Western Australia is preparing to overhaul its discrimination laws, potentially restricting the ability of Christian schools to require staff to actually be Christian.
The Cook Government has committed to amending the Equal Opportunity Act 1984, after broadly accepting recommendations from the WA Law Reform Commission in 2022. The final bill has not yet been released, so its precise provisions remain unknown.
But one recommendation should concern Christian parents.
The Commission recommended that religious schools only be permitted to discriminate in employment where conformity with their religious beliefs is an “inherent requirement” of the particular job, among other conditions.
OK—so, who decides which jobs actually require Christianity?
Is it just the school chaplain? The Bible teacher? Well, what about the principal, maths teacher, science teacher, counsellor, receptionist, or gardener?
Christian schools told the review that maintaining a community of practising Christians was essential to preserving their religious identity.
The Commission recorded arguments that Christian formation extends throughout the school community, not merely to those explicitly teaching religion.
And that’s the point.
A Christian school isn’t supposed to be a secular school with Bible classes attached. Christianity shapes what the school believes about truth, morality, human nature, authority, sexuality, family and the very purpose of education.
A Christian maths teacher doesn’t need Christianity to calculate an equation. But neither does a Christian school employ teachers merely to transmit isolated pieces of information, disconnected from the world in which God created, or from the purpose for which He created them.
They are helping form children—children whose faith impacts every aspect of life.
This is why parents deliberately choose Christian education.
Yet an “inherent requirement” test potentially gives an outside authority the power to determine whether Christianity is sufficiently relevant to a particular position to justify employing a Christian.
It gives a government bureaucrat authority to decide the extent of Christ’s Lordship.
Think about how strange that is.
Nobody seriously expects the Labor Party to employ people committed to advancing Liberal Party values. We all know that organisations need people who believe in their mission.
So, why should Christian organisations be different?
The state has every right to prohibit genuine abuse and wrongdoing. But it is another matter entirely for the state to decide which parts of a Christian institution actually require Christianity.
As Abraham Kuyper famously declared, there isn’t a square inch of human existence over which Christ does not declare, “Mine!”
A Christian school should not have to confine its Christianity to chapel and Bible class, because central to the Christian faith is the fact that Christ is Lord over all of life.
If a Christian school can’t require the people responsible for shaping its Christian students to share that Christian conviction, well then, it’s Christian in name only. Maybe that’s the goal.