Church of Conscious Living


The Church of Conscious Living is a "fake" or "sham" church according to the NSW Government and the media, established by "anti-vaccine zealots" founded by Stephanie Messenger and promoted by the Australian Vaccination Network in order to exploit religious exemptions in Australian "No Jab, No Play" policies for publicly supported childcare and play schemes. Mainstream churches have denounced it as the "cult of anti-vaccine".
The Church of Conscious Living is not registered as a church or charity with the Australian federal government's Charities and Not-for-profits Commission; it is instead registered as a for-profit business.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald:
Virologist Dr David Hawkes described the group as a "devious sham", and investigation by the Telegraph found that no real church in Australia had any doctrinal objection to vaccination. It was denounced as "a scam" by NSW opposition health spokesman Andrew McDonald.
McDonald specifically identified the Church of Conscious Living, describing "spurious religious exemptions" as being open to abuse and exploitation in the legislation as then proposed, saying: "Today, sadly, we have already seen an attempt by the Australian Vaccination Network—it should be called the Australian anti-vaccination network—to exploit the loophole in these new vaccination laws by encouraging their supporters to join the Church of Conscious Living and avoid the New South Wales Government's vaccination legislation". Minister for Health Jillian Skinner noted that the "church" was promoted by the Australian Vaccination Network, and commented that recent changes to legislation permitted the Health Care Complaints Commission to scrutinise this activity.
Tony Abbott pledged, as federal opposition leader, to restrict religious exemptions to "clear religious reasons" and as Prime Minister in April 2015 he announced that family and childcare payments worth thousands of dollars per year would be stripped from vaccine refusers unless supported by a religious exemption formally approved by the Government.