The NSW Teachers Federation is sponsoring the first Secularism Australia Conference early next month, featuring “inspirational pro-secular speakers” who will “share their vision for secularism in Australia”.

Why on earth is the NSW Teachers Federation – a union with the stated purpose to “protect and improve teachers’ working conditions and salaries, within the public education system” – throwing in its lot with a line-up of speakers whose politics are, leftist and godless?

Modern secularism has lost touch with the ideas of French scholar Jean Bauberot, whose model of secularism revered freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, opposing discrimination against people on the basis of their religious or non-religious views. The fine idea that there should be no religious tests applied to people wanting to hold public office has been turned on its head. These days you can lose your job for holding religious views. It happened to former Essendon chief executive Andrew Thorburn. You could be booted out for not agreeing with trans orthodoxy, for challenging the idea that the “science is settled” about gender transitioning. That happened to former Age columnist Julie Szego.

Modern secularism has become untethered from its historical moorings. The separation of church and state is proving harder to abide by when the new secular religion is infused into everything the state does.

Last week, in a statement about the Israel-Gaza war, the NSW Teachers Federation said “The actions of the Israeli government cannot be justified in any way”. It’s bad enough that this terrible conflict is tearing Australia apart without teachers making it worse by inflaming immature school students who have taken to the streets screaming for a free Palestine without any understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I’m guessing no one in the NSW Teachers Federation is inclined to point out that, as the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, Israel is the only state in this unhappy region that guarantees freedom of religion, abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and a host of other rights that the teachers union rightly regards as fundamental. Or to point out that Hamas, a terrorist organization that beheaded babies, raped young women, and murdered and kidnapped other civilians, didn’t come from nowhere. Hamas defeated its rival political party, Fatah, in the 2006 elections.

It’s hard to escape this new religion. There are new moral rules; about diversity and inclusion (which normally mean excluding certain categories of people); accepting climate “science” (where we are told the science is settled); gender transitioning; on preferred pronouns; on the definition of a woman; on acceptable forms of humour; on welcomes to country; and so on.

We are increasingly told a matter is settled, that certain things must be done and said. If you have a different view, you are not just wrong, you are immoral. In which case you risk being treated as a blasphemer. These secular clergymen and women will describe words and ideas they don’t like as a form of violence to justify new forms of censorship. If you offend a commandment, you will be hounded for an apology, only to discover that the sanctimonious secularists among us don’t believe in redemption.

In Victoria, you risk five or 10 years in jail for saying a prayer for someone who falls foul of the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act. JK Rowling is not alone in being lynched by online mobs for believing only biological women are women. Comedians are routinely censored for cracking a joke that offends some secular god of wokeness. This year, employees were forced to shut up if they opposed the Indigenous voice.

Public teacher’s unions are full of these secular activists. They rail against formal religious instruction in public schools while they fully support teachers proselytizing their new secular religion in the classroom.

When the union is overrun by leaders indulging in personal political and cultural agendas, why would we be surprised when teachers condone or even encourage students to go on protest marches instead of learning more English or maths? How can a dead white male such as Shakespeare possibly offer a kid anything when there is a direct line between teachers evangelizing in the classroom and students bludging school to join a climate “emergency” march?

The vast gulf between the goals and values of teacher activists and mainstream Australia is on display almost every day. We saw it in the voice referendum when activist teachers urged students to adopt a position resoundingly rejected by Australia at large. At some schools, teachers handed out Yes badges and only Yes speakers were invited to address students. This is politics dressed up as morality, pure and simple.

Fortunately, God’s Word, the Bible tells us that this would be the world prior to Jesus’ return to Earth to rescue His Saints and God pouring out His wrath upon an unrepentant world with the Trumpet and Bowl judgments. The world will be godless and lawless which is exactly what we see happening at an increasing rate.