The new Anglican Dean of Sydney has been accused of insensitivity,
provocation and offensive intolerance after his strident defence of
evangelical Christianity.
Religious organisations across the community yesterday railed against the
Reverend Phillip Jensen's provocative comments, which included saying that
Australia had stretched the idea of tolerance to the point of stupidity.
He told the congregation at his installation in St Andrew's cathedral on
Friday that "some or all" religions were wrong and if wrong were "the
monstrous lies and deceits of Satan devised to destroy the life of the
believers".
http://smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/10/1047144923869.html
The dean has argued he was not using the St Andrew's pulpit to attack other
religions, but merely to point out that different faiths were mutually
incompatible.
The Anglican bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, came out in his
defence, arguing that although the mode of speech may have been
confronting, the message was hardly new.
"What he said was what I understand to be the way in which the New
Testament sees other religions: that outside of Christ people are enslaved
to sin or to spiritual forces," he said.
"If all people have a terrible disease and you believe that God has
provided a particular cure for everybody that worked - but others were
hawking cures that didn't work - you can't just say it doesn't matter. It's
false and its dangerously false in a spiritual sense."
