Roundup: Service boycott, what’s killing the churches, drones

Uniting Church boycotts opening

Canberra’s Uniting Church presbytery has refused to attend Vicki Dunne’s controversial church service for the start of the Legislative Assembly year because it is ”not multi-faith enough” and too politically divisive.

The internet is not killing organised religion

At the end of the day it is not so much “the culture” — digital culture, secular culture — that is driving young people from churches, it is religious culture itself. Particularly, it seems, the religious culture found in progressive mainline and liberal Catholic denominations.

US counts the cost of a deadly idea

America has developed a new dependency on armed drones, pilotless aircraft guided from afar that can rain instant death from unseen heights. They’ve been used to kill more than 1500 people, including at least four US citizens, in a program of daily targeting and assassination.

US drone use could set dangerous example for rogue powers

Imagine if North Korea or Iran or Venezuela deployed thousands of unmanned surveillance aircraft in search of earthbound enemies, a swarm of robotic hunters armed with lethal weaponry and their governments’ go-ahead to exterminate targets.