Secular rules shouldn’t apply to church schools, Anglican Archbishop Glenn Davies says

Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop backs PM on preventing schools expelling gay students, but defends right to hire staff who uphold teachings.

Archbishop Glenn Davies has warned that recent reporting on the review into religious freedoms had revealed that the “forces against Christianity are strong in our land”.

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney has backed Scott Morrison’s proposal to prevent schools from expelling students for being gay, but defended the right of religious institutions to hire staff that upheld the key teachings of their faith.

In a key speech this afternoon, Glenn Davies denounced the “enemies of religious freedom” for discrediting a key review into whether believers needed stronger protections against discrimination.

Dr Davies rejected any suggestion that Anglican schools had lobbied to turn away gay students as part of the current debate on religious freedoms.

He also argued that some media outlets had deliberately misinterpreted the findings of the long-awaited Ruddock review into religious freedoms in order to further marginalise and entrench discrimination against people of faith.

In his address to the second session of the 51st Synod of the Diocese of Sydney this afternoon, Dr Davies said that faith based institutions were asking for the “right to speak and act according to their fundamental convictions” and to also hire staff that accepted their faith’s key values and teachings.

“Church schools should NOT be forced to play by secular rules. It goes to the very heart of religious freedom that religious organisations should be able to operate according to their religious ethos,” he said. “Anglican schools, if they are going to remain Anglican, must be able to employ staff who support the Christian values of the school”.

However, Dr Davies said that Anglicans would be happy to support changes proposed by the Prime Minister ensuring that students at religious schools could not be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation.

“Let’s be very clear. Anglican schools in Sydney do not expel students for being gay. It is an absurd proposition and it is certainly not something we asked for in our submission to the Ruddock Review,” he said.

“We would gladly support any amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 which would clarify this. This issue was nothing more than a beat up and smoke screen to discredit the Ruddock Report and obscure the real issues”.

He warned that recent reporting on the review into religious freedoms -- conducted by former Liberal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock -- had revealed that the “forces against Christianity are strong in our land”.

In a major attack on some media outlets, Dr Davies said that “anti-religious activism masquerading as journalism” had created a “hand-wringing hysteria about an imaginary epidemic of gay students being expelled from religious schools”.

“There is, in fact, nothing objectionable in the Ruddock recommendations. But in an attempt to scupper the Ruddock ship while still in the docks, its recommendations were mischievously misrepresented,” he said.

“This week has exposed the hypocrisy of those who, during the same-sex marriage campaign, repeatedly told the Australian public that same-sex marriage would have absolutely no consequences for religious freedom.

“Now they have revealed what has always been their agenda — to force religious schools to play by secular rules”.

Dr Davies said that, when the Ruddock report is eventually released, it would be necessary to have an “informed national conversation” about its findings.

“Despite the delay in its release, the report deserves due process and careful analysis before it is kiboshed by the media and ill-informed political commentators,” he said.

Addressing the move by parliament last year to allow same sex couples to marry, Dr Davies warned the issue was “not going to go away” and took aim at the Uniting Church of Australia.

“This year the Uniting Church of Australia changed its laws to allow ministers to solemnise same-sex marriages, and thereby abandoned the historic teaching of the Church and of Christ. The explanation of this decision was interestingly couched in the language of freedom,” he said.

“This misconceives the nature of true freedom. True freedom is not the absence of all constraint – ‘freedom from’ – but rather the freedom to be what we were made to be – ‘freedom to’ ... Freedom is a dangerous word. Freedom has boundaries. God is free, but he is not free to lie”.