And the Courier-Mail's response...

[Letter sent to The Courier-Mail, 2:15pm 31 October 2005]

The kind of statements that Professor Ian Harper is making obviously alarms the secular media. They are not used to Christianity taking a front row seat in day-to-day Australian political life, apart from the token Lord's Prayer which opens Parliament. However, journalists like the rest of us need to get with the times, and should recall that our Head of State is not only the Queen of Australia but also the Head of the Church of England, a cementing of the Church / State relationship that happened almost half a millenia ago.

Where is the problem is Prof Harper "coming out" about his faith? Surely this reflects the wonderful diversity within Australian society. And if he wants to pray to one, all or no gods, why isn't that diversity tolerated, appreciated and celebrated? Why the attempt to seal off his private life from his public duties? Surely one informs the other.

It is not for nothing that Australians call those holding public office to higher personal standards than the great unwashed community - witness Democrats senator Andrew Bartlett's fall from grace over drinking (never a journalist's vice! Never!) or NSW Opposition leader Andrew Brogdon's calamity over "mail order bride" comments and advances to female journalists (was he mad?). And of course, public opionion of journalists has never been higher.

Surely as one of the few bastions of freedom and openess remaining in our society, The Courier-Mail should be supporting the Australian public's has right to know what is informing the decisions made by those who influence their lives - to have less is to demean not only the intelligence but also the political power of those who might be ignorant of the full facts.

What is needed is more of the kind of interviews done on, of all things, the ABC's Compas program "What Our Leaders Believe" - an open and honest investigation of the internal driving forces of many of our nations leaders. What is not needed is an implicit call to return to a secretive, elitist era, characterised by a few quiet drinks in sumptuous surrounding among those in high places, gently smoothing the pillow of the masses as they get duped yet again by their masters and betters.



IN EXPRESSING the hope that the wages his Fair Pay Commission sets for millions of Australia's lowest-paid workers will be "God's will", the head of that commission, Professor Ian Harper, has imprudently crossed a line that will make many Australians feel uneasy.

Placed in a sensitive position where workers of all faiths and none are relying on his good judgment and fairness, Professor Harper's comments will anger and alienate atheists, agnostics and many others who are grateful that public figures generally do not wear their faith on their sleeves in the same way Americans do.

More sensible is Professor Harper's assurance that his concern for the best interests of the poor and vulnerable, stemming from his Christian faith, will guide his decisions. This outlook should complement his expertise as a professor of the Melbourne Business School as he sets about balancing the issues at stake in setting a minimum wage that is somebody's income and somebody else's cost.

Professor Harper told the Australian Christian Lobby national conference in Canberra that he and his wife and "a very narrow circle of Christian brothers and sisters" are spending a lot of time praying about industrial relations. This is their private business. Professor Harper's public business is to do his job competently in the best interests of all Australians.

In setting about the task, he would do well to remember the advice of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430AD): "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you."

God's will all in a day's work

UNION leaders have attacked the man in charge of setting Australia's minimum wage after he suggested "God's will" would influence his decisions.
Professor Ian Harper said God would provide him with a "moral compass" when he deliberated on minimum wage levels.

Professor Harper is the government appointed head of the new Fair Pay Commission, the body with which the Howard Government will replace the Industrial Relations Commission.

Australian Workers Union Queensland secretary Bill Ludwig described his statement as an "extraordinary" development in 120 years of industrial relations.

Professor Harper said on the weekend that as chairman of the commission "I happen to have a personal Christian faith which is alive and I will be using that to guide me in how I read the evidence and how I vote around the commission table".

More

Caught in the soggy embrace of the Uniting Church

From The Australian... couldn't have put it better myself (or could I? Hmmmm!)

Caught in the soggy embrace of the Uniting Church

October 27, 2005

IT is called the kumbaya effect, the frightening phenomenon when a religious service starts to look like an Australian Democrats branch meeting. And it is happening to the Uniting Church, which has anew liturgical handbook that puts the k intokumbaya.

If this volume were any wetter it would need to be printed with waterproof ink. As it is, the pages emit an aroma of brown rice and patchouli oil.

Anybody interested in old-time religion - the ancient language of the King James Bible, details of damnation, that sort of thing - will be disappointed in the Uniting Church effort. Instead of divine wrath and resignation to the rule of an inscrutable deity, there is caring, sharing and empathy by the acre.

Regretful the family dog died? The Uniting Church has a prayer just for you. Want to get the bathroom blessed? Just turn to page 514.

There are also words of comfort for people unsettled by industrial action.

Perhaps because the church now appears to be the Democrats at prayer, there are inevitable calls for - you guessed it - social justice and world peace.

And ensuring there is a service for all seasons, there is also one for people getting divorced. When and where to hold it, and who to invite, should give the unhappy couple all sorts of extra issues to argue about.

Perhaps to avoid a demarcation dispute with the Family Court, there is a note reminding clergy that it "is not intended to enact the ending of a marriage".

Not only is the church hip to the issues of the hour, it uses language and examples familiar to all Australians, at least those who listen to a lot of Radio National.

Like the prayer that hopes God will guide "people in positions of power in government and business" "so all may live in peace and justice". The author obviously has not listened to question time lately or entirely got their head around capitalism.

And for congregants who have trouble with abstract ideas there are some spectacular, simplistic examples of spiritual need. Such as: "O God, we gather at your waters, as a hot and bothered crowd gathers at the beach on a sweltering, summer day." And maintaining the metaphor: "O God, we drink at your fountain, as a parched dog laps at the fresh, running water of a bush creek."

Thanks are also offered for budgerigars, bananas and that staple of the Protestant tradition, the mango.

All of this is fine for those who like local colour in their religion and want a prayer for the tool shed. But it is not all happy, clappy religion. The long list of topics for intercessory prayer includes "those who work for the preservation of natural resources and the environment", not to mention transgendered persons as well as "those who are addicted to drugs" and are "involved in vice and organised crime". There is also a suggestion for prayers for people who are probably beyond help, "all who work in the media and public communications".

Cynics may say this sort of religious expression is custom created to make hippies happy. But it seems this sort of thing has been around for quite a while.

In her recent book on why John Howard is very bad, God Under Howard, Marion Maddox says in the 1950s, when the Prime Minister was a Methodist, one of the predecessors of the Uniting Church, there was a lot of what is now called social justice spouted. Of course, it was nothing like now, when congregations are united in niceness.

But the Uniting Church can still do more if it really wants to be relevant. Where are the prayers for people whose investment property has declined in value? And statements of comfort for parishioners whose grandchildren just missed out on the HSC mark to make it into medicine? Nor does the church apologise anywhere near enough for the way Australian consumerism, code for people buying big houses, causes world poverty.

It is time the church stopped mucking about and really spoke out against evil. After all, what sort of committed congregation does not have a service of exorcism for families where somebody votes Liberal?

Smash the Howard Government's IR reforms!

From Green Left Weakly

What do conservative church leaders, a couple of neoliberal economics editors and Green Left Weekly have in common? Warning against the disastrous effect of the federal Coalition government’s new industrial relations agenda, misnamed WorkChoices, on working people’s lives.

Archbishops George Pell and Philip Jensen, the Sydney Morning Herald’s economic editor Ross Gittins and many others have joined trade unionists in criticising PM John Howard’s plans to erode our weekends, remove penalty rates and rely on workers’ ability to “bargain” individually with their bosses for decent pay and conditions. Individual workplace agreements (AWAs) are being presented as a choice: they are nothing of the sort.

More

Interesting reading, for its polemical style if nothing else. For example,

They...	We...
"attack"	"combat"
"smash"	"build"
have a "disastrous agenda"	"criticise" and "warn"
have "draconian laws"	seek "decent pay and conditions"
"erode"	have "growing organisation"
are "anti-union"	are "union and (wider) community"
"shift the balance of power"	"protest"

along with the old favourites...

They...	We...
have "profit"	have "wages"
are "bosses"	are "workers"
are "employers"	are [still] "workers"

There's a big ACTU sponsored rally on November 15.

Blogging – meant for ministry

From Christian Computing magazine...


Music & Multimedia
by Terry Wilhite

Blogging is the newest Internet craze, right up there with Podcasting. Blogging is Internet-based journaling that can be seen by a world wide audience and while not invented specifically for pastors, small group leaders or student ministers, it is one of the best communication forums I’ve seen in a long time for church leaders. Blogging allows you to do daily Internet journal entries and have the software automatically organize those comments in chronological order. Depending upon the preferences you establish, you can archive your entries by month or year so that your audience can easily retrieve past blogs.

Download the PDF here

Anti-terror laws put Australia on a dangerous path

Just waiting for the ABC to pick up what the Sydney Anglicans think about this...

The Federal Government's anti-terror legislation puts Australia on a dangerous path according to the Uniting Church President, the Reverend Dr. Dean Drayton.

"While every Government has a responsibility to protect itscitizens, these new laws send a clear message that the only way to do this is to erode people's rights. They have the potential to create an atmosphere of fear and distrust in Australia.

"We are concerned the Government has failed to allow adequate time for public discussion and debate about the proposed laws. It is unacceptable that the community is being told to accept measures that radically curtail civil liberties without widespread and substantial consultation."

I doubt if anyone would accept "measures that radically curtail to civil liberties" even with "widespread and substantial consultation", but that's just me. "Widespread and substantial consultation" may be the democratic and the UCA way to go, but that doesn't make it a better way to decide how to help us accept radically curtailed civil liberties.

Lend them a hand

More church responses on the latest IR proposals (and yes, the Salvation Army is a church, not a charity). I find it amusing to see the ABC seek the opinions of church leaders so earnestly when they are dealing with an issue that ABC policy must direct it to tacitly or overtly oppose.

Listening to ABC's AM program of a morning, there are far more harsh questions, probes and interrogations of Government representatives on this than on issues the ABC is sympathetic to (witness their soft interview of Quensland Premier Peter Beattie over Health a while back).

But now, heres this...

NICK MCKENZIE: But the Government has argued that it is still guaranteeing key conditions, and it's up to the worker, the employee, who can ask for the help of a bargaining agent, to decide if they want to then trade them away when they're signing up to an AWA.

JOHN DALZIEL: Yes, well the Salvation Army deals with people who are desperate. And I can assure you the desperate person will be quite willing to accept the most basic conditions to get their rung on the ladder. It won't matter how good the bargainer is, they'll say look that's all right, this is much better than being long term unemployed, or no other way I'm going to get a job, I'm not bright enough to get through to HSC.

NICK MCKENZIE: The Salvation Army has argued in the past for an ethical approach to boosting employment. Is this reform package ethical?

JOHN DALZIEL: When you look at this reform package from the most disadvantaged in Australia, it is not ethical because it exploits them.

Church / State IR Update

UPDATE: The UCA point of view available at Journey Online:

Uniting Church leaders today condemned the Government’s proposed industrial relations reforms and the limited safeguards announced yesterday which do little to protect the rights and conditions of Australia’s most vulnerable workers.

Uniting Church President, Reverend Dr. Dean Drayton, said the Government’s ‘WorkChoices’ reform package is more about choice for business than protecting the country’s workers.


“We are not comforted by the very minor safeguards which have been included. The Government is so focussed on the economy as an end in itself that it has lost sight of the real purpose of economic systems. The economy is a tool which should serve the needs of people.


“Workers are not commodities in the service of greater profits – they are people trying to make a decent life for themselves and their families. ‘WorkChoices’ claims it will make our labour market and our economy more competitive - but where does it legislate for cooperation, collaboration and community?”

Spot the differnces between the Angllicans and the Unitings on this one - there aren't many. Two things:

1. The ABC picks up what Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney, has to say, rather that Dean Drayion, National UCA honcho. Reflects the Sydney bias of the ABC? The availability of Peter Jensen? His media approachibility?

2. On this issue the UCA Assembly reps and the Sydney Anglicans agree. So the differences do not lie in the issue of social justice, at least as far as it applies to the labourer and his wages.

Churches concerned about IR changes

From the ABC's AM program:

The churches remain unconvinced about the benefits of the Federal Government's workplace reforms. The Catholic Church's employment relations body has said the Government's proposals do not appear to address "fundamental concerns about fairness and balance". The Uniting Church says the package outlined by the Prime Minister John Howard on Sunday is "disgraceful and excessive". And Sydney's Anglican Archbishop says he's concerned that the Government's plans could mean less time for relationships.

QUOTE from Peter Jensen:

"If this is the consequence of the new legislation, if it is, and I haven't read the legislation yet, there won't be time for relationships. And after all, I would have thought that's what life is about, rather than the economy. Withoutshared time, we may as well be robots. "

No futher UCA comments, however.

Back in the day

This is probably more a "faith and politics" type blog entry rather than "doctrine" but there are so many interesctions it seems a shame not to put it in, especially when such luminaries as Matthew Fox and John Shelby Spong get a podium spot. The quotes below are taken from a longer article posted on The Weekly Standard, about Michael Lerner, long-time activist and former agitator on Berkeley, Ca., campus, on or about the 1960s.

[H]is "Conference on Spiritual Activism," held at Berkeley this summer, tried to present a left-wing alternative to the dreaded Religious Right. Amid opening "visualizations" directed to Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, and the "goddess Divine Mother," Lerner hosted a fairly prominent array of Religious Left luminaries.

Item of interest: the term "prophetic faith" as contrasted with "fundamentalism" by evangelical left-wing activitst Jim Wallace. I have heard the term "prophetic faith" bandied around UCA circles, but I have never really grasped what it was supposed to mean. Now I get it. According to these guys, it's tied up with environmentalism, feminism, opposition to war (in particular the one in Iraq) and sexual liberation - all favourites of left-wing US politics.

Also amusing:

Defrocked Catholic priest Matthew Fox, now an Episcopalian, blamed war and economic injustice on "those who want to worship a dominating punitive Father God which includes the put down of women, nature, [and] gays." In soothing contrast, Fox offered a unisex, pantheistic "mother/father God who is embedded in nature, creativity, our bodies and all our art forms." Fox lambasted the Pope for defeating liberation theology and faulted Protestants for succumbing to a "kooky Christianity" of "domination and not of justice."

...and this:

Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong lashed out at this "domination" religion. "It's time to name evil as evil when sounded in pious accents of biblical religion," Spong declared. Conservative Catholicism and "evangelical fundamentalists" are growing because "hysterical people are seeking security," Spong fretted. Referring to the rise of religious conservatives based in the South, Spong claimed, to the audience's delight, "The old [segregationist] George Wallace vote simply applied perfume and call themselves the Religious Right."

.... and this, the icing on the cake!

Mindful of such progressive spiritual goals, an opening "visualization" exercise summoned a wide range of spirits, including the archangels, Adam and Eve, Hindu deities, Socrates and Aristotle, Moses and Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, Leonardo Da Vinci, White Buffalo Woman (from Sioux mythology), anthropologist Jane Goodall, environmentalist Rachel Carson, Gandhi, Anne Frank, Mother Theresa, and the Dalai Lama.

The reader is invited to draw their own conclusions about the relationship between these.

A million reasons to rediscover God

A clipping from Queensland's The Courier-Mail. Can't yet find the website "Australia for Jesus, but I would say the questionnairre in concern is something like this. Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort are also behind the website
http://www.wayofthemaster.com/, panned by the glitterazzi on the Youthmultimedia list who prefer "celebrity grunge" to "Star Trel Slick" as their haute couture of website design.


A million reasons to rediscover God

Alas and alack, this note, discovered in the CBD yesterday, is not legal tender. But while this clever piece of fakery might not allow you to retire to the Bahamas, it might pay your way into a more spiritual paradise. On the flip side is a web address which takes you to something called Australia for Jesus, a very useful website featuring a handy little questionairre which tells you whether you are going to hell or heaven. For the record, QC will burn for all eternity. The website contains links to a whole bunch of sites associated with American evangelist Ray Comfort. Yep, his real name. Interestingly, Ray is very chummy with for Growing Pains pin-up boy turned God-spruiker Kirk Cameron.

The Courier-Mail, 11 October 2005, p. 21.

Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church - Review

Just finished reading Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by D A Carson.

A review link is posted here - to which I would probably agree in the main.

I really enjoyed the read. Indeed, I savoured every moment. Some of Carson's writing is a bit thick in patches, but definately worth wading through. And the critique is non-stop, especially of Brian McLaren et al. Nice to know that doctrinal slipperiness can be firmly nailed down for what it is.

My biggest issue is that the book was TOO SHORT. But I will have to delve into Carson's back catalogue for sympathetic material - he cribbed a whole chapter from The Gagging of God (1996) - I book that was recommended to me many moons ago but I have still not gotten around to reading.

And my copy of The Younger Evangelicals still sits on my bookshelf unread (right next to The Da Vinci Code - also unread) - but no longer. No, I will read it (and The Da Vinci Code!) in the light of Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church and draw my own conclusions.

Reformissionary

Emerging Church engagement and critique. Reformissionary

For later reading.

The Media’s Secret Agenda

Some Sydney Anglican news...

Archbishop Peter Jensen’s address to the Access All Areas media conference, organised by Christians in the Media, is now available. In his address Dr Jensen tackled what he indicated were consistent distortions of faith messages to accomodate a secular mindset.

Dr Jensen says clear communication is important to a God who delivered his message in words.

“Christianity is a book religion that relies on language and words,” Dr Jensen says.
“God wants to speak to us in order to establish a fitting relationship with us. It’s no mistake that Jesus is referred to as the ‘word’ of God.” The Media’s Secret Agenda

This evokes the distinction some make between the "word of God" (the Bible, the Scriptures, the Biblical witneses, the Gospel) and the "Word of God" (Jesus, the Gospel). It can be seen in some interpretations of the Uniting Church's Basis of Union (para 5):

The Uniting Church acknowledges that the Church has received the books of the Old and New Testaments as unique prophetic and apostolic * testimony, in which it hears the Word of God and by which its faith and obedience are nourished and regulated. When the Church preaches Jesus Christ, its message is controlled by the Biblical witnesses. The Word of God on whom salvation depends is to be heard and known from Scripture appropriated in the worshipping and witnessing life of the Church. The Uniting Church lays upon its members the serious duty of reading the Scriptures, commits its ministers to preach from these and to administer the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper as effective signs of the Gospel set forth in the Scriptures.

* A study I am doing with my small group at the moment, characterised by a mixed bag of helpful material, and what I see as a pretty heavy handed agenda.

See also Bill Loader's Approaches to Scripture (he is a co-author of the above study) and the response.

I am leaning towards something like this at the moment:

(1) Literary interdependence is not in any way a denial of inspiration; it is only a denial of mechanical dictation as the mode of inspiration. The nature of the Bible is such that it is both the Word of God and the words of men. To deny the first is analogous to Arianism; to deny the second is analogous to Docetism. Both are Christological heresies. And if the analogy between the incarnate Word (Christ) and the living Word (Bible) is one intended by scripture, then we could say with equal force that to deny either the divine inspiration or the full human involvement in the making of the Bible is heretical.

(2) The incarnation invites and even demands that we look at the Bible with the best of our historical-critical tools. If we do not, then our bibliology is really no different than the Muslims’ view of the Quran. I am persuaded that the closer we look, the better the Bible looks. Or, as an old British scholar of yesteryear said, “We treat the Bible like any other book to show that it is not like any other book.”

From The Synoptic Problem and Inspiration: A Response.

Plus, I take Peter Jensen's advice on where God you will hear (and won't hear) God, and apply to it those who worship ("experience the presence of God in") nature:

...[our] reception of revelation in nature is distorted. There is nothing wrong with the revelation itself. God is a great communicator, a perfect one. The problem is with us. When Adam sinned on our behalf he put himself and his family outside the Garden, where God spoke to him face to face. In the world outside the garden, free, so he dreamed, from the authority of the word of God, he became enslaved three times over: to his own fallen nature, to cosmic evil and to human communal wrong. He and his successors rejoice in a spurious freedom, a freedom marked by an unspoken addictiveness

.. and those who worship ("experience the presence of God in") multimedia/popular culture:

We cannot hear his message in this world, Instead we habitually take parts of the world and worship them. Our idolatry is a testimony to the need we have to be united with God and yet our alienation from him We would rather be in charge of our gods instead of submitting to the true God. Ironically, of course, we are in fact dominated by the gods we choose for ourselves. You only have to see the addictive, and spiritually crippling, power of money and of shopping.

THE PROBLEM IS US. Are we trying to see God's revelation in the works of our own hands? (art, music, drama). Isn't this a definition of idolatry? If not, someone, please enlighten me. There must be a separation between human inspiration and divine inspiration, otherwise I may as well follow a religion of my own making, and you yours, and let's forget about whether or not there is any ontological connection at all.

The empahisis of the Basis of Union on message of the being controlled by the Biblical witnesses when it preaches Jesus Christ needs to be taken as just that - control. Not "guided" or affirmed". By control I take it to mean being under the authority of Scripture, not the reader / interpreter controlling or having authority over it. We will find God (or rather, God will find us) in his revelation given to us in the Scriptures, illumed by the Spirit, and revealed in the person and work of Christ.