Letter to The Editor - Loss of Religion

to THE AGE
     Tosca Lloyd indulges in wishful thinking in his promotion of secularism (‘As Australia grows, religion becomes less relevant’, 28/6). In advocating that our schools and society ‘should be free from religious bias’, he is actually seeking the substitution of an irreligious bias. As for his soft soap claim that secularism does not mean ‘imposing the views of the non-religious on to the religious’, he ignores the horrifying militancy of atheists in France after 1789, Russia after 1917 and China after 1949.
     It is the principle of equity, not equality, that should govern public policy in matters religious. Perhaps the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the opening of parliaments could be accompanied by a prayer from a different sacred tradition (chosen on a rotational basis) and a secular exhortation of an inspiring kind. And the National School Chaplaincy Program could be amended to make fair allowance for all reasonable non-Christian points of view, including the secular.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic