Andrew Norton » Religion

This review appeared in Policy magazine in Spring 2010. In many Western countries, marriage is a subject of passionate political contention. Gay marriage triggers controversy wherever it is propo...

https://andrewnorton.info/2021/09/13/separating-marriage-and-state-a-review-of-tamara-metzs-untying-the-knot/

Liberalism is a philosophy of individual freedom, but liberals disagree on what counts as a threat to freedom. Jacob Levy’s Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom explores how liberal thinkers see...

https://andrewnorton.info/2021/09/05/rationalism-pluralism-and-freedom/

(A shorter version of this review, omitting discussion of how the American experience influenced Australian politics to the mid-19th century, is cross-posted at Goodreads.) This book is the first...

https://andrewnorton.info/2020/02/09/the-rise-of-liberalism-in-colonial-australia-a-review-of-the-first-volume-of-david-kemps-history-of-australian-liberalism/

Yesterday’s Essential Research poll asked about the fastest growing religion between 1996 and 2006. I would have guessed Buddhism, most people thought Islam, but Essential says the correct answ...

https://andrewnorton.info/2011/03/01/buddhists-second-most-popular-religious-group/

An Essential Research poll asked about attitudes to Muslim migration, and found 25% support for excluding Muslims from the migrant intake: That’s 11% lower than a Morgan Poll this time last yea...

https://andrewnorton.info/2011/03/01/muslim-migration/

Ross Gittins thinks that subsidising private schools means subsidising wasteful status competition. A persistent line of social criticism argues that status competition is wasteful when people pa...

https://andrewnorton.info/2010/09/21/schools-and-status-competition/

My CIS colleague Jennifer Buckingham has a new paper out today on the rise of religious schools, written up in the Fairfax broadsheets. It’s full of useful statistics on enrolments over time an...

https://andrewnorton.info/2010/09/16/the-rise-of-religious-schools/

Surely having LESS complicated hurdles to pass over would help secular private schools and surely encouraging the private sector would help secular private schools, too? – commenter Shem Bennet...

https://andrewnorton.info/2010/02/22/why-are-there-so-few-secular-private-schools/

We have finished the year with worries about the border between religion and politics – the Fairfax feature, Charles Richardson’s warning that Rodney Smith is too sanguine about the influence...

https://andrewnorton.info/2009/12/31/when-can-religion-influence-politics-or-why-a-christmas-public-holiday-is-ok/

Today the Fairfax broadsheets turn from the religious beliefs of Australians to how they see the relationship between religion and politics. Their Nielsen poll had however been scooped by Pollyti...

https://andrewnorton.info/2009/12/26/the-publics-view-of-religion-and-politics/