Australia: We don’t urge law-breaking, but we cherish religious freedom
by Phil Colgan, Sydney Morning Herald:
Every Sunday morning before I go to church (at present to preach to a camera in an empty building) I have a ritual of reading the newspaper over breakfast to see if there is anything of note. Imagine my surprise last Sunday when I opened it to see my name printed with the implication that I was encouraging civil disobedience against COVID-19 compliance.
In the hours that followed I received unsolicited messages from people I have never met telling me that I should be jailed for my “anti-vaxxer” stance. I did have a wry chuckle at the irony that all of this was happening while I was still feeling unwell from my second vaccine jab on the Friday just gone! Not to mention that our church has gone above and beyond the government requirements throughout the whole pandemic, and that during that week alone I had had more than one conversation encouraging people to listen to the medical advice about vaccinations and not get caught up in conspiracy theories.
What was my sin? I was invited to appear on a podcast for Christian ministers to consider a Christian response to the (at that stage) theoretical possibility of vaccine passports being introduced for church attendance. We were concerned about this idea because it seemed to go against the essence of what we want church to be – welcoming to all. But in that discussion we counselled patience and I talked about the need to wait for what the government proposed before getting up in arms about the idea.
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