For a decade or so, much of Australia was in the grip of a terrible drought because of global warming. Now climate change has brought the rain. The other day, tourists were huddling under umbrellas watching the Warragamba Dam, which supplies most of Sydney’s water, spill over for the first time in 14 years. Residents of Wagga Wagga, an inland city, are being winched off the roofs of their cars and houses.

I discovered the reason for the downpour the other day when I paid a quick visit to the local church. Christine, the local Chinese bag lady (possibly Australia’s one and only Chinese bag lady) grabbed me by the sleeve and announced that she had been praying hard for rain for the last five months to help the farmers. “Well done, love!” I said, “but don’t you think it’s time to stop?” Christine obviously didn’t. “Can I have five dollars?” she said. I demurred and she wandered off looking for someone who wanted to see the roofs of Wagga disappear under her prayers.

That’s what I like about churches. They are full of Christines. Well, full of all sorts of people, including the crazy people: academics and council workers; bank managers and home managers; restless toddlers and bored teenagers; young fathers shushing their kids and shuffling old men. It’s the ultimate democracy; everyone there knows that they are all equal in the sight of God. Most environments are elitist, segregating the wealthy from the poor, the educated from the uneducated, the well-connected from the unhinged -- but not churches.

This is one reason why marginalising Christianity, as the US and UK governments seem determined to do, is a pretty dumb idea. It would only heighten our natural tendency to live in gated communities. There would be no place where we could chat with Christine.

So far this week, the MercatorNet home page is a bit sombre, but very informative. Oliver M. Tuazon and Angelo S. Porciuncula explain why the Philippines has such a low rate of AIDS, even though conditions seem ideal for an epidemic. Two leading bioethicists, Trevor Stammers and Margaret Somerville, discuss a proposal to make infanticide “ethically permissible”. And Robert Reilly argues that extending the privileged status of marriage to homosexuals would undermine its foundation.

Our new blog on same-sex marriage, Conjugality, by the way, is bursting with new posts. Please check it out.

Cheers,

Michael Cook, Editor, MercatorNet