Church of Conscious Living

The Church of Conscious Living is a fake church[1] established by "anti-vaccine zealots"[2] founded by Stephanie Messenger and promoted by the Australian Vaccination Network in order to exploit religious exemptions in Australian "No Jab, No Play" policies for publicly-supported childcare and play schemes.[3] Mainstream churches have denounced it as the "cult of anti-vaccine".[4]

The Church of Conscious Living is not registered as a church or charity with the Australian federal government's Charities and Not-for-profits Commission; it is instead registered as a for-profit business.[1]

According to the Sydney Morning Herald:

An AVN newsletter in December 2007 said the church was being created to make sure people's rights to refuse vaccination are not eroded.

"We have decided to create a 'religion', so, amongst other things, we can claim 'religious exemption', if the need ever arises, for ourselves and our children," it says, adding that it costs $25 to join.

— Anti-vaccination group encourages parents to join fake church, SMH, 28 Jan 2015

Virologist Dr David Hawkes described the group as a "devious sham",[1] and investigation by the Telegraph found that no real church in Australia had any doctrinal objection to vaccination.[2] It was denounced as "a scam" by NSW opposition health spokesman Andrew McDonald.

McDonald specifically identified the Church of Conscious Living, describing "spurious religious exemptions" as being open to abuse and exploitation in the legislation as then (May 2013) proposed, saying: "Today, sadly, we have already seen an attempt by the Australian Vaccination Network—it should be called the Australian anti-vaccination network—to exploit the loophole in these new vaccination laws by encouraging their supporters to join the Church of Conscious Living and avoid the New South Wales Government's vaccination legislation".[5] Minister for Health Jillian Skinner noted that the "church" was promoted by the Australian Vaccination Network, and commented that recent changes to legislation permitted the Health Care Complaints Commission to scrutinise this activity.

Tony Abbott pledged, as federal opposition leader, to restrict religious exemptions to "clear religious reasons"[2] and as Prime Minister in April 2015 he announced that family and childcare payments worth thousands of dollars per year would be stripped from vaccine refusers unless supported by a religious exemption formally approved by the Government.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Anti-vaccination group encourages parents to join fake church". Sydney Morning Herald. 2015-01-28. Retrieved April 16, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 "Anti-vaccine zealots form sham church". Sydney Daily Telegraph. 2013-05-20. Retrieved April 16, 2015.
  3. ↑ "Religious exemption bid is last sting in anti-vaccine bag of tricks". The Australian. 2013-05-26. Retrieved April 16, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Real churches denounce cult of anti-vaccine". Sydney Sunday Telegraph. 2013-06-09. Retrieved April 16, 2015.
  5. ↑ Hansard, Parliament of New South Wales Legislative Assembly, 29 May 2013
  6. ↑ "Parents who refuse to vaccinate children to be denied childcare rebates". The Guardian. 2015-04-11. Retrieved April 16, 2015.

External links

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