Presbyterian Church Council Considers Banning Gay Student Leaders in Church-Owned Schools
In response to “anti-discrimination” laws that have been pushed on a federal level, the Presbyterian Church of Australia has asked the government to review its stance towards the church’s views on school governance. The church is specifically querying whether a policy that disallows students actively partaking in homosexual acts or any other form of sex outside of Biblical marriage from serving in leadership roles within the schools would be admissible under the country’s new strict anti-discrimination laws. In response to mainstream media and leftist criticisms, The Australia Presbyterian church made a statement defending its position on barring those who participate in sexual deviancy from becoming student leaders.
“They would not be able to give appropriate Christian leadership in a Christian school which requires modeling Christian living.”
In an interview with Australia’s 9 News, Prime Minister Richard Marles accused those who oppose anti-discrimination laws, including the Presbyterian Church of Australia, of discriminating against children. Marles is “uncomfortable” with any kind of discrimination against children by a religious institution. The Prime Minister went on to claim that the quality of leadership, even leadership within a Christian institution, could not be affected by the rise of leaders who live a lifestyle contrary to the Christian faith.
“Obviously, leadership and the qualities of leadership are not a function of people’s sexual orientation, and we need to make sure that we have the widest pool of people for leadership positions across our society, and that should apply here as well.”
Church leaders in the United States should take notice. Despite promises to create carve-outs and exemptions for churches and religious institutions, the leftist Australian politicians who created the anti-discrimination laws are insatiable in their desire to inject leftist deconstructionist politics into every orifice of public and private life. Even children in a private school that is paid for by Bible-believing Christians are not exempt from the policies of the leftist wokescolds who believe that every church and Christian institution is an abomination unless it looks like a Unitarian Universalist service led by a choir of drag queens and a Lesbian Pastrix whose sermons resemble John Lennon’s Imagine.
Unsurprisingly, leftist evangelical champions of secularism in Australia have failed to stand against the onslaught of laws that infringe on the practice and beliefs of the church. In a 2022 interview with Christianity Today, Australian Theologian Michael Bird, author of Religious Freedom in a Secular Age: A Christian Case for Liberty, Equality, and Secular Government, argued that sexual minorities should be accommodated by the church to maintain a pluralistic society.
“I’d like to envision a settlement where LGBT people are not subject to harm or discrimination, but there are reasonable accommodations made for religious communities to live out their own understandings of family, marriage, and sexuality. There are examples in places like Utah where religious and LGBT groups have tried to create an atmosphere of mutual respect. Neither side gets everything it wants, but they get what they need to live in peace together. That’s what it will take, in the long run, to sustain our pluralistic societies…..Beyond reaching an accommodation on LGBT rights and religious freedom, we need to develop a generous secularism, which means a context where government and religious communities can work together in areas like education, police chaplaincy, hospitals, and the armed forces—areas of mutual interest where cooperation makes sense.”
Bird is staunchly against the use of political power by conservative religious groups, something Bird labels as “Christian Nationalism.”
Leftists like Bird, however, do not have a problem with any other form of Nationalism. If the secularists, sexual deviants, or leftists want to use their political power to rule over those in the church, as they have done in Australia, Michael Bird supports the cause of pluralism, even to the detriment of the church. When asked by Christianity Today why his book is dedicated to a gay Australian politician, Bird revealed that rather than take a principled Biblical position on sexuality, he believes that Pagans and Christians need to just come around the table, have a series of conversations, and then somehow appease LGBT people with a grand compromise.
You dedicate the book to Tim Wilson, an Australian politician. Why is that?
Tim Wilson is a member of Parliament and a former human rights commissioner. Several years ago, he convened a roundtable discussion about religious freedom and LGBT rights. The idea was to arrive at a settlement where LGBT people wouldn’t be subject to harm, harassment, or unfair discrimination, but where we also allow the Muslims to be Muslims, let the Jews be Jews, and let the Christians be Christians. Tim is a gay man who is married to another man. But he has been a voice of reason, sanity, and fairness in these discussions. He’s shown us how to have healthy, nonadversarial conversations in a context often filled with accusations and hateful hypotheticals.
Michael Bird is obsessed with ecumenical roundtable discussions and interfaith dialogue and understanding, but none of his theories on Christian religious compromise is rooted in scripture.
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They’ve already compromised themselves by failing to follow 1 Cor. 5. Unrepentant practitioners of porneia (1 Cor. 5:1) should not be allowed through the doors of the church, much less in any positions of leadership.
To follow Christ is often to force the hand of the worldly rulers. It is the only option. As Jesus was crucified, and like the Apostles who followed, doing so may lead to prison or even death. But ultimately God wins. If that day comes, and you find yourself in a courtroom, you can’t use scripture as your defense if you’ve already failed to follow it. Do what the scripture says to do. Discriminate against sin, as God says to do. And then if they want to come after you, force them to have to specifically, intentionally, and directly rule against God’s Word, in order to rule against you. Force them to have to rule against the very Book they have you swear in on when you take the witness stand, showing themselves to be the reprobate, deluded fools they are.
As for me, I’m going to discriminate against sin, as the Bible instructs, and I’m not going to ask for permission from Caesar for something which he does not have the authority to either give or deny. I’m not going to dignify his attempts to usurp God’s authority.
And that doesn’t imply that if we ever committed a sin at all, thereby failing to to follow scripture, we should then just throw up our hands, ignore scripture, and start supporting all manner of sin. It means if the church is (present tense) making no effort to follow a scripture such as 1 Cor. 5, then it will have a hard time making a case in secular court. I.e., to even ask about, and draw a distinction between, leadership positions and attendance/membership, is to simultaneously conflict with the present argument. The Bible doesn’t specifically say they shouldn’t be leaders, because that is a given. The Bible says they shouldn’t even be allowed in the church at all.
Good for them. Any church that honestly believes that ‘alphabet people’ lifestyles can comfortably coexist with the church of Jesus Christ is more fond of the world than God Almighty. There is no ‘balance.’
Just to clarify, calling Richard Marles the Prime Minister is like calling Kamala Harris the POTUS; Marles is the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence.