Why Rudd should let the Brethren slide

Prior to the Federal election, PM in waiting Kevin Rudd stated that the Exclusive Brethren were an “extremist cult” and called for investigation of their affairs by a number of government bodies. This was in response to allegations that the Brethren have a
disproportionately high taxpayer funding of Brethren schools, dishonest political campaigning, their charitable [...]

Commonsense on preachers and politics

Via a comment at LP, I stumbled onto an excellent article by Katha Pollitt on the need for presidential candidates to have crazy, preaching guys as their spiritual advisor (part of Obama’s sin is that he chose a black crazy preacher guy, not the usual white bread crazy preacher guy).
The on the money quote [...]

The myth of Rudd’s religious right swinging voters

Welcome to A Freethinker from Oz.
My first post isn’t about atheism per se but a look a column by ex-Liberal big wig Micheal Baume in today’s AFR. It is worth examining for the claim that the Australian Prime Minster, Kevin Rudd, carried the 2007 election due to votes from religious conservatives. As an atheist I [...]