Category Archives: Religion

Jewish groups blindsided by Labor’s reversal of recognition of West Jerusalem as Israeli capital

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Prominent Jewish community leaders in Australia say Albanese government’s withdrawal of recognition ‘a gratuitous insult’ – but criticism is not universal

Several Jewish community leaders say they were blindsided by the Albanese government’s decision to reverse recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, describing the handling of the issue as “shoddy” and “a gratuitous insult”.

A Labor parliamentarian has also privately said the government “mishandled” the sensitive issue and should not be “making foreign policy on the fly” after Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Australian ambassador to demand an explanation.

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Queensland considers stronger regulations after students quizzed over teacher’s living arrangements

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MP Grace Grace says schools should be ‘supportive environments’, after Livingstone Christian College principal’s investigation

Queensland’s education minister, Grace Grace, says she is considering beefing up the powers of the independent schools’ regulator, to ensure students outside the state system are “protected and supported”.

On Monday, Guardian Australia revealed the principal of a Gold Coast school, Livingstone Christian College, interviewed several students amid an investigation into whether a teacher had told them she lived with her boyfriend.

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Queensland Christian school principal asked students if they knew unmarried teacher lived with boyfriend

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Exclusive: Principal of Livingstone Christian college said investigation was sparked by a parent’s concern over ‘biblical moral standards’

The principal of a Queensland religious school interrogated students about whether they knew a teacher was living with her boyfriend, amid concerns the teacher’s “lifestyle” went against its “biblical moral standards”.

Guardian Australia has seen emails and other information confirming that the principal of Livingstone Christian college, Stephen Wilson, launched an investigation into an allegation the teacher had breached her contract by telling a class that she was unmarried and lived with her partner.

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New Orleans lawyer fined for alerting school to priest’s past sexual misconduct

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Richard Trahant was fined $400,000 for violating confidentiality rules around a bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese

A New Orleans attorney who represents victims of clerical sexual abuse faces a $400,000 fine after alerting a local Catholic high school that a priest who worked there once admitted to fondling and kissing a teen girl he met at another church institution.

The lawyer, Richard Trahant, said he would appeal against the hefty sanction handed to him on Tuesday, which stemmed from a federal judge’s ruling that his alert violated confidentiality rules governing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the local archdiocese.

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Government ‘burying head in sand’ over health inequality, says bishop of London

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Exclusive: UK’s most senior female bishop calls for long-awaited white paper promising ‘bold action’

The most senior female bishop in the country has launched a scathing attack on the government, accusing it of “burying its head in the sand” over “shocking” and “rampant” health inequalities.

Dame Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London, spoke out after the Guardian reported that Thérèse Coffey was dropping the government’s long-promised white paper on health disparities.

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Welby voices concern over potential move of British embassy to Jerusalem

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Archbishop of Canterbury joins others worried about impact Tel Aviv switch could have on Palestinian peace talks

The archbishop of Canterbury has expressed concern about the potential for the British embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The UK prime minister, Liz Truss, told her Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid at the United Nations summit in New York last month that she was considering the relocation.

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Are hijab protests ‘the beginning of the end’ for Iran’s regime?

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The uprising over the death of Masha Amini is like no other, but whether it leads to revolution remains to be seen

The Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, was holding court to a small group of journalists at the Millennium Hilton in New York on his first visit to the United States since his election in June 2021. At home, protests over the death in police custody of Masha Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, were entering their sixth day.

At the start of the meeting, a 10-minute film was shown, part patriotic travel brochure and part paen to how the Iranian people “live peacefully together in a new model of democracy”. Given the events in Iran, it seemed like the kind of absurd propaganda only a severely self-deluded regime would screen.

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C of E must welcome gay people or face questions in parliament, says MP

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Labour’s Ben Bradshaw says church is ‘actively pursuing a campaign of discrimination’ against lesbian and gay people

The Church of England must move swiftly to welcome lesbian and gay people and embrace same-sex marriage or face mounting questions in parliament about its role as the established church of the country, a senior MP has said.

The church was “actively pursuing a campaign of discrimination” against lesbian and gay people that was incompatible with its role as a church for England, said Ben Bradshaw, the Labour MP for Exeter and a former secretary of state for culture, media and sport.

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Andrew Thorburn resigns as Essendon CEO after one day over links to controversial church

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Essendon says City on a Hill’s values are in ‘direct contradiction’ with its own, as Daniel Andrews labels its views on homosexuality and abortion ‘appalling’

Andrew Thorburn has resigned as Essendon chief executive 24 hours after being appointed because his links to a church condemning homosexuality and abortion were in “direct contradiction” to the values of the AFL club.

The Bombers announced on Tuesday afternoon that Thorburn, despite not holding the same personal views as the City on the Hill movement for which he is chairman, felt he could not serve in both roles and had offered his resignation.

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Narendra Modi’s BJP bans Indian Islamic group for ‘terrorist’ links

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Popular Front of India, which says it fights for rights of minorities, victim of ‘political vendetta’ by Hindu nationalist government

An Islamic organisation that says it fights discrimination against minorities in India has disbanded after the government declared it and its affiliates unlawful, accusing them of involvement in terrorism.

The government of Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) accused the Popular Front of India (PFI) group of having been involved in “terrorism” and “anti-national activities”.

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Pope urges Italians to help migrants as far right tipped to win election

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Francis said migrants and refugees should be able to ‘live in peace and with dignity’ at open-air mass in Matera

Pope Francis has urged Italians to help migrants as voting proceeded in a general election widely expected to bring an anti-immigration rightwing coalition into power.

Speaking at the end of an open-air mass in the southern Italian city of Matera, the pope recalled that Sunday coincided with the Catholic church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees. “Migrants are to be welcomed, accompanied, promoted and integrated,” he told the assembled faithful.

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Is net finally closing on US priest who allegedly abused ‘countless’ children?

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FBI agents have questioned Lawrence Hecker, 91, who worked as a Catholic priest in New Orleans until 2002 despite the archdiocese being aware of molestation accusation since 1988

In arguably the clearest sign yet that he is under active criminal investigation, a retired Catholic priest from New Orleans who has been publicly accused of molesting “countless” children but never charged has acknowledged that the FBI recently questioned him.

Lawrence Hecker, 91, declined to elaborate on exactly when FBI agents met with him or what they asked him as they reportedly lead an investigation into whether clerics serving a Louisiana region that is home to nearly half a million Catholics took children across state lines to abuse them. But, in a brief conversation with the Guardian, Hecker admitted that FBI agents had spoken with him.

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Mahsa Amini’s death could be the spark that ignites Iran around women’s rights

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The country faces a litany of problems, from inflation to a democratic deficit, and the women’s movement is seen as an agent of change

On the day that news of Mahsa Amini’s death spread throughout Iran, a young woman with a shaved head joined protesters who had gathered outside Kasra hospital, where Amini had lain in a coma since her violent arrest by Iran’s morality police days earlier.

In her hand she carried a plastic bag full of her long hair, shorn off in a gesture of solidarity with Amini and in defiance of the increasing crackdown on women by the regime.

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Church of England bars Desmond Tutu’s daughter from officiating at funeral

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Church says same-sex marriage means Mpho Tutu van Furth cannot preside over godfather’s service

The daughter of the late Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu has been barred by the Church of England from officiating at her godfather’s funeral in a Shropshire church because she is married to a woman.

Mpho Tutu van Furth, an ordained priest in the Anglican church, was invited to preside over the funeral of Martin Kenyon, who died last week at the age of 92. The C of E said its actions were “in line with the House of Bishops current guidance on same-sex marriage”.

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Leicester violence could spread beyond city, warns local MP Claudia Webbe

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Leicester East MP says ministers must clamp down on ‘extremist rightwing ideology’

Violent clashes between groups of mainly Hindu and Muslim young men will spread beyond Leicester to other towns and cities without central government and police intervention, a local MP has warned.

Claudia Webbe, whose Leicester East constituency has been at the centre of several incidents over the past month, said ministers needed to clamp down on “extremist rightwing ideology” and misinformation being spread through social media.

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Half of those arrested over clashes in Leicester from outside county

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Exclusive: Concerns outsiders have stirred up trouble between Hindu and Muslim groups heightened after discovery people travelled into the city

Almost half of the 18 people arrested after violence between Hindu and Muslim communities in Leicester over the weekend came from outside the county, the Guardian has learned.

Concerns that outsiders have stirred up trouble in the city have heightened as it was discovered eight of those arrested were not from Leicestershire. Of these, five came from Birmingham, while one came from Solihull, one from Luton and one gave an address in Hounslow.

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Iranian woman dies ‘after being beaten by morality police’ over hijab law

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Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurd, dies after ‘violent arrest’ for infringing hijab rules amid Iranian crackdown on women’s dress

A 22-year-old woman has died in an Iranian hospital days after being detained by the regime’s morality police for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab regulations.

Mahsa Amini was travelling with her family from Iran’s western province of Kurdistan to the capital, Tehran, to visit relatives when she was reportedly arrested for failing to meet the country’s strict rules on women’s dress.

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Irish teacher jailed for breaching court order to stay away from school

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Enoch Burke, who had also refused to refer to pupil as ‘they’, spent 11 days in prison

A school teacher in Ireland who refused to call a transgender pupil by the pronoun “they” has spent 11 days in prison for ignoring a court order to stay away from the school.

Enoch Burke failed to obtain a court injunction on Wednesday that would have paved his release and return to school, leaving him in Mountjoy prison in Dublin.

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Christians in the US could be a minority group by 2070, study finds

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All four of the Pew Research Center’s scenarios showed the Christian share of the population shrinking and the number of non-believers rising

Christians in the US may become a minority group by 2070 if recent trends continue, according to data released by the Pew Research Center.

To predict how the US religious landscape will change over the next 50 years, the center posed several questions: “What if Christians keep leaving religion at the same rate observed in recent years? What if the pace of religious switching continues to accelerate? What if switching were to stop, but other demographic trends – such as migration, births and deaths – were to continue at current rates?”

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Saudi Arabia: man arrested after Mecca pilgrimage for Queen

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Yemeni national posted video clip of himself at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site

Saudi authorities have arrested a man who claimed to have travelled to the Muslim holy city of Mecca to perform an umrah pilgrimage on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II.

The man, a Yemeni national, published a video clip of himself on social media on Monday at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, where non-Muslims are forbidden.

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