Telling Lies For Jesus

The way religion is taught in Victorian primary schools will be overhauled after a report found that volunteers from the state's key provider Access Ministries breached its guidelines. [link]

Ho hum. This situation has been going on for over a decade and it is never going to change.

Back in 2002 the Government of the Australian State of Victoria employed social workers in most schools at a cost of about $50,000 per worker per year. Then Access Ministries offered to supply school chaplains who would do the same job for $20,000 per worker per year. They could afford to make this offer because they intended to use unqualified local Christians including many who volunteered to work for free. (It's easy to undercut the opposition when you don't have to pay your workforce.) The Government said, "It's a deal - but you can't preach Christianity." Access Ministries said, "No, we'll never do that." And they've been preaching religion in schools ever since.

By the year 2008, the CEO of Access Ministries (Evonne Paddison) had been getting away with breaking the law for so long that she felt she no longer had to remain secretive about it. At a meeting of the Anglican Evangelical Fellowship in 2008, she enthusiastically told her workers to get back into the schoolyard and continue harvesting souls for Jesus:

We have a God-given open door to children and young people with the gospel. Our Federal and State Governments allow us to take the Christian faith into schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples ... We have the responsibility of fulfilling the great commission of making disciples. We need to see our scripture teachers, our chaplains especially, as facilitators. We need to be missional.

Three years later, when questioned on ABC TV about her law-breaking activities, Paddison did what so many Christians do in these situations - she told lies:

We instruct our people not to proselytise. We're not there to convert children; we're there to educate children.

[Source]

But here's the pathetic part - she got away with it. And now, all these years later, Paddison and her cronies are still preaching religion in the schoolyard.