Not welcome any more

Welcome to country is one of those modern phenomenona that you see everywhere, find hardly any ordinary person supports, but that is continually promoted and supported by the elite classes of society. And not just the elites of secular society, churches engage in this nonsense to. I know of church services which have begun with either a welcome to country or acknowledgment of country before the service has even referenced the Lord Jesus Christ in prayer.

I sat at a major denominational meeting where the chair of the denomination’s board got up and did the acknowledgement of country and then prayed. It was a travesty to behold it happening. It is insufferable to see continually at the start of every major sporting event some middle aged guy get up mostly naked and dance in some smoke ceremony, it is blasphemy to see church services and meetings begin with it.

But one denomination has said no more, as reported by Caldron pool,

“The Presbyterian Church of Australia has banned its congregations from conducting the Welcome to Country in their worship services.

The General Assembly of Australia (GAA), which gathered in Sydney last week, deemed Acknowledgement of Country practices “inappropriate for public worship where the call to worship centres on God.”

Moderator-General David Burke outlined the decision in a letter to Presbyterian congregations on Thursday, noting the wording of acknowledgments of country “almost invariably carries overtones of an Indigenous spirituality inconsistent with Christian belief.”

Burke added, “As Christians, we have to avoid wording that suggests final ownership of land is vested in people rather than with the Creator.”[i]

Praise God. This is what we need to see happen more and more. It has felt like for some time now the march of “progress” (really regress) or radical liberalism has been inevitable and unstoppable. But for those of us who know our history we know that there are all sorts of swings and roundabouts in the development and history of nations. Sometime nations progress towards higher Christian ideals, sometimes they regress to paganistic ideas and call this progress. Our nation has been in the throws of one of these declines in recent decades. But there are green shoots of hope showing that a turn many be coming.

It was also really encouraging to see the Presbyterian minister Mark Powell given a platform on national T.V. to explain why the Presbyterian church has made this move.

Progressivism is not inevitable. Mostly because it is not really progress, but regress back to a more primitive and heathen worldview. Society can only cope with so much regress before things start to really fall apart. And despite what some people would have you think, the church is still strong in the West. It is largely asleep and it is converged in many places. But there are large and growing segments of the church who are taking notice of how God would really have us be good citizens and they are starting to become more active in opposing the move back to paganism.

It is really good to see this, so be encouraged. I think more moves like this are down the track. The Voice to Parliament has not gotten the support from society that the elites thought that it would. More and more people are discontented with the direction progressivism is taking society, and more and more people are starting to make the right kind of noise about heading back towards sanity. Praise God.