Christian and Muslim leaders have called for restraint and common sense in the face of escalated terrorism fears within Australia.

The Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, joined senior leaders from the Muslim Sunni and Shiite communities and and the Greek-Melkite, Maronite, Anglican and Catholic Christian Churches to reject threats from the Islamic State (IS) group to harm Australians.

In a statement Dr Mohammed, Sheik Yahya Safi from the Australian National Iman Council and Father Patrick McInerney from the Catholic Church said the fatwa from IS calling on Australians to be targeted should be rejected by all Australians.

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The gravity of the financial situation facing the Bathurst Diocese of the Anglican Church hit home this weekend for members of the 47th Synod.

Bishop of Bathurst Ian Palmer implored representatives of parishes from Bourke to Bathurst to accept the need for fresh approaches to ministry across the Central West.

He said the Diocese needs to look at where its resources are spent and ask itself if there are resources that are no longer needed.

Bishop Palmer said the mood of the Synod was one of grappling with, or coming to terms with, the enormity of the financial problems currently facing the Diocese.

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Australia’s prime minister says intelligence that Islamic State supporters were planning to carry out a killing to demonstrate its abilities led to counterterrorism raids in Sydney.

Australian police detained 15 people Thursday in a major counterterrorism operation, saying intelligence indicated a random, violent attack was being planned on Australian soil.

About 800 federal and state police officers raided more than a dozen properties across Sydney as part of the operation ”” the largest in Australian history, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Andrew Colvin said. Separate raids in the eastern cities of Brisbane and Logan were also conducted.

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A toned and sunburned 32-year-old Australian with the letters F-A-I-T-H tattooed onto his biceps strode onto the stage of a former burlesque theater here and shouted across a sea of upstretched hands and uplifted smartphones: “Let’s win this city together!”

The crowd did not need much urging. Young, diverse and devoted to Jesus, the listeners had come to the Belasco Theater from around the city, and from across the country, eager to help an Australian Pentecostal megachurch that is spreading worldwide establish its first outpost on America’s West Coast.

The church, Hillsong, has become a phenomenon, capitalizing on, and in some cases shaping, trends not only in evangelicalism but also in Christian youth culture. Its success would be rare enough at a time when religion is struggling in a secularizing Europe and North America. But Hillsong is even more remarkable because its target is young Christians in big cities, where faith seems out of fashion but where its services are packing them in.

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Pattaramon [ Chanbua] was promised 300,000 baht ($9,300) by a surrogacy agency in Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, to be a surrogate for the Australian couple, but she has not been fully paid since the children were born last December.

She said the agency knew about Gammy’s condition four to five months after she became pregnant but did not tell her. It wasn’t until the seventh month of her pregnancy when the doctors and the agency told her that one of the twin babies had Down syndrome and suggested that she have an abortion just for him.

Pattaramon recalled strongly rejecting the idea, believing that having the abortion would be sinful. “I asked them, ”˜Are you still humans?’ I really wanted to know,” she said Sunday.

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Sister Philomene Tiernan, a Catholic nun living in Sydney, Australia, is being mourned by her community after being confirmed as a victim of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down over Ukrainian airspace on Thursday.

A statement issued by the Kincoppal-Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart mourned her loss, as she had been associated with their community for over 30 years. “We are devastated by the loss of such a wonderfully kind, wise and compassionate woman, who was greatly loved by us all. Phil contributed greatly to our community and she touched the lives of all of us in a very positive and meaningful way,” said Principal Hilary Johnston-Croke.

“Her entire existence was to bring good into this world,” wrote Lucy Thackray, a former student of Tiernan’s in a Daily Mail Tribute. “But she gave unwavering guidance and taught people that faith in God, in themselves, and in the world would carry you through the journey.”

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Father Michael Lapsley is an Anglican priest who was sent to South Africa during the institutionalized racial segregation of apartheid. He became a chaplain to Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress and a target of the white supremacy government. One day Lapsley opened a package that turned out to be a bomb. He lost both hands and one eye in the attack on his life, but his faith survived. He now uses his wounds to connect with those who have experienced trauma and help them find healing.

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NSW public schools should spend government funding on tackling obesity and promoting wellness and positive psychology rather than the untested chaplaincy program that are in hundreds of the state’s schools, the head of Sydney’s Anglican Education Commission has argued.

As the Federal Government considers the fate of its National School Chaplaincy Program after the High Court ruled the commonwealth could not fund it, the executive director of the commission, Bryan Cowling, said there was no evidence the chaplaincy program was effective.

Dr Cowling, a former head of curriculum in the NSW Department of Education, said a long-term goal of public schools should be to replace scripture classes with a mandatory “world view and ethics” class providing students with a “broad exposure” to many religions.

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Auckland’s best-known Anglican Church is shutting its doors for three months after Sunday morning’s service so it can undergo a facelift.

The Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell has hosted the funerals of Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Paul Homes and Sir Paul Reeves.

More than 100,000 people attend the church each year.

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What does “recognise” mean?

Listen to it all (about 4 1/2 minutes). You may read more Philip Richardson there.

The current-day church sits on the same patch of land as the original cathedral when it was built in 1848.

“Unfortunately in this area, there’s a river bed right down low and the old cathedral didn’t have good enough foundations,” says the co-ordinator of the cathedral’s guides, Lalage Gabb.

“In 1895 they decided to put heating in and they put in a furnace below ground, which dried-out the clay and caused the old cathedral to crack.

“In 1911, the Bishop wanted to replace the cathedral. If the present occupational health and safety laws had been in, the cathedral would’ve been closed because it was dropping bits off it,” she says.

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General Synod today passed a resolution that will create a pathway towards the blessing of same-gender relationships ”“ while upholding the traditional doctrine of marriage.

It will appoint a working group to report to the 2016 General Synod on “a process and structure” that would allow those clergy who wish to bless same-gender relationships ”“ using a yet-to-be developed liturgy ”“ to do so.

The working group will also be charged to develop “a process and structure” to ensure that clergy who believe that same sex blessings are contrary to “scripture, doctrine, tikanga or civil law” to remain fully free to dissent.

The “process and structure” in their case would mean these clergy would not only be exempt from performing these same-sex blessings ”“ but that their “integrity within the church” would be assured, and they would have full protection for their dissent in any relevant human rights legislation.

Synod has therefore upheld the traditional doctrine of marriage ”“ but also moved to find ways to respond to committed relationships between two people, regardless of gender.

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In the front rows, the graduating class sat enthralled. At the back other students shifted excitedly in their seats, some whispering agreement as Provan’s language soared.

“I charge you, most seriously . . . [to] be dangerous to all who, in the pursuit of [false] gods, damage other people, and damage God’s good creation. Be dangerous to the powerful who want to use and oppress the weak, and to the rich who want to use and oppress the poor.

“Be dangerous to those who diminish the importance of the individual person, in the womb or in the twilight years, or in between ”“ to those who trample the individual soul, out of deference to the convenience of other family members, the health of the economy, the good of the state, or the well-being of the planet.” An Australian listening may be forgiven for thinking that Provan is calling for his young charges to oppose pretty well everything that marks business as usual on Macquarie Street. Normally it might not be fair to use a young man’s education as predictive of his future course, but Regent College is not a normal school. Unlike most seminaries, Regent was created not to prepare its graduates to become clergy, but to give them an evangelical Christian education with a view to returning them to the secular world to serve God in their chosen professions.

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Anglican leaders are hailing the report Nudging Anglican Parishes to Prevent Violence Against Women, saying it points to a paradigm shift in the way Anglican communities assist in tackling family violence now and in the future.

In Australia, one in three women has experienced violence and one woman dies each week as a result of violence in the home. Most of their tormentors are not strangers lurking on busy streets, but their friends, acquaintances, husbands, brothers and fathers. The rest of the data on violence against women is equally disturbing.

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Seven out of 10 Australians believe a child needs to grow up in a home with both a mother and father to be happy, despite growing acceptance of single parents.

The latest World Family Map, produced by the US Child Trends research organisation, found Australians were more progressive than Asian and Middle Eastern families but not as liberal as Europeans.

While two-parent families are still the norm around the world, a quarter of children in the US, Britain and New Zealand grow up with a single parent compared with 18 per cent in Australia.

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(The title of the video by ABC is “Miracle in Hell”–KSH).

A New Zealand pastor and his wife have made it their mission to take on India’s billion-dollar sex industry by rescuing young prostitutes from one of the largest “red light” districts on Earth.

The streets of Sonagacchi in Kolkata, India, are home to more than 10,000 prostitutes, many of whom are teenage girls. Most are sold into the sex trade by their families.

Pastor Kerry Hilton and his wife, Annie, who have lived in Sonagacchi for about 15 years, said they were shocked when they first moved to India and stumbled upon them. They had no idea their apartment overlooked the largest sex bazaar in India — until the sun went down.

“We felt that these women straight away were our neighbors,” Kerry Hilton said.

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One of Tasmania’s leading religious leaders has used his Easter message to criticise one of the new Government’s key reforms.

The Anglican Bishop John Harrower has urged the government not to scrap suspended sentences, saying there is too much focus on locking up criminals rather than rehabilitating them.

Reverend Harrower today urged the congregation at St. David’s Cathedral to show compassion and love towards all.

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Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what was the greatest obstacle to the extension of Christianity. He answered: “Christianity.”

Christianity faces the prospect of its own death through the death of its inadequately conceived Easter God. Christianity, as practised in New Zealand, is not credible and is dying.

If Christianity faces up to this full reality, it will survive to be a useful religious community. If it fails to shoulder the full weight of its own cross, it will not discover whether its Christian faith is really true.

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The Anglican Church in New Zealand could be split up over a debate on whether to bless same sex relationships and allow the ordination of gay priests at its General Synod next month.

A commission, chaired by former Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand, has come up with ten possible options, including a total ban, universal acceptance, or even splitting the church.

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The long-awaited report of the Ma Whea? Commission into the question of same-gender blessings and ordinations has been released.

The report, which is the fruit of 15 months’ work by five eminent New Zealand citizens, lists 10 options to inform the General Synod debate at Waitangi next month.

The options range from a more conservative statement about who can be blessed and ordained (ie a firmer statement than the canons now prescribe) through various degrees of change and liberalisation.

The options are:

Option A: Affirming Traditional Understanding

Option B: Preserving Present Circumstances

Option C: Bishops to Determine What Equals Right Relationships

Option D: Delegate to Diocesan Synods/Te Runanganui Power to Determine Right Relationships

Option E: Adopt a New Understanding

Option F: The Anglican Church Having Two Views

Option G: Dual Episcopacy

Option H: Planned Dismembering

Option I: Anglican Church to Add a New Rite of Blessing by Priests of Those in a Same Sex Relationship.

Option J: Adopt a Two Year Period of Focussed Discussion within Church Communities with a View to Making a Decision in (say) 2016

Read it all and follow the links to the whole report.

New Zealand Anglicanism shifted from a firmly-held “marriage cannot be dissolved” to “a couple when getting married should intend to stay together”. ALL references to Marriage-is-like-Christ-and-His-church imagery were completely removed from the three different rites available for getting married in the 1989 New Zealand Prayer Book. Even the Church of England’s own Common Worship rite has removed all but the tiniest single vestigial allusion (quoted above) to what was clearly once a dominant biblical paradigm for marriage.

What once again is clear when those who say the debates are not sourced in prejudice about homosexuality, but are about integrity to scripture and tradition, is that whilst a sea change has occurred in the understanding of marriage, they have only begun to register an issue when the direction heads towards committed same-sex couples.

In the discussion about whether gender difference is essential to marriage it is clear where the inner logic of the trajectory of Christian marriage changes leads, and that the Church of England bishops’ statement is on the wrong side of that trajectory.

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Punters who attended the Oxford Tavern before it was retrofitted told the Telegraph that the pub had a real “community spirit”. Tamara, one of the strippers, said “it’s like the loss of my second home”. Two demolition workers would come from across Sydney to have lunch there every Thursday. “There goes my social life,” a third bloke joked of the takeover. This was in some sense a religious place, and now it’s gone, without even having been paid the complement of a bit of violent iconoclasm. No, the sketchy places, the sacred places, are slowly being ground out of the world by a force that sees them as neither holy nor profane, but as novelties to spice up the next round of drinks or the next sing-along.

“I don’t expect much objection from religious communities. They are happy for us to use their church model”, Jones told Salon magazine in 2013. Only someone who already feels entitled to the Christian “model”, and who doesn’t understand why it might be a sacrilege to appropriate those forms and gestures, would assume as much. The churches should think very carefully about how they will relate to the growth of organised atheism. At the very least, they should not collaborate in their own desacralisation.

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[A recent study]…has found one in three girls and a quarter of boys are depressed, with many turning to violence, alcohol and unwanted sex to cope with problems.

The study of almost 4500 year 7 to 12 students, also revealed that 34 per cent of girls and 30 per cent of boys felt constantly under strain and unable to overcome difficulties.

More than half had low levels of resilience and of those, 43 per cent felt violence was an appropriate way to solve relationship issues.

A third were drinking at dangerous levels, and one in four lacked the confidence to say no to unwanted sexual experiences, while 16 per cent feel it necessary to carry a weapon.

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In a surprise move Monday, North Korean officials freed a Christian missionary from Australia who was arrested for handing out Bibles in Pyongyang.

John Short, 75, allegedly apologized for his behavior and begged for his freedom.

“I now realize the seriousness of my insult to the Korean people on Feb. 16 because I made the Korean people angry, and for this I truly apologize,” Short said, according to a report on the state news agency. “I am willing to bow down on my knees to request this tolerance of (North Korea) and the Korean people.”

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The remarkable thing about this confession is, it’s true. It’s not a moment of great self-esteem, or at which the lost son remembers how inherently worthy he is. By rights, he has no rights. And yet, what does he discover? Well, it is true that he receives no joy from his elder brother. But that is because the Father is irritatingly insistent on showering his tender mercy upon the returning son.

Many Christian churches open their services by inviting the congregation to confess its sins. It might seem as if this a dour reminder of our inadequacies and failings, and a rather grim thing to be doing on a Sunday, when you could be enjoying a late breakfast. But the Christian can confess with confidence – not simply because he or she will find in God a righteous judge, but because “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” To confess your sin is to express confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the one in whom God displayed both his justice and his mercy. And it is a gloriously counter-cultural testimony to the “admit nothing” world.

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Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland held on to stun a hobbled Rafael Nadal 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 and win his first Grand Slam championship in his major debut at the Australian Open on Sunday.

No. 8 Wawrinka, long the second fiddle to compatriot Roger Federer, erased an 0-12 record against No. 1 Nadal and knocked off three top-10 players during his Cinderella run, including three-time defending champion Novak Djokovic.

“Last year I had a crazy match (to Djokovic). I lost it. I was crying a lot after the watch,” Wawrinka said at the trophy ceremony. “Right now I don’t know if I’m dreaming or not, but we’ll see tomorrow morning.”

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The third time was the charm. No. 4 Li Na overcame her nervy play to defeat No. 20 Dominika Cibulkova 7-6 (3), 6-0 and win the Australian Open women’s title. This is Li’s second major title after winning the French Open in 2011, when she became the first Asian player to win a Grand Slam. Her victory will push her to No. 3 in the WTA rankings on Monday, just 11 points behind No. 2 Victoria Azarenka.

Li survived her own scratchy play in the first set, in which she hit 19 unforced errors off her forehand side, and pocketed the first set tiebreaker. After overcoming a bout of early nerves, Cibulkova played well enough to keep Li uncomfortable, but was ultimately let down by her serve. The Slovakian, the first Grand Slam finalist from her country, hit seven double-faults at seemingly the most inopportune times of the match. Once Li won the first set, she relaxed and played her best tennis of the match. After an hour and 37 minutes, Li finally got her well-earned trophy.

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Congratulations to Roger, he is certainly playing a lot better than the last time I have seen him.