In Fiji, Methodist Church ministers who want to enter party politics will have to resign from ministry. That is the message from church communications secretary Reverend James Bhagwan. “If any minister wants to join a political party and stand under the party’s banner, they will have to resign from their appointment,” he said. Bhagwan said Read more
Christianity has shed hundreds of thousand of devotees in the past seven years, while the number of non-religious has risen strongly. Victoria University professor Paul Morris, who specialises in religious studies, said the country was in “new territory”, with Christianity losing its central position in society. “For the first time since 1901, Christians are not Read more
The PNG Health Department will provide the 172 unregistered church-run health facilities with funding assistance. Health Secretary Pascoe Kase says Kase said about 20% of the church-run institutions were not registered or recognised by the Government. “A lot of the health infrastructures were put in by the churches themselves many years ago even before the government Read more
A Samoan academic who is a Professor of Law at Otago University, New Zealand, Professor Rex Tauati Ahdar says Samoa is not and cannot be a Christian nation when people here do a “patchy” job of practicing what they preach. In a paper published this year titled “Samoa and the Christian State Ideal,” Professor Ahdar explored the Read more
Parliament’s sanctioning of same-sex marriage this year has prompted galloping expectations, not least where churches are involved. One has been tested in the Human Rights Review Tribunal by the Gay and Lesbian Clergy Anti-Discrimination Society on behalf of Eugene Sisneros, an events co-ordinator at St Matthew-in-the-City who claimed he was rejected for a priest training Read more
Catholic priests are not allowed to get involved in party politics, which means they cannot support a party, stand for a party or promote or tell the congregation about which particular party they should support. According to Archbishop Peter Chong, the head of the Catholic Church in Fiji, this is a non-negotiable principle and forms Read more
A true partnership between the Churches and the State, doesn’t really exist in Papua New Guinea. What is in place is a remnant of the colonial structure or more precisely of the missionary era says Fr Giorgio Licini of the Office for Social Communications of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Papua. Licini was responding to Read more
The National Planning and Monitoring Department has given the archdiocese of Rabaul two used cars and some furniture. Executive officer Tony Miva and administration officer Janet Walum made the donation on behalf of the acting secretary. At the hand-over, the archdiocesan finance manager, Ray Ramirez, thanked the National Planning and Monitoring Department. He said the department had Read more
Schools are going through the “hurtful” process of choosing to drop the Bible in Schools programme, with boards of trustees working through passionate arguments from parents on both sides of the debate. The Herald was flooded with correspondence after a front-page story that reported on a survey of state primary and intermediate schools and found Read more
The Pacific Council of Churches has responded with caution to the news that Papua New Guinea politicians have endorsed the idea of the country being officially a Christian State. Hela Province governor Anderson Agriru recently introduced a motion in Parliament to carry out a nationwide consultation on PNG’s religious status, which was passed unanimously. There Read more