Access Ministries: “We need to go and make disciples”

The state of Victoria allows Christian group Access Ministries to have unfettered access (hence the name) to high schoolers. This allows them to evangelise what is essentially a captive audience.

And how does Access Ministries feel about this? They can’t believe their luck! Listen to the CEO crow about it:

”In Australia, we have a God-given open door to children and young people with the Gospel, our federal and state governments allow us to take the Christian faith into our schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples,” she told the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion national conference in Melbourne. ”What really matters is seizing the God-given opportunity we have to reach kids in schools.”

Now can we agree that this is an evangelical conversion campaign that has no place in secular schools?

Maybe I shouldn’t get too worked up about it though. Danny Katz sees a silver lining to religious education.

Thank God Almighty! This is really good news: I heard the Victorian Education Department has started forcing public primary schools to host non-compulsory Christian education classes during school hours and all I can say is HALLELUJAH, PRAISE THE LORD. Because, as we all know, religious education is the ONLY way to turn our young children into decent, moral, compassionate, lifelong despisers of anything to do with religion.

Seems perfectly obvious to me: if you want to create an instant atheist, just add holy water. Everyone I know who is a committed non-believer had been saturated with religious education at an early age, either through school or Sunday school or youth groups – I’m telling you, it works.

UPDATE: There’s a Facebook group: Get Access Ministries out of our schools. Like it.