To be frank

Praying for rain is not enough

    In drought-stricken Australia, the Prime Minister recently announced that soon our government may have to take drastic measures, to deny irrigation water to a huge region of the country which has been called the nation’s food-bowl. Many towns in this region are already in desperate situations.
    Following this statement, the P M then called on everyone to pray for rain. This kind of statement may be common-place in other countries, but it is rare in Australia for a political leader to call people to prayer.
    As a result, Centre for Christian Ethics, at Morling College in Sydney, has devoted its newsletter ‘Soundings’ (edited by Rod Benson) to this theme.
    Here I reproduce that letter: first, because I think some excellent thinking is expressed in it, and secondly because I think it is well worth thinking about the political interface between public policy and our individual religious and moral commitments. Too easily, the latter are seen as private matters. But here they come together. It is quite proper for us to be religiously concerned about the drought. But is that just a matter of praying for rain, when we are in hard times?

In search of leadership

This weekend, in the national political scene, a struggle is going on within the federal parliamentary opposition. A new leadership team will be elected on Monday, and conceivably the leader could be our next Prime Minister.
When announcing a challenge, against the incumbent (Kim Beazley), Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard declared that they are offering a new style of leadership. Quite rightly, in my view, they said that Australians are seeking a new alternative, a different approach to our political life.
There is I believe a deep longing for a genuine change, not just another party hack.
Kevin Rudd has recently published some significant articles about faith and politics. He has taken the stage to speak publicly about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as one of his role models. He has challenged the influence of the 'Religious Right' as the only way in which Christians can have a role in politics. Instead, he has argued for a social justice perspective, and he embodies that alternative—both to the religious right, and to the atheist left.
But I find myself wondering what is meant by 'leadership', when these people suggest that our nation is looking for fresh leadership.

Community is its own value

There has been a lot of carry-on in Australian politics of late about 'Australian values', and the demand that people coming to this country, as immigrants or even on a visitors visa should subscribe to 'Australian values'.
Alas, no one seems to know exactly what these are!
There is a similar concern that schools should be teaching these values.
Meanwhile, in the United States there has been another appalling shooting of school children, this time of children in an Amish community.
Today, a student and colleague circulated the following report from a writer within the Sojourners group.
I am unashamedly copying this, as it has such value to offer.
It speaks of the values of community, forgiveness and peace. It also has helpful suggestions, for those of us who feel there is nothing we can do. There are things we can do!
If only these were the values we could teach and share, with our children and those who come to be part of our nation .

In place of religion

There is a parable of Jesus, in which an 'unclean spirit' leaves a person, but does not find a new home. It returns, to find its former home lovely and clean—and empty. So it goes to find seven friends, to join it and they move back in. The last state of the house is worse than the first, Jesus says. (Matthew 12. 43 - 45.)

So, if we are going to abandon religion, what will we put in its place, lest it return with seven more monsters, to wreak havoc upon our lives and out communties?

This is I think the real challenge for us, and to answer this question we have to work out not just what we are against but what we are for.

I am for a fair dinkum faith; that is, a faith that has enough integrity at least to try to say what it is for, including what might even be of lasting value, despite itself, in what we so easily label and reject as 'religion'.

I am for faith, rather than religion.

I'm not religious, but ...

It will be interesting to see the results of the recent Census of the Australian population. An ever growing number of people are ticking the box for 'No Religion'.

It's an interesting question just what people mean by that.
As indicated in the discussion of Voting for Jesus, a significant number of people are interested in the person of Jesus, in a way, but they are really turned off by what they see of the church.
Which part of all this is 'religious'?
I have always been a strong critic of 'religion', as I think Jesus was, too. So are many of the people I regard as good Christians. Many of my friends who consider themselves Christian say that they are not religious.
What do we mean by this?
Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian of the twentieth century, thundered against religion, and once called it 'the last bastion of godless [human beings]'.
What do we mean by religion here, and what are we for when we say we are Christian but not religious?

Voting for Jesus 2

More reflection on Amanda Lohrey's Quarterly Essay, Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics in Australia.
My special interest here is in some of the theological ideas, beginning with the idea of a popular Jesus, set free from 'religion'.
In so many ways, this is exactly what I have longed for, not only as a young person but also as a pastor. If only the Gospel Jesus taught, lived and died for, could be our focus, rather than 'The Church'.

But the danger here is that the 'Jesus' we end up with is a figment of our own wishes, who validates what we want.

Lohrey picks this up well when she writes: 'A free-floating Jesus suits a corporatised model of religion, such as that of the current mega-churches, because it mobilises an already established and powerful god-image in a way that is not hidebound by clericalism and a history of church politics. Cut loose from traditional forms of human authority—the scriptures are not human but the word of God—Jesus can be anything you want him to be.' (p32) There is much that is right about this!

But there is an interesting paradox here. Lohrey is saying that this way of thinking about Jesus especially suits 'corporatised religion'. It's not a Jesus set free from religion, just set free from the older forms of church.

Even more interesting is the fact that this new kind of religion works with a quite distinctive image of God—God the Father, and this in turn exactly suits a particular kind of politics.

Voting for Jesus

I've just finished reading the latest Quarterly Essay, called Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics in Australia, written by Amanda Lohrey.
There is so much that is insightful, disturbing and challenging in this excellently written piece.
It begins and ends with discussions with young people attending one of the 'mega-churches' which have come to prominence and to political influence in the last few years.
The essay suggests that these groups of Pentecostals and Evangelicals do not in fact comprise really large numbers of voters, but they have been very effective in creating the impression that they do, and that their political clout is much more than it really is. But what they do have is strategic influence, out of all proportion to their numbers—and the politicians know this, and some of them like it that way.
Conversely Lohrey shows that in fact governments make use of these groups, when and as it suits them, but also ignore them when they want to.
Amidst all this Lohrey has some really valuable and challenging things to say.

Praise Music

For a long time I have imagined that when God handed out the genes, I was at the end of the queue when it came to the 'Praise and Worship' gene.
Everywhere I visit the local churches, the emphasis is on what is called 'Praise' music.
The leader, usually someone skilled in singing rather than in worship, will introduce the singing of numerous, repeated and often repetitious songs as 'a time of praise and worship'. Often this is in fact called 'worship', as if all else that happens is not.
It's been a huge transformation from the style of worship and the music of my upbringing.
And around the world all this has led to what are called 'the worship wars'. No subject has elicited so much conflict in local congregations, and sadly a number of local congregations have split, or their pastors been forced to leave, because of these 'wars'.
Amazing, that the worship of God should be the subject of such angst.
I felt some of that angst personally when in a meeting with some pastors of large churches. The conversation included discussion of worship styles, and one of the pastors confidently declared that what takes place in several of his services would not be to my liking or preference.
I found myself thinking: 'What do you know of my liking or preferences?'
Indeed, what are my preferences?
As always, is is much easier to say what I do not find easy to go with. It is not a matter of music styles. It has more to do with inanity. I find worship songs that insult my intelligence, that are inane in the extreme, that are basically poor poetry and lacking in basic grammar or elementary style, these are just offensive. Not theologically offensive, though sometimes they are. No, they offend one's basic intelligence, and that's where the problem is. They cause me to be critical, at exactly the time when I am wanting not to be critical, but rather to offer myself in humility before God.
A few days later, a transforming experience came to me.

On being morally alive

Today I finished teaching for this current semester, and in the energy which comes from that positive arrival (yes, it is a real joy to teach, and to see how my students —most of them, anyway—engage so constructively with doing theology), I have finally gotten around to blogging.

Several things come together this week to prompt my reflections.
What joins them, in my thinking, is the question of what it means to be morally alert, or alive to the basic meaning of being a fellow human being.

Last week, a woman was kidnapped and murdered, in the carpark behind her work-place. Her car was stolen, and all that was found was a large pool of blood and some human hair.
In the next days, the police found no fewer than ten people, who had heard what they described as 'blood-curdling screams', but not one of them reported anything to the police or to anyone else.

A week later her car, and body, have been found.

On this same day, a leading political commentator, Robert Manne, published an article in The Age newspaper, titled 'Oh, to be so morally complacent'. His piece suggests that 'the Howard prime ministership has put the national moral conscience to sleep'.

I am not interested just now in debating whether this is Howard's fault. I agree with Manne's diagnosis, though: that we have become a community whose moral awareness is altered. We have lost our conscience. We are not really morally alive, responsible to our fellow citizens—not even the citizens of our own local place, let alone those beyond our shores.

Spirituality of place, 2: Contrasts

Place is at least as important as time, or what we have thought was the realm of history, in our basic understanding of who we are and where we are with God.

Some time ago I had the opportunity to visit a number of places which showed this to me.

One of these was the compound where the ‘Branch Davidian’ sect used to be, until they were destroyed in a massive explosion, in April 1993.
These are some notes I made, after visiting there in 1995:
“It is a hard place to find; it's really just a large field in a lush farming district. But it is one of the most desolate places I have ever visited. As you enter a farm track, there is a timber hut bearing numerous signs, one saying 'The Most Persecuted Church on Earth', and others decrying the US Government and announcing that here is the true Lion of Judah, the people of God, etc. There's a tent museum, with photographs and newspaper clippings, telling of what happened there, and several attendant people, who live there still and will tell you all about it, if you give them half a chance. Further down the track, there are two huge mounds of rubble, bull-dozed some time later, and near them a grove of young trees, each one having beneath it a plaque bearing the name and national flag of the 120 or so people who died in the fire, many of them young children, lots of them the teenage conquests of David Koresh. And amongst all this, a caravan, where lives a Seventh day Adventist pastor, who will rush out to give you another leaflet, denouncing the Davidian Sect and offering the real truth about it all.
    This place was the site of religious madness.