The news of the day is that the Australian High Court has, for the second time, ruled the Commonwealth Government's funding of school chaplains unconstitutional. This decision has come courtesy of a persistent Queensland litigant by the name of Ron Williams (pictured) who has objected to the placement of a chaplain employed by Scripture Union in his children's school. I have come across school chaplains in a few ways. I have a good friend who is a chaplain (government-funded) at a rural school in the community where he is also the Anglican priest. I have met and interviewed chaplains in the course of a project I worked on a few years ago about youth service delivery. I also have a leadership role in a local church which employs two chaplains at Brisbane State High School, just across the road from us. In this capacity I wrote the most recent application to have our permission to place chaplains in the school renewed, and helped negotiate the subsequent contract. Our
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson