Feminist and progressive advocacy groups are demanding the Albanese Government remove legal protections that allow Christian schools to uphold biblical standards of morality, arguing that religious convictions should not take precedence over anti-discrimination laws.
In an open letter released on Tuesday, women’s organisations, legal experts and LGBTQ activists urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to abolish exemptions that permit religious schools to make employment decisions based on their beliefs.
The campaign, backed by organisations including the National Foundation for Australian Women and Fair Agenda, follows independent MP Allegra Spender’s introduction of legislation seeking to restrict religious schools’ ability to make decisions based on sexuality, gender identity, marital status and pregnancy.
The groups argue that women should not risk losing their jobs for becoming pregnant outside marriage, entering relationships or divorcing their spouses.
Equality Australia Legal Director Heather Corkhill declared that religious freedom should not be a licence to discriminate, insisting that publicly funded institutions must uphold the standards expected by Australian society.
But whose moral standards should govern Christian institutions?
The activists appear to regard their own progressive convictions as sufficiently authoritative to dictate how Christian schools must operate, while denying those same schools the freedom to uphold their religious convictions.
It is a familiar trick: demanding tolerance for lifestyles that conflict with biblical morality while seeking to restrict institutions that refuse to endorse them.
Christian schools are not merely secular schools with chapel services sprinkled on top. They exist because Christian parents believe education must be grounded in the authority of God’s Word, including its teachings on marriage, sexuality, family and personal conduct.
Scripture places the responsibility for raising and instructing children principally upon parents, commanding them to teach God’s law diligently to their children (Deut. 6:6–7).
The state has no God-given authority to assume that responsibility or dictate that Christian institutions must set aside biblical teaching to accommodate contemporary political preferences.
Senior Christian leaders have warned the Prime Minister that Spender’s bill would significantly weaken existing protections, restricting schools’ ability to employ staff who share their faith and maintain their distinctive religious character.
Supporters of the legislation insist it is about protecting individuals from discrimination. But that overlooks the rights of Christian parents, teachers and communities to establish institutions governed by their own religious convictions.
There is nothing inherently intolerant about expecting those who voluntarily seek employment at a Christian institution to respect the beliefs it was established to uphold.
The underlying dispute is not simply about employment law. It is about moral authority.
The feminist organisations behind this campaign want the state to impose their preferred moral standards upon Christian institutions. Yet Christian education, by its very nature, recognises a higher authority than the changing political and moral fashions of the day.
Increasingly in Australia, Christianity is treated as acceptable only so long as Christian convictions are not permitted to shape the institutions established to practise it.
These groups aren’t demanding freedom from religion. They are demanding the authority to impose their own religious convictions upon institutions, organisations, and individuals who disagree with them. Their “secular” morality is no less a system of belief simply because they refuse to call it a religion. What they cannot tolerate is the existence of an institution that recognises a moral authority higher than their own.
It’s like demanding membership in a political party whose principles you reject, then insisting the entire party abandon its founding convictions to accommodate your membership.
At that point, you’re not asking for inclusion. You are demanding the institution’s surrender. And that is precisely what these organisations seek from Christian schools: not the freedom to live according to their own convictions, but the power to prevent Christians from living according to theirs.