The road to hell

For one thing, revenues from the resources sector, including the fossil fuel industry, have helped finance welfare, health and education to the benefit of all Australians. Now the church has decided it wants to see that significant source of prosperity shut down.

Yet nor is the church thinking seriously about energy policy. Nuclear power would be a good and safe alternative to power derived from coal, but the Anglican Church is dead set against that option even though nuclear accidents are rare and are becoming rarer.

And it's not much keener on cheap, affordable hydro-electric power since building dams entails flooding valleys and changing the landscape, both of which are egregiously offensive to green campaigners in the churches.

In fact, one suspects that the real motive for the decision of the Perth synod lies elsewhere. The Anglican Church is probably not so much concerned with developing an effective national energy policy as it is with struggling to secure its own survival.

Ageing church members are dying off, leaving empty pews that are not being filled by new parishioners. Young people fill their Sunday mornings with other activities and many families simply want to spend time relaxing at weekends with friends in the park or at the beach.

But as church attendance drops, so too does the size of the Sunday collection put in the plate each week. The church is desperate to connect with a younger generation of people and to stem the drift away from church life.

Many Anglican church leaders think that greater advocacy on fashionable issues such as safeguarding the environment will help them connect with that missing generation.

But while the church is pursuing the idealistic environmentalists it will actually be harming working parents with families to raise, bills to pay, and homes to heat.

G K Chesterton once said, "Those who marry the spirit of the age will find themselves widows in the next." The Anglican Church of Australia is making the very mistake which Chesterton warned about.

No doubt church leaders are well-intentioned. But sometimes good intentions are not enough. Especially when the consequences of actions have a whiff of sulphur about them.