Emeritus Professor Patrick Parkinson is regarded as one of Australia’s pre-eminent legal minds with great insight into how Christians can navigate the increasingly hostile legal environment that they face.
He’s a former Dean of Law at the University of Queensland, an expert in family law and child protection, a long-time advocate for religious freedom, and a Christian for most of his life.
He’s just released an important new book for believers.
It’s titled Unshaken Allegiance featuring an image of a lighthouse shining brightly over a turbulent sea.
It’s subtitle is: Living Wisely as Christians with Diminishing Religious Freedoms.
PROFESSOR PARKINSON’S EXPERIENCE BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN
His experience with religious freedom, or the lack of it, is grounded in working as an exchange lawyer for nine months in what is now Slovakia, after graduating from an English university in the 1980s.
It was then part of the Communist Soviet Bloc.
People could go to church, but they paid a price for being Christians by being barred from certain jobs.
Patrick Parkinson told Vision Radio: “You lived in fear. You never knew who you could trust. The person sitting next to you in church may well be an informer.”
“The risks they took in the name of the Gospel was inspiring.”
“LAWS ARE BEING WEAPONISED AGAINST PEOPLE OF FAITH”
Professor Parkinson stressed Australians are in no way in the same situation today.
But he observes: “Laws are being weaponised or made capable of being weaponised against people of faith and becoming more hostile.”
“I think a lot of people self-censor, particularly in the workplace, and sometimes that’s the right thing to do.”
“I’ve always taken the view in my work teaching for 40-years in universities that I would be quite open about being a Christian.”
“However I would never use the classroom to proselytise or take a point of view. Never.”
“Many of my students told me that it was a comfort and support to them to know that I was openly a Christian and holding a position of responsibility, and in some cases power.”
GROWING PRESSURE ON CHRISITIANS TO PUT THEIR FAITH IN THE CLOSET
“There are pressures where people are wanting us [Christians] to self-censor, to put our faith in the closet.”
“A lot of the pressures we are experiencing come from anti-discrimination and anti-vilification or hate speech laws.”
“Anti-discrimination, treating people with dignity and respect, is a really important part of what it is to be a Christian.”
“But there are areas where anti-discrimination law has expanded in ways that threaten the practice of our faith.”
EXEMPTIONS HAVE PROTECTED CHRISTIANS FROM BEING SUED FOR DISCRIMINATION
“In Victoria and Tasmania it is against the law to discriminate on the basis of lawful sexual conduct which is clearly not Christian.”
“But for exemptions that we have had for a long time in anti-discrimination laws, we [Christians] would be subject to civil suits for discriminating against somebody who is engaging in lawful sexual conduct.”
“There’s been a lot of pressure to eliminate those exemptions.”
HATE SPEECH LAWS WEAPONISED AGAINST CHRISTIAN IDEOLOGY
“We’ve also long had laws, and rightly so, that say you should not use words to incite violence against others.”
“But increasingly these hate speech laws have been drafted in such a vague way that they are really used against ideas that people happen to hate.”
“It’s simply I don’t like the ideas you’re expressing and therefore that is hate speech.“
“I think that claims of psychological harm caused by speech has in some cases been weaponised as a way to stifle debate.”
“We have to stand against the tyranny of being told that ideas can cause psychological harm and therefore they should be suppressed.”
“INTENTION OF THE BOOK IS TO GIVE CHRISTIANS WISDOM”
Professor Parkinson told Vision’s Twenty20 host Neil Johnson the intention of his book “is to give people wisdom in how to deal with these situations should they face them, particularly for pastors and other Christian leaders including those at Christian schools.”
“They’re going to deal with these issues, and how do they do so wisely? How do they do so in a way which is faithful to our Lord?”
“A great place to start is the Sermon on the Mount.”
“Jesus gave revolutionary teaching on these issues.”
WHAT WAS JESUS’S ADVICE?
“He said love your enemies, be kind to those who persecute you, treat everybody with dignity and respect.”
“So, the starting point, I think, is that we do treat everybody, as best we can, decently and with care for their well-being.”
“If there are conflicts, we try to resolve them quickly.”
“Jesus wants us to live peaceably with others. We should avoid useless quarrels.”
“We’re not to engage in culture wars for the sake of it.”
“We are not to align ourselves as if God was on the side of one political cause.”
“AUSTRALIA DOESN’T WANT TO BECOME LIKE ENGLAND”
Professor Parkinson told Vision Radio, Australia doesn’t want to become like England where six police officers turned up at a journalist’s door because of something she posted on social media.”
“This is wrong. This is an abuse of power.”
“It’s a waste of government and police resources.”
“WHERE APPROPRIATE, SUBMIT TO AUTHORITY”
“The book emphasises how much we [Christians] should submit to authority, how much we should obey the law, how we should be reluctant to disobey it.”
“That’s an important emphasis because Paul taught that and Peter taught that: Submit to those in authority, because actually none of us want to live in a lawless society.”
“There will be times for some of us where our allegiance to God has to take precedence over our willingness to obey the law.”
“Most laws require voluntary compliance by the citizens. And there are some situations where we will withhold our voluntary compliance.”
ARCHBISHOP’S WORRYING SCENARIO FROM THE FUTURE
Professor Parkinson’s book repeats a scenario posited by the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher.
It’s set in 2035 where he had to get his sermons approved by a ‘Religious Safety Commissioner.’
“Archbishop Fisher’s speech was a provocation in the sense he wanted to say it could get this bad — and it could,” explained Professor Parkinson.
“Some human rights experts say the government is entitled to regulate churches’ positions on who can be a minister or a priest.”
HEADING TOWARDS NO LIMITS ON GOVERNMENT REGULATION FOR RELIGION
“I think that we are heading in the direction where there are no limits on what government can regulate and do.”
“A good example of this is Victoria, which has sought to regulate what we can pray for. This is just a huge and silly overreach.”
“We shouldn’t assume governments have the right to govern and regulate every aspect of our lives, including our lives of faith.”
“That’s what the Soviet government did.”
The key thing is we’ve got to be very, very careful before we say there is a conflict between our faith and what the government wants.
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