Tim Costello has used his recent appointment as senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity to send a clear and concise message to Christians hitching their wagon to the ‘Religious Discrimination’ debate “Suck it up” and “Calm down”.
To help add a little perspective, Costello has also advised any and all of his fellow Christians who feel they’re being persecuted in Australia to look into countries where Christians are actually being persecuted including Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan.
Costello, a well-documented social justice advocate, has taken issue with the tone and direction of the discourse surrounding religious freedom in Australia. While he supports the current investigation into religious freedom in Australia, he stops short of adding his voice to the chorus of conservative figures calling for a stand alone religious freedom bill.
Costello’s opinions are largely informed by the fact that he fails to see any evidence of Christian’s being persecution in Australia. Nor is he seeing any impending trend of persecution.
“I don’t think there is a risk of persecution – Christians need to calm down,” Costello said.
“If they read their Bibles, Jesus said the world will hate you and misunderstand you for following me, but to go on following, loving, serving – so I would say, just suck it up. Jesus didn’t go around demanding legislation to protect his rights. Jesus didn’t advocate for freedom of religion legislation.”
Costello takes issue with the conversation being hijacked by Israel Folau as well as conservative MPs whom he believes are needlessly pandering to scare tactics. “There is no question that the mark of our age is anxiety, people are feeling the fragility of life … and politicians play to that anxiety,” he says.
As per The Guardian, conservative MPs aren’t content with legislation that promotes the protection of religious groups, they want to take it a step further, calling for a Religious Freedom Bill. LGBTQI groups have voiced concerns that this could result in ““indirect discrimination”, thus increasing the risks faced by minority groups.
“I would want less of a debate on rights and more of a debate on respect, because it is very difficult in law to cover what I call the extremes,” Costello adds.
Attorney general Christian Porter has begun engaging with concerned parties to start working the language around a proposed religious discrimination bill, concerned with protecting people from religious persecution, which is expected to be brought before Parliament later this year.
