I was perhaps as surprised as annoyed to hear former Liberal party MP Ross Cameron feign disinterest in the present disquiet surrounding school chaplains, on a recent episode of The Drum.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman has made 8 recommendations that underscore failures of very basic compliance and accountability. The wider implication of Peter Garrett’s iron clad “guidelines” being fatefully porous and gouged like the side of the sinking Titanic, must raise serious concerns. But Cameron almost seeks to ridicule by “regarding it as the smallest of small beer”.

Insultingly he likens this group peppered with creationists and demon exercising fundamentalists who have “unfettered” access to small children, to Australia’s war time chaplains. He offers;

Our troops have been taking chaplains into war zones for 200 years – I’m sure they can cope with a playground.

Responding to a question on proposed increased funding for psychological services for students, Cameron doesn’t want to “create a generation of victims… life involves knocks”. Surely then, this is an admission as to the ingenuous claims of the NSCP itself. Chaplaincy promoters purport to be there to help children with the very “knocks” he alludes to. Bullying, sexual orientation, bereavement, friendship problems, study load, anxiety, etc.

But Cameron’s true bias is quickly revealed. Hot on the heels of his foot in mouth rebuttal to stated NSCP aims he continues;

… life involves knocks. I just think what you have here is the Greens who want to de-carbonise Australia but they also want to de-Christianise Australia, while I’m not there, you know, wanting to insist on Scripture being taught in a certain way or insist on a certain number of chaplains in schools… I’m not offended by it, it doesn’t bother me if it continues, I don’t think it’s perfectly done but I think it’s a net benefit.

In short he has very little idea but will take the “Greens conspiracy” angle to suit his own aims.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of chaplaincy comes from Christine Burford, a chaplain with ACCESS Ministries. Christine spoke on ACCESS Sunday, raising eyebrows and serious concerns. I was asked by the fine folk over at Fairness In Religions In School back then to put together some of the weirder stuff Christine said  It turned out there was quite a bit. Christine didn’t disappoint me and the video below is the result.

Whilst Christine dons the warrior for God persona, bemoaning “attacks” on ACCESS Ministry, I am still pondering how she’d go in a war zone, Ross.

The Devil is a “living enemy” says Christine Burford of ACCESS Ministries. Yet whilst God’s love is more powerful “be prayerful [don’t] fall into cockiness”, she advises speaking at Naringal Baptist Church on ACCESS Sunday.

Christine was “a lost sheep”, thinking independently at school and committing acts of wanton sailing by the age of 21. Fortunately, whilst in PNG in a “little thatch church” God “apprehended” Christine and “said will you trust me, now will you let me take over your life”. That was “a major significant experience”, Christine understates with absolute seriousness but now of course sees “many hands of God over my life”.

Apart from having a one way conversation with a deity who wanted to take over her life (she seemingly acquiesced), Christine also opines as to the “small groups with different world views”. Far from being just those who don’t hear God ask to take over their lives, it appears there’s a perceived attack on those who don’t hallucinate.

“We face the world… secular situations with other world views who have a loud voice and penetrate a swell, to bring unrest and undermine the work of God in schools and of course ACCESS Ministries does represent God, so it’s gunna be attacked”.  In fact Christine likens this “opposition” (of having a different world view) to the opposition to the rebuilding of the ancient biblical wall of Jerusalem. Strangely, I didn’t see that coming – seriously!

Delusion, arrogance and battle regalia aside, all thinking Australians must by now be asking just what is our government doing handing money to a group that propagates and perpetrates the type of far, far “out there” biblical fundamentalism that has wrought so much division and plunging educational standards in American schools. Whatever “values” our children are receiving it’s coming from people who dismiss any other ontology or interpretation as an attack – as unGodly. They alone hold the key to our kids salvation.

Incredibly, free thinking and moderate Christians apparently do not “represent God” in the view of ACCESS Ministries. Never mind the unbelievers of other faiths that make up an ever growing proportion in Australian society or the “secular situations” like those which are designed to protect education from exactly this type of abuse.

Who needs bollocks when we have “truth” like this?