your soul you go to Hell for all eternity.I could, but I won’t.)
Paul Burns wrote:
Heh.
Adrien wrote:
I haven’t seen that so much. I do wonder though about the efficacy of being completely obnoxious (“YOU”RE GOING TO HELL!!”) in evangelising though. I always save up the “why hasn’t god given me emerods yet?” for that moment. Emerods FTW!
I thought sitting on cold concrete gave you emerods.
Maybe God made the concrete.