by Andrew Singleton, Lecturer in the Sociology Program, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

In 2006, the Australian federal government announced that it was funding a program to place school chaplains in all Australian schools, at a total cost of Aus$90 million. This was met with both praise and derision in the mainstream

press. For example, a columnist in one major metropolitan daily noted that the plan potentially contravened the Australian constitution, while others fretted that Christian philosophy would be taught to the exclusion of other perspectives. The presidents of various rationalist and humanist societies wrote a joint letter to one newspaper warning that the plan favored “zealous evangelical/fundamentalist/Pentecostal groups.” Others applauded the initiative. One wrote a letter thanking all the politicians involved and concluded: “I give all thanks to God, who makes all things possible.”

“People Were Not Made to Be in God’s Image”: A Contemporary Overview of Secular Australians