A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Members of a wealthy Christian sect are accused of child sexual abuse. Now the man who helped with the cover-up is speaking out. Photo: Getty Images The Royal Commission has examined everything from Sydney's Knox Grammar School to the Jehovah's Witnesses; Cardinal George Pell to Tennis NSW. But not the Exclusive Brethren, a [...]
The moment of truth. No pressure, kid. Photograph: Allen Donikowski/Getty Images/Flickr RM Children from religious families are less kind and more punitive than those from non-religious households, according to a new study. Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian, Muslim and non-religious children to test the relationship between religion and morality. They [...]
Petar Paunchev via Getty Images It's no accident that all of the major world religions employ some form of gratitude in their rituals. It's simply because it makes our daily life better, even if you're not religious nor spiritual. Gratitude is the feeling of being thankful and showing appreciation for what is in [...]
Asma Fahmi says she has experienced overt racism. Photo: Kate Geraghty Muslims in Sydney experience discrimination and verbal slurs at three times the rate of all other Australians, a study that is the first of its kind in the country has found. Nearly two thirds of Muslims surveyed had been subjected to racism, with one in 10 reporting such encounters as [...]
Chad Mizelle sits in silent meditation during service at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington. (Erin Schaff/For The Washington Post) A new study suggests that joining a religious group could do more for someone’s “sustained happiness” than other forms of social participation, such as volunteering, playing sports or taking a [...]
Anti-racism protesters during a rally against Reclaim Australia in Melbourne on April 4, 2015. Picture: Hamish Blair In a surprising result, the Scanlon Foundation’s 2015 Mapping Social Cohesion report found despite the rise of anti-Islam groups such as Reclaim Australia, Australians had not embraced racist views. In fact the experience of discrimination in [...]
One aspect of education that is increasingly worrying parents is the place of Special Religious Instruction (SRI) in Victorian government schools: 42 per cent have withdrawn their children from SRI over the last 12 months, leaving fewer than one in six enrolled (The Age, 21/12/2014), after the government issued a more detailed "opt-in" form to [...]
In 2012, a WIN-Gallup International poll asked the question, “Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person or a convinced atheist?” Just 37 percent of Australian respondents said they were religious, 48 percent said not religious, 10 percent were convinced [...]
A seismic shift is occurring with religious belief in Australia. This dramatic change reveals a search for national identity—one that offers a clear path to a hopeful future. Until now, everything Australians have tried, religiously speaking, has not worked. Widespread attachment to traditional Christianity has not brought true prosperity and contentment. Wholesale secularism has also failed [...]
