Dr Paul Allen

By   TYLER O'NEIL   Published on  January 4, 2024 Imagine the government told you what you  can and cannot pray for , inside your own head. Such an idea seems better suited to “thoughtcrime” dystopias — such as George Orwell’s  1984  or Aldous Huxley’s  Brave New World , where the government attempts to control your every thought — rather than to the modern, free English-speaking world. Yet a government in the Australian state of Victoria has trodden on the sacred space of one’s own inner prayers, all in the name of protecting people  who identify as LGBTQ . The Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021, which went into effect in August 2022, forbids certain practices aimed at changing or suppressing an individual’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The law also bans “carrying out a religious practice, including but not limited to, a prayer-based practice, a deliverance practice or an exorcism.” The Victorian Equal Opp...

Something momentous happened this week. The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) announced they no longer recognize the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury as “first among equals.” What’s more, they say that in adopting “innovation in the liturgies of the Church and her pastoral practice” in order to bless same-sex sexual relationships, the Church of England has “departed from the historic faith passed down from the Apostles” and has thus “disqualified herself” from leading the Anglican Communion. In choosing to move closer to the wishes of politicians and revisionist church leaders in the United Kingdom, the Church of England has signalled that her desire to stay as a “wife” to the state is greater than her desire to remain a “mother” to the worldwide Anglican Communion.  Perhaps the fear of disestablishment and divorce from the state is greater than the fear of losing “the kids.” But here’s what’s strange.  If you read the headlines or peruse the news ar...

  The Church of England’s bishops descend into utter nonsense After years of study, bishops of the Church of England have announced that they will not allow same-sex marriages within their churches, nor allow their clergy to perform them, but they will allow their priests to “bless” same-sex unions after a civil marriage. In other words, they lack the courage to go ahead with same-sex marriage as a rite of the church, but their backup plan, for now, is to allow clergy to bless the unions they cannot approve. The Church of England was famously born in compromise, but at least it once produced bishops like J. C. Ryle, definite statements of doctrine like the Thirty-Nine Articles, and theological achievements like the Book of Common Prayer. I am an unrepentant Anglophile, though certainly not an Anglican. Nevertheless, a portrait of 16th-century Archbishop Thomas Cranmer hangs in my library. I can only imagine what bishops like Ryle and Cranmer would say to their contemporaries today....

To start, might it be useful to contrast Israel Folau’s conduct — in publishing his own summary of 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10 – against the myriad high crimes and felonies which don’t secure you a lifetime ban from professional sport in Australia, Great Britain and elsewhere? So, what did Folau NOT do? Well, he didn’t lay the boot into his heavily pregnant wife’s stomach, while she lay on the floor, cowering in the foetal position. Nor did he pick up his ex-girlfriend and hurl her into a garage door at 2am following an epic bender. Folau didn’t kick the livin’ bejesus out of an unconscious man lying in the gutter, outside a nightclub. Folau hasn’t intentionally smashed an opponent’s jaw to smithereens, in a pre-meditated on-field incident. He didn’t gouge at an opponent player’s eyes, with all the fervour of a nine-year-old excising the last skerrick of ice cream from a four-litre tub. Not once has Folau reckoned upon sticking his index finger up opponents’ bums as being a red-hot,...