Queensland Synod News

In advance of World AIDS Day on 1 December, Kenyans living with HIV gathered at Nairobi’s All Saints Anglican cathedral to send 10 000 Thanksgiving Day postcards to U.S. President Barack Obama. The cards express gratitude for Obama’s support to the Global Fund for AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, while urging the U.S. president to take a lead in ensuring increased ...

On 31 December this year it will be the end of an era for a faithful servant. The MV Doulos is the world’s oldest ocean going passenger ship. It is 95 years old, with the hull built in 1914, just 2 years after Titanic. For the last 32 years, Doulos has been a major part of the Operation Mobilisation (OM) ...

The Uniting Church in Australia has written to all federal ALP MPs and Senators, urging them to implement the recommendations made in the report of the National Human Rights Consultation. In its submission to the Consultation, the Uniting Church articulated its commitment to social justice and the achievement of human dignity for all through a Human Rights Act. National Director ...

An exhibition of children’s letters to pharmaceutical companies and governments is going on display at the United Nations in New York as part of a campaign by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance and its partners to promote the treatment of children with HIV. "If governments and pharmaceutical companies were to increase access to testing and provide appropriate paediatric treatment for children ...

The Uniting Church in Australia has today welcomed the Federal Government’s formal apology to the Forgotten Australians. President of the Uniting Church, Rev. Alistair Macrae, said that the church had also acknowledged and apologised for its role in any harmful institutional care practices. “Following the 2004 Forgotten Australians report, the Uniting Church apologised for any physical, psychological or social harm ...

AROUND 270 people from Australia, the Pacific, South East Asia and Africa gathered in Canberra for the fourth annual Voices for Justice Conference in Canberra in September. Unlike most Christian conferences the aim of this conference was not to talk to ourselves but to talk to our Australia’s leaders. After a weekend of worship, training and workshops, participants were unleashed ...

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, officials have returned to a church in what was East Berlin, where protests of candlelit prayers helped bring down communism in East Germany. Germany’s political and church leaders marked the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November with an ecumenical service at the Protestant church in ...

The Uniting Church in Australia, it has recently been noted, is the only major church to officially support a Human Rights Act. This is true but there is more diversity among the Christian community than is often recognised. While the voices of religious leaders and organisations opposed to a Human Rights Act are often heard loud and clear, a quick ...

The Uniting Church in Australia has written to Prime Minister Rudd and Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Sharman Stone to express concern and disappointment at the Government’s responses to asylum seekers arriving by boat. President of the Uniting Church, Rev Alistair Macrae, expressed dismay that issues surrounding the movement of asylum seekers were once again being confused with issues ...

In the aftermath of the World Day Against the Death Penalty on 10 October 2009, Amnesty International has highlighted several cases of people facing execution – including one in the USA which is being distorted by religious fundamentalism. A Texas man who faces execution after jurors at his trial consulted the Bible when deliberating his fate, should have his death ...