Queensland Synod News

Melbourne, Australia, 23 FebruaryEcumenical News International Australian religious leaders have made a commitment to a unified response to the devastating bushfires that have seared across southeast Australia, particularly the state of Victoria. "From within our various faith traditions standing together here today, we too offer… a commitment to work together for the common good despite our differences," the religious leaders ...

IT IS TIME for the Uniting Church in Australia to recommit to the vision of actually being a multicultural church and what might be life-giving and reassuring about that for Australian society, said Uniting Church National Director of Multicultural and Cross-cultural Ministry Rev Dr Tony Floyd. “In 1985 the Uniting Church proclaimed itself a multicultural church and in doing so ...

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has urged new US President Barack Obama to signal a real change of heart on Middle East policy by apologizing for the Iraq war. Archbishop Tutu, aged 77, who is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the retired Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, said late last week that Mr Obama risked squandering goodwill from around the ...

The former general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches, the Rev Mvume Dandala, has been nominated as the presidential candidate of a breakaway faction of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress in the country’s 22 April elections. Professor Russel Botman, the rector of Stellenbosch University and the former president of the South African Council of Churches, pipped the ...

Lifeline Community Care Queensland is supporting the Victorian Bushfire Relief Appeal by donating profits from a day’s trading from all its 155 Lifeline Shops across Queensland. On Friday February 27 all Queenslanders who purchase goods from their local Lifeline Shop will be doing it in the knowledge that all the day’s profits will go directly to the Bushfire Appeal. Lifeline ...

A group of Christians meeting in Lebanon have declared that people of their faith have belonged to Iraq since the nation’s birth and that they are not just a minority but an essential part of Iraqi society and deeply rooted in its history and civilisation. "As authentic children of this land, they have the right to live freely in it ...

South Korean Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, who has died aged 86, is being remembered as a campaigner for human rights and democracy when his country was ruled by the military four decades ago. "In the days of military dictatorship, he raised a voice of protest. He kept soldiers out of [Seoul’s] Myongdong Cathedral, where students were holed up during their ...

The Uniting Church today reaffirmed its support for the Government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). It will be making a submission to the Inquiry announced yesterday by the House of Representatives Economics Committee encouraging a strengthened scheme. The National Director of UnitingJustice Australia Rev Elenie Poulos said that while the scheme is far from perfect, it is vital that ...

The general synod of the Church of England has voted by 322 votes to 13 to ban its clergy from membership of the British National Party, which advocates the voluntary repatriation of immigrants to their countries of origin. A motion on 10 February by Vasantha Gnanadoss, a lay member of the synod – the Anglican church’s parliament of bishops, clergy ...

African Americans are "markedly" more religious than others in the United States, a new study has concluded, with nearly nine in 10 black people surveyed saying they are "absolutely certain that God exists". The Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life concludes that African Americans are "more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a ...