Queensland Synod News

For the past 41 years, Heather McKenzie has dedicated herself to supporting the elderly, people with a disability and others in need in the community through various roles with Blue Care. Ms McKenzie was recognised as Blue Care’s longest serving staff member at the recent staff awards night, which focussed on recognising staff who displayed great courage, sacrifice, commitment and ...

The Pope should invite Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to the Vatican to impress on him in a "fatherly conversation" that he is not on a messianic mission and should step down as leader of his country. The suggestion is being made by the Rev. Andre Bartlett, a Dutch Reformed Church minister who chairperson of the South African Council of Churches in ...

Christian theology needs to seek forgiveness for the ecological damage resulting from the misinterpretation of the creation stories in the Bible, a global gathering of theologians meeting in northeastern Brazil has been told Sergio Torres, a Chilean Roman Catholic theologian, told the 21 to 25 January World Forum on Theology and Liberation in Belem that an "incomplete and unexplained interpretation ...

The President of the Uniting Church has today urged the nation to celebrate the privilege of being an Australian, while encouraging reflection on our bloodstained history. Rev. Gregor Henderson said that Australia Day was the perfect time to acknowledge the first peoples of the land and to extend the hand of peace and friendship between all Australians. “This is a ...

The USA’s premium cable channel, HBO, has expressed regret for not broadcasting an invocation by openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson for the televised Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. However it seems that it was the Obama team not TV executives who were responsible for the decision, and HBO says it will be included on all ...

The founders of the Reborn in Christ Church (Renascer) have said they were dismayed and saddened by the deaths of nine people in one of the denomination’s churches after a roof collapsed in the country’s largest city. "What happened was a great fatality. We don’t know the reason. But there must be a purpose for so much suffering. Our heart ...

A Christian bus driver from Southampton, Hampshire, has objected to driving a bus with a slogan proclaiming ‘There’s probably no God – now stop worrying and enjoy your life’. Mr Ron Heather says he is "shocked" and ‘horrified" at the message and walked out of his weekend shift in protest. The company involved, First Bus, said that it would seek ...

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen to include Jewish and Islamic clergy as well as Christians of various stripes in his inauguration ceremonies. From the National Cathedral in Washington and the Islamic Society of North America located in Indiana to the Saddleback Church in Southern California, a variety of religious communities throughout the United States are connected to the historic event ...

The Berlin State Library has launched an appeal for funds to save and digitalise thousands of letters and manuscripts that belonged to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an anti-Nazi Protestant theologian who was executed shortly before the end of the Second World War. Bonhoeffer was a founder of the Confessing Church, along with Karl Barth, Martin Niemöller and others. It represented opposition to ...

Charges of polygamy against two men in Canada who have several wives are expected to result in a challenge to the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees religious liberty. Winston Blackmore, aged 52, and 44-year-old James Oler, from Bountiful, British Columbia, belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Each man was charged ...