From the Interim Headmaster
Dear Students, Parents and Carers
As you have no doubt seen, there has been some recent media coverage regarding decisions within the Sydney Anglican Diocese and the Anglican Church of Australia – decisions that may have raised questions about what this means for schools like Shore. Let me assure you that these decisions will have no impact on Shore’s fundamental ethos and approach.
The impact of Church politics on the School is, in my view, nil. Perhaps the obvious needs to be stated, for the sake of clarity. Shore is not the Anglican Church, it is a school. Nonetheless it is an Anglican school, and we will continue to commend all that is good and true about the Christian faith and Anglican traditions as part of our ongoing work.
Shore continues to put the pastoral welfare of its students to the fore. It seeks to be an inclusive Anglican school which welcomes students from a broad range of opinions in society. Inclusivity has limits. Some views are beyond the pale; examples are antisemitism and racism. We do not wish to give a megaphone to the purveyors of those ideas which are vile. Such exclusions are not really controversial. To most people, they are obvious. Other ideas, which may be controversial, are still appropriate to discuss. People of goodwill can be found on both sides of debates.
Shore continues to be an invitational Christian school of the Anglican tradition. While it commends Christian faith, it does not oblige it. There is no intent here to pressure students into a monochrome conformity of views. There are good reasons for this stance: Jesus didn’t do it, and it demonstrably doesn’t work. We accept that in this society, ideas are contested and a fine school is a marketplace of ideas, where they can be discussed freely (apart from advocacy of those I mentioned) as young people form their world views which they take into adulthood.
Far from being a retreat of some kind, this is in fact a biblical position, as put by the Apostle in 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” In fact, in a society which is increasingly fractured, and where opponents are inclined to shout at or even past one another, we need to model and teach the value of disagreeing well. Before we reject someone’s point of view, we should first seek to understand it. We wish this from those who disagree; it is incumbent on us to model it for them.
Accordingly, Shore will seek to continue to function in the faith domain as it has done for decades; respectfully, invitationally, with sensitivity, in a way which honours the faith we uphold, and our long tradition of critical engagement with the world of ideas.
Dr John Collier
Interim Headmaster