And so to a homily from the exceptionalist proselytisers ...

(Above: found here. It's a teacher joke).

The pond often gets stuck in a rut, but that's because it covers the night beat for the daily, where eccentrics, odd-bods and ruts are a way of life.

The Christian rut is now well grooved, having rutted away for a couple of thousand years, and there's plenty of rutting on view in David Hastie's piece Put ideology to one side for a moment and look at the work chaplains do.

Strangely initially it only turned up in The Age, which suggests that The Sydney Morning Herald's editors thought better of it. Well that's until this turned up on the front digital page of the SMH:

Thanks whimsical NZ subbie for a jolly jape amongst chums. Now we know what chaplains do.

Carry a bible hidden behind their backs in clutching hands, deviously putting theology, Adam and Eve, and the whole garden of eden thing into the game, while wearing a grim funeral black suit and matching missionary white shirt.

The joy of stereotypes.

Before we get into a tedious look at a thoroughly predictable piece, let's cut to the chase, and kick the tyre of the last par:

...ultimately for parents and schools, this is not an ideological question. It is a pastoral one. For those of us on the ground in education, when one extra child is comforted, when one extra class is helped, when a chaplain's extra smile is given, ideology can go and get stuffed.

Uh huh. Let's try a secular version of that for a state school system which is ostensibly secular, fair and balanced in the matter of religion, whether you be calathumpian or scientological, Christian or Islamic:

... ultimately for parents and schools, this is not a theological question. It is a physical and mental well-being one. For those of us on the ground in education, when one extra child is comforted, when one extra class is helped, when a counsellor's extra smile is given, theology can go and get stuffed.

There is simply no reason why there should be a chaplaincy program in schools, as opposed to a counselling one, except for John Howard's determination to dog whistle the conservative Christian vote, and the Labor government's determination to dog whistle to show they can be as doggy as Howard.

Counsellors could of course come from any belief set, provided they had the qualifications to be a school counseller adept in the ways of students - not for example wanting a gay student to renounce his or her sexuality on the basis that the bible said it made them unclean.

There's no reason to think that a secular or atheist counseller would be any worse at this sort of work, unless you happen to be David Hastie, in love with Christian exceptionalism:

Whatever its claim to rational truth, it is an empirical truth that secular atheism just doesn't produce a larger quantity of community generosity than religion. I am not saying that atheists don't generously give to the lives of others: many manifestly do, and many better than religious folk. But as a cause celebre, secular atheism just doesn't seem to have the ideological muscle to produce 2700 bright-eyed serving volunteers overnight: religion does.

Hastie clearly doesn't have the first clue how offensive that sounds, nor what it implies - religion's capacity to produce a bunch of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed unqualified zombies.

Thank the absent lord even the federal government has realised that there needs to be some basic standards and qualifications, rather than let loose a bunch of loons roaming around schools explaining how atheists can't cut the ideological muscle.

On and on the offensive exceptionalism rolls out. Generalisations and banalities, as if to the manner born:

Unlike school counsellors, chaplains tend to be public personalities, complete with antic dispositions, fulfilling a kind of community ''glue'' function.

Yes, that'd be as opposed to those dour Heathcliff counsellors who cast gloom and doom around them with their un-antic dispositions, ungluing everybody and making the community feel it's lost on Yorkshire moors.

Does Hastie mean to evoke the kind of unctuous do gooder clap happy kind of Ned Flanders Christian that sees sensible kids driven to a life of atheism (yes, yes, it was the chaplain program what done it for the pond, and Ned that did it for Homer, though you'd have to rate the Reverend Lovejoy a close second).

In the 2011 Commonwealth Ombudsman's inquiry, hardly any schools complained about what their chaplains were doing. Where counsellors mostly deal with abnormal psychology, chaplains deal with positive psychology, wandering around bus lines and chatting to mums and kids.

That's simply not true, which is why there were a set of recommendations arising from a national consultation process, which will change the way the scheme operates because even the feds realised the program's limited aims weren't being accomplished and some Christians - especially the Queensland division - were using it for proselytising (and you can access the reports and the Ombudsman's report from links available here).

And ain't it wondrous to read how counsellors are mostly weird, while chaplains are positive (clap your hands and say you're happy).

And ain't it wondrous to read how all chaplains have to do is smile at the EMOs and the gays, and calm the nerd-bashing bullying jocks - like the brothers Cheeryble on a dose of ecstasy - and throw in a bit of positive psychology and all will be well, thanks to the healing power of god. And there are other upsides:

When a little boy gets cancer - which sadly happens all too often in all school communities - the chaplain might get up during a school assembly and say something comforting, yet not religious, just when something needs to be said, and just when the school counsellor is flat out counselling the traumatised little brothers and best friends.

Yep, it's simply not possible for a secularist or a deviant perverted atheist to get up during a school assembly and say something comforting, yet not religious, and perhaps not even involving blather about pie in the sky by and by.

We could go on and on, because Hastie goes on and offensively on, decrying school counsellors, and praising chaplains to the sky.

C0unsellors are simply too toffy and too educated, don't you know, so it's much better to have a flock of chaplains running around offering a comforting word here and there, and perhaps, for all the pond knows, a nice ham and cucumber sandwich and a cup of tea (that seems to sort out everything, less you're feeling like a scone with jam):

School counsellors keep a strategically low (almost furtive) profile, and mostly deal reactively and formally to student trauma, abnormal mental health and mass school crisis. A school counsellor typically has a bachelor's degree, a post-grad in education, and a masters in educational psychology. This is (at least) an eight-year training process.

Hiss boo, that's simply way too over-qualified and educated. Damn these counsellors, and their overworked and underpaid ways, and filling an entirely different role to a chaplain doing a Ned Flanders routine to set the entire school laughing and smiling for joy (why was that one of the most instructional episodes of The Simpsons? Nedward it here, flandiddy-anders fans ).

All students need is a comforting word, and bright-eyed volunteers, which produces a huge upside:

Most importantly, most chaplains have beneficent and gregarious personalities and a capacity to connect with youth: things a formal qualification simply cannot guarantee. If they did not, under current arrangements the schools would sack them.

Yes you can be qualified to be a school counsellor but that doesn't mean you're qualified to be a school counsellor. You need the power of the long absent god in your heart, and be beneficent and gregarious - rather than a skulking, sulking secularist - and then everything will be alright, whether you have a formal qualification, or the kind of qualification and beatific smile that membership of the Scripture Union gives you.

Now there might be a downside, a kind of pervasive sense that somehow Ned Flanders is running around state school corridors:

And yes, chaplains owe much of their beneficent impulses to their personal religious beliefs. Despite the euphemising of chaplaincy organisations and churches about ''neutrality'' and ''non-proselytising'', it is a no-brainer that the presence of religious chaplains in state schools is an unspoken endorsement of religious worldviews. On this Ron Williams is absolutely right.

Yep, let shamelessness be your guide.

All this is intended by way of Hastie explaining how, despite being a progressive Green at heart, he simply can't tick the Green box when voting because whenever they mention that a state secular education system should be a state secular education system, the substantial demographic of Australian Christian progressives stampedes away in a panic, back into the arms of conservative politics.

As if any Hastie expects any secularist who's graduated from primary school to swallow that sort of hogwash.

Howard devised the chaplaincy program to make sure Christians stayed within the fold - he'd even talk the talk with rabid ratbags like the Exclusive Brethren (here), and sent a goodwill message to Catch the Fire while the likes of Costello went off to yodel with Hillsong. And now Labor is terrified to stand up to the god botherers, while Hastie purports to have a crisis of conscience:

And so again my voting pencil will hover uncertainly over the Green box. Milne and Williams are right to note that this is about secular versus pluralist education: whether we can cope with the idea that religious world views can be socially present in state schools (I think we can, and they should).

It's just so irritating, that sort of illogical logic. Of course religious world views are socially present in state schools. The question is whether there should be a school chaplain program paid for by government which gives religion an advantage in their relentless proselytising, or a better funded school counselling program which isn't done on the cheap.

The truth is, the mainstream religions are a bunch of proselyetising Ponzi artists always in search of conversions, always running a scam, and always hooked on state money, as if they didn't get enough of it through tax breaks, and funding charity works, and now for god's sake running unemployment schemes and the like.

Hastie can carry on about the wretchedness of school counsellors, praise Christian chaplains to the sky, and hold his vote back from the Greens, but at least can we abandon the pretence that we should put ideology and theology aside for a moment, a day, or a week.

Reading this sort of tosh just ensures the pond won't be voting Labor. Let the Christian progressives have their Tony Abbott, and their version of climate science, and let them show their Christian style with refugees, and so on and so forth, and let's see who gets to head up to the heavens above on the wings of the rapture.

Presumably the progressive Hastie will ban the Greens so he can stick with Labor and their chaplain program. In this crazy world, a vote for an atheist PM is a vote for school chaplains.

But if an atheist PM sticks in his craw, will he vote for Abbott? In which case talk of being a progressive is mere idle chit chat, and why did he waste everyone's time scribbling this tosh?

Naturally he doesn't answer this question. Somehow it's just meant to torment the Greens and make them change their watermelon ways.

While sensible secularists are actually tormented by a federal government which wants to be John Howard in thought and deed, with the bonus of Peter Garrett as the Minister of Education.

Which is why the pond will probably be voting for Mr. Jack or perhaps Ms Jennet at the next election ... (and you too can think of the virtues of Equus africanus asinus in the ballot box).

(Below: this one's been doing the Facebook rounds - a pity there's not an equivalent for David Hastie's effort).