St Mary's Vicar's Blog

The Wholly Innocent, by Bruce Dawes

2012-01-18T02:36:00.004+11:00

I never walked abroad in air
I never saw the sky
Nor knew the sovereign touch of care
Nor looked into an eye.

I never chose, nor gave consent
Nor voted on my fate
Unseen, I came, unseen I went
Too early and too late

This was my life-line trust
As absolute as blood
Now down in the bucket thrust
Anonymous as mud

Oh you within whose God-like power
Lies to so decide
Remember me when, some late hour
Talks turn to genocide

For I was part of that doomed race
Whose death-cell was the womb
But who can clear a bloody space
And call it living room

I never had a name or cried
That central cry "I am"
But in a world-wide shambles died
Defenceless as a lamb

Remember me next time you
Rejoice at sun or star
I would have loved to see them too
I never got that far.

The right side of history

2011-10-09T00:25:00.001+11:00

I was interested to read in a recent article (here) from the Australian that the phrase 'the right side of history' has been growing in popularity. For example President Obama has claimed that American foreign policy during the so-called Arab spring is on the 'right side of history'.

I didn't agree with Frank Furedi's analysis of the phenomenon: this has absolutely nothing to do with a resurgent belief in Fate. Yet the observation is an interesting one all the same.

When people speak about the 'right side of history' they are using a moral rhetorical device. They are saying 'I am in the right because history will judge me to have been correct.' This argument seems to acknowledge that when someone is in the midst of an issue it can be hard to know what is right or wrong, because as history is being made, it is hard to know what to do. However eventually the benefit of hindsight will bring moral clarity and at some time in the future people will come to a consensus about what was the right decision, and they will be right. The 'right side of history' is the side which people some time in the future will uphold as correct,

There could also be a more pragmatic view of morality embedded in this rhetorical flourish. This is the sense that there will be a 'winning' side who will get to write the history, and if you make the right choice now, you will find yourself on that winning side, and those who write history will look more kindly on your contributions and think better of you.

For example, many British people supported Chamberlain's appeasement stance at the time, but 'history' ruled against Chambelain, both in terms of a moral judgement – Chamberlain's 'peace in our time' slogan came to be destested as a grotesque deception – and because the opposing position represented by Churchill won out politically and militarily. Appeasement did not win WWII.

As another example, most British politicians at the end of the 18th century supported the slave trade. This was a popular, mainstream view at the time, but 'history' has rejected it as abhorrent.

The phrase 'the right side of history' seems to presuppose a belief in progress, that people in the future will know best, because they will be morally more enlightened. It also seems to presuppose that a stable consensual view of history will emerge as the 'correct' one. Not true. Historical perspectives shift and things thought admirable in one era will be detested in another.

The phrase also acknowledges a degree of moral confusion and uncertainty, that people find it hard right now to know what is right and wrong. Surely moral uncertainty is part of the spirit of our age. The person who uses the phrase is claiming that despite this uncertainty, their views will win the day. "Trust me - sometime in the future people will come to see that I did the right thing."

There is, it seems to me, an element of cowardice and moral surrender in the phrase, with its overtones of 'winner takes all' virtue. We should not do what is right just because it is right, but only because future generations will find it to be right. Does this mean that if the Third Reich had won WWII, they would have been on the 'right side of history', and Hitler's genocidal policies would have been judged to have been virtuous? Is that all that morality consists of – the judgement of history?

Surely this is a desperate rhetoric, the forlorn cry of a lost and confused generation, without any moral compass of its own, which is desperately scrambling to second-guess the moral judgement of future generations in an attempt to find some point of certainty. Is this all we are left with as the foundation of morality: if our grandchildren will only think well of us, all will be well. Such rhetoric plays on people's fears of being shamed, but that is a hopeless basis for distinguishing right from wrong.

The Rise and Rise of Horror - David Goldberg (aka 'Spengler') on Horror in US popular culture

2011-09-07T22:11:00.000+10:00

How the hijackers changed American culture
By Spengler

This essay is excerpted from my collection of essays, It's Not the End of the World - It's Just the End of You [1]. It appears simultaneously with my new book, How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying Too). [2].

A month after the September 11, 2001 attack, I wrote in this space:

The grand vulnerability of the Western mind is horror. The Nazis understood this and pursued a policy "des Schreckens" (to cause terror) and "Entsetzens" (horror, literally: dislodgement). Horror was not merely an instrument of war in the traditional sense, but a form of Wagnerian theater, or psychological warfare on the grand scale. Hitler's tactical advantage lay in his capacity to be more horrible than his opponents could imagine. The most horrible thing of all is that he well might have succeeded if not for his own megalomaniac propensity to overreach.

America, as Osama bin Laden taunted this week, lost in Vietnam. But it was not military setbacks, but the horrific images of Vietnamese civilians burned by napalm, that lost the war. America's experience in the war is enshrined in popular culture in the film Apocalypse Now, modeled after Joseph Conrad's story, The Heart of Darkness. The Belgian trading company official, Paul Kurtz, sinks into bestiality and dies with these words: "The horror! The horror!" It was a dreadful film, but a clever reference. At the close of World War I, T S Eliot subtitled his epitaph for Western civilization, The Waste Land, with a quote from the Conrad story: "Mr Kurtz, he dead." [3]

In this essay, adapted from material first published in First Things magazine, I argue that the 9/11 terrorists succeeded in precisely this goal: to employ the theater of horror to demoralize Americans. The culture has changed in consequence of the attack, to our detriment.

The "horror" genre supplied one out of 10 feature films released in the United States in 2009, according to the International Movie Database. During Universal Studios' heyday in the 1930s, the proportion was one in 200; only a decade ago it was one in 25. Vampire teen heartthrobs meanwhile take first place on some lists of best-selling books.

By way of contrast, 716 horror features were released in 2009, compared to 39 Westerns, a ratio of almost 20 to one. During 1960-1964, Americans saw more Westerns than horror movies. The earlier date is pertinent because it includes two of the most fearful events in post-war American history, namely, the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of president John F Kennedy.
Westerns invariably portray a well-understood form of evil and contrast it to the courage to stand up to evil. Horror films involve an evil that is incomprehensible because it is supernatural and so potent that ordinary courage offers no remedy.

Americans never were more frightened than during the Cuban missile crisis, when nuclear war might have erupted, and never more affected by an act of violence than by the murder of a president. But in the 1960s, Americans thought they understood what they most feared; today they appear to fear most what they cannot understand.

What has horrified them?

The element of incomprehension, that is, of the supernatural, distinguishes the horror genre from mere gratuitous violence. It is not the spurting blood or mangled flesh that defines horror but the presentiment that the world itself is disordered: Demons abound in the absence of a beneficent God, who is somehow absent.

There is nothing new in the monsters that infest popular culture, indeed, nothing particularly scary about them compared to the lurid products of the pagan imagination in antiquity. What is new is the unprecedented way in which they have proliferated in the American popular media.

In biblical terms, we may define horror as the presentiment that the forces of chaos have escaped their appointed bounds and that a good God no longer exercises mastery. Fear and awe of God differ radically from horror: We fear God's punishment and stand in awe of his presence, but we are horrified when we no longer believe that God will do justice. One might mention in this context Psalm 74:
O God, my king from of old,
Who brings deliverance throughout the land;
It was You who drove back the sea with Your might,
Who smashed the heads of the monsters in the water;
It was You who crushed the heads of Leviathan,
Who left him as food for the denizens of the desert.
As Jon Levenson of Harvard University observes (in Creation and the Persistence of Evil), these are unmistakable references to a Canaanite myth discovered in the excavation of Ugarith (14th century BCE). "Each of these words occurs in some form in the passage just quoted. Without the Ugaritic literature, these allusions would remain tantalizing obscurities."

In Levenson's reading, creation ex nihilo in the sense of an instantaneous change from nothing to something fails to capture the theological implication of the biblical creation story.
Two and a half millennia of Western theology have made it easy to forget that throughout the ancient Near Eastern world, including Israel, the point of creation is not the production of matter out of nothing, but rather the emergence of a stable community in a benevolent and life-sustaining order.

The defeat by YHWH of the forces that have interrupted that order is intrinsically an act of creation. The fact that order is being restored rather than instituted was not a difference of great consequence in ancient Hebrew culture. To call upon the arm of YHWH to awake as in "days of old" is to acknowledge that these adversarial forces were not annihilated in perpetuity in primordial times. Rising anew, they have escaped their appointed bounds and thus flung a challenge at their divine vanquisher.
There is a radical difference, by the same token, between Christian apocalyptic literature and the corresponding subgenre of horror films: In the former, God manifests himself in the world and his mastery over the fearful apparitions never is in doubt. But God remains inexplicably absent while hell rampages in The Omen or Rosemary's Baby.

Biblical faith has no need of theodicy (YHWH explicitly condemns the theodical arguments of Job's friends in 42:7). Jeremiah's famous accusation (Jer 12-13) against YHWH is neither a philosophical judgment of God nor a cry of horrified despair but rather an indignant demand that God rise up and destroy the wicked:
You will be in the right, O LORD, if I make claim against You,
Yet I shall present charges against you:
Why does the way of the wicked prosper? ...
Drive them out like sheep to the slaughter,
Prepare them for the day of slaying!
As Levenson comments: "The answer - and please note that there is an answer here - is nothing like those rationalizations proposed by the philosophers: 'Drive them out like sheep to the slaughter.' The answer to the question of suffering of the innocent is a renewal of activity on the part of the God of Justice. In light of the answer, it becomes clear that the question is not an intellectual exercise but rather a taunt intended to goad the Just God into action." Jeremiah recounts dreadful events, but he is outraged rather than horrified. That is the decisive difference.

The faith of the West too easily devolves into philosophical rationalization about divine justice rather than persisting as faith in the covenantal relationship with a just and loving God. We then become vulnerable to a neo-pagan foe that wielded horror as an instrument of policy.

What produces monsters is not the sleep of reason but the absence of faith. God's creation metaphorically banished the monsters from the world in the biblical creation story. If we cease to believe that God will rise up as of old and fight our fight, then we will reify the world's evil in the guise of fictional monsters. That is the secret of our morbid fascination with the horror genre.

Why do Americans pay to watch images as revolting as the cinematic imagination can discover? Many things might explain the vast new market for uncanny evil. If you do not believe in God, you will believe in anything, to misquote G K Chesterton; and, one might add, if you do not feel God's presence, you will become desperate to feel anything at all. Terror and horror are at least some kind of feeling. After pornography has jaded the capacity to feel pleasure, what remains is the capacity to feel fear and pain.

But there is to the horror genre a pattern, of highs and lows, that may reflect something specific about Hollywood's feeding of the mood of the United States - something about America's encounter with truly horrible events, from World War II through Vietnam and down to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the lingeringconflict in Iraq. Terror loiters in dark corners just off the public square.

Among all the film genres, horror began as the most alien to America. The iconic examples of the genre in the 1930s required European actors and exotic locales - vampires from Central Europe, for example, and zombies from Haiti. The films were noteworthy precisely because they were so unlike the cinematic mainstream: In 1931, the year that Frankenstein and Dracula first appeared, the worldwide film industry managed to make and release 1,054 features, of which only seven could be called supernatural thrillers.

After retreading the same material for 20 years, Hollywood finally put a stake through the genre's heart. By 1948, the few horror films being made were the likes of Abbott and Costello encountering Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein's monster. Laughing at monsters was emblematically American - and remained so, as when Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder did it, perhaps best of all, in 1974 with Young Frankenstein.

In other words, Hollywood gave us a small run of exotic-origin horror films in the 1930s, all drawn from European fiction: Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Portrait of Dorian Grey. After World War II, however, these nightmares of tormented Europeans were mostly naturalized as sight gags for American adolescents.

And that was how it was supposed to be. The monsters had a different meaning in their Old World provenance. The pagan sees nature as arbitrary and cruel, and the monsters that breed in the pagan imagination personify this cruelty. Removed from their pagan roots and transplanted to America, they became comic rather than uncanny.

America was the land of new beginnings and happy endings. The monsters didn't belong. After 1946, Adolf Hitler had been crushed, and that was that. Americans did not want to think about it anymore. And at the height of the national self-confidence that followed, the horror genre almost disappeared from American film. In 1950, for example, Hollywood managed only four films in the genre, all B-movie filler.

Horror recolonized American culture during late 1960s. The genre jumped from 2% of all films to 6% between 1968 and 1972. The homegrown American horror film, moreover, evolved from summer-camp slashers to truly disturbing portrayals of torture and madness.

As the online commentator Marco Lanzagorta notes, "A renewed interest in the horror genre" arrived "in the late 1960s, most probably due to the success of sophisticated and revolutionary horror films" in the vein of Night of the Living Dead (George Romero's 1968 surprise B-movie hit) and Rosemary's Baby(Roman Polanski's 1968 major-studio release).

What motivated so many Americans to subject themselves to such torment? Perhaps the explanation is that, with Vietnam, horror had returned as a subject in American life. United States troops were engaged with an enemy that made civilian populations the primary theater of battle, fighting a different and terrible sort of war. The images of civilians burnt by napalm transformed my generation. Until our adolescence - I was already 12 when John F. Kennedy was killed - America's civic religion was taken for granted. In 1963, my peers and I put our right hands over our hearts when the flag passed; by 1967 we did not flinch at flag burning. Horror over a war in which civilians could not be distinguished from combatants destroyed America's civic religion, and it was, I suspect, also the beginning of the end of mainline Protestantism.

Long after the fact, Francis Ford Coppola took Joseph Conrad's tale of horror in the jungle and transplanted it to Vietnam. Compared to what we had seen on television, the Apocalypse Nowof 1979 seemed trivial, but it gave permanent images to the post-Vietnam national mood: the sense of being lost in a nightmare of pointless and pervasive cruelty.

As data drawn from the Internet Movie Database shows, the horror genre grew from insignificance during the 1950s to 6% of all releases by 1972, in the last phase of the Vietnam War. A second spike came in 1988, driven by a bumper crop of sequels to established series (Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Critters, Friday the 13th, and so on).

But what accounts for the six-fold increase in the total number of horror films released since 1999? Subgenres such as erotic horror (mainly centered on vampires) and torture (the Saw series, for example) dig deep into the vulnerabilities of the adolescent psyche. Given the success of these films over the past 10 years, the number of Americans traumatizing themselves voluntarily is larger by an order of magnitude than it has ever been before.

There are any number of possible explanations for this phenomenon. What the bare facts show, however, is that moviegoers are now evincing a susceptibility to horror. People watch something in the theater because it resonates with something outside the theater. To see the cinematic representation of horrible things may be frightening, but the viewer knows that it is safe.

And the sense of safety we derive from watching make-believe things helps us tolerate the prospect of real things. What in the world today horrifies us the most? The horror that attended the Vietnam War had far-reaching cultural effects even though not a single shot was fired on American territory. All the more so should we expect the attack on the World Trade Center and its aftermath to have such consequences.

Random acts of terror against civilians seem a new and nearly incomprehensible instrument of war to most Americans. That is why they have such military value: The theater of horror has a devastating effect on our morale. The same is true for suicide attacks, which continue on a scale that has no historical precedent.

The enemy's contempt for his own life is, in a sense, even more disturbing than his disregard for ours. Nor should we underestimate the cultural impact of the torture debate. Not only has America considered regularizing an abhorrent practice, but our armed forces have became entangled in countries where torture is a routine and daily matter. Americans do not need to imagine what might be going on in Afghanistan. On YouTube they can see videos of young Muslim women being tortured for minor infractions.

Starting on September 11, 2001, Americans were exposed to an enemy that uses horror as a weapon, as did the Nazis - who never succeeded in perpetrating violence on American soil. In its attempt to engage the countries whence the terrorists issued, America has exposed its young people to cultures in which acts of horror (suicide bombing, torture and mutilation) have become routine.

As long as we insist that there is no fundamental difference between our outlook and theirs - and as long as we make only weak attempts to take responsibility for the civic outcome in such cultures - their horror becomes ours. In World War II, America portrayed its cause as a crusade against the forces of evil. Today, we send female soldiers wearing headscarves under their helmets to show cultural sensitivity to the Afghans.

How much damage the souls of Americans have incurred in consequence of this exposure to real horror, we cannot say. But the growing morbidity of America's imagination as shown in the consumption of cinematic horror suggests we might heed the tagline of Jeff Goldblum's 1986 remake of Vincent Price's The Fly, made famous by Christina Ricci in the 1993 spoof Addams Family Values: Be afraid - be very afraid.

Notes
1. It's Not the End of the World, It's Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations by David Goldman. RVP Publishers (September 19, 2011). Price US$22.95, 384 pages.
2. How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too). by David Goldman. Regnery Publishing (September 19, 2011). Price US$27.95, 256 pages.

More on the UK Riots

2011-08-20T23:02:00.000+10:00

Here are two posts from people in the UK about the riots.

J. John, (writing in Christian Today) believes that the core issue is rejection of Christian faith, with a resulting erosion in moral values, among both the rich and the poor:

"My own diagnosis is that the nation has lost the Christian faith that, in a quiet and unnoticed way, acted as the glue that has held the British social fabric together. For two generations it has been fashionable to sneer at Christianity and to consider it unnecessary for a modern civilised society. The result has been a moral vacuum and amongst the noise of sirens and breaking glass many people heard the sound of chickens coming home to roost."

On the other hand, Harriet Sergeant (writing in The Spectator) calls the rioters 'Blair's children', and attributes their destructive rampage to three factors, traced back to a failed social policies of the Blair government:

The failure of schools. A leading symptom of failure is illiteracy: "A full 63 per cent of white working class boys, and just over half of black Caribbean boys at the age of 14 have a reading age of seven or below." Sergeant argues that educational ideology and 'wishful thinking' has taken precedence over teaching methods which actually work. Instead of structure and discipline, children have been subjected to ideologically-driven 'student-directed learning'. As one young person put it: "School shatters your dreams before you get anywhere."
Changes in the job market. The decline in the availability of unskilled jobs has been matched by an influx of immigrants who are eager to take up what unskilled jobs do remain. The result is crippling unemployment for poorly schooled British youth.
Degradation of family life. The British family shows signs of mortal illness: "In a recent survey 49 per cent of British parents did not know where their children were in the evenings or with whom." Britain has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Europe, while government support for single mothers has been climbing at a staggering rate: "The government have put young girls in a position where the only career open to them is to have children, whether they want to or not and regardless of whether or not they are good mothers. The state has taken over the role of both husband and father and, as it is all too clear, have failed at both."

Failure of school, work and home: this British tripple-whammy disaster has surely been generations in the making. The educational policies of the 80's and 90's were hatched by the baby boomers, who, like Tony Blair, were teenagers in the 1960's.

How long could it take for a nation to turn these failures around, even if they have the will and the understanding to do so?

And what if J. John is right, and the policy failures Sergeant identifies stem from a deeper spiritual malaise, which is ultimately the rejection of faith in God, and the embracing of worldviews built on a mistaken understanding of humanity? What then does the future hold for Britain?

Are there signs that the people of the UK are ready to adopt the medicine of repentance which J. John is offering? And if not, how then will British society's leaders find their bearings in these confusing and troubled times?

More on England - unhappy children to disturbed young adults?

2011-08-13T23:09:00.000+10:00

In relation to the English riots, I was interested to discover that in 2007, UNICEF published a report entitled ‘Child poverty in perspective; an overview of child well-being in rich countries’ (UNICEF, 2007). This provided an overview of child well-being in industrialised nations. It used six main headings: material well-being; health and safety; education; peer and family relationships; behaviours and risks; and young people’s own sense of subjective well-being.

The report placed UK at the bottom of the league table.

The British policing 'with consent: speaking softly, while saying "No Big Stick"

2011-08-11T09:09:00.000+10:00

Hugh Orde, police chief in Britain has responded to the London riots:

"What we have seen so far is not soft policing, and although I understand the enthusiasm of politicians and communities for robust measures, excessive force will destroy our model of policing in the long term. What we must hang on to in all of this is the British model of policing, premised on human rights and the minimum use of force. We police with consent and must be professional, proportionate, fair and justifiable to the public at all times."

Likewise British Home Secretary, Theresa May, has stated: ‘The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon,’ she told Sky News. ‘The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.’

Pride in the 'British' way shines through here. But what happens when consent breaks down?

Below is Bill Muehlenberg's post on the riots:

On the British Riots

With five days of anarchy on the streets, buildings burning, streets unsafe, looters running amok, and already a billion pounds in damages, it is not too soon to start asking a few hard questions concerning the riots in Britain. Why are the streets of London aflame? How do we account for all this in a modern, prosperous Western nation?
There are a number of features which have contributed to this madness. They include: the abject failure of multiculturalism; the rise of the welfare state and the incessant demand for entitlements; the meltdown of family and community; the secularisation of society; the relativisation of morality; and the stranglehold of political correctness.
But it might be wisest to allow some English and international voices to share their concerns here. Already a number of incisive commentaries have been penned, and I offer here some of the best of their thinking on this worrying situation. One of the earliest and best pieces was by Jewish commentator Melanie Phillips. Her short but penetrating piece is worth citing in total:
“As London descends into anarchy this evening, with disturbances, arson, looting and other criminality breaking out in one borough after another for the third night running, it is clear that this is organised disorder, with thugs being dispatched to provoke and escalate hooliganism and rioting from area to area through use of social media and apparently now, the more secure BlackBerries.
“It also seems clear that this follows in a direct line from the disorders in recent years, such as we have seen at the G20 demonstrations or the storming of Conservative party headquarters over student fees, which again seemed to owe their violence to organised anarchist (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) and revolutionary leftist groups. This is almost certainly because of the near-delirious belief among such groups that, with the western economy in meltdown and the political class and the police discredited and disdained, Britain is on the cusp of a revolutionary moment. So they hijack specific protests or demonstrations in order to smash up property, police officers and anything or anyone deemed to represent the established order in order to bring about the End of Capitalism As We Know It.
“What we are seeing, in the sluggish and unprepared reaction of the police and political class to these events, compounded by their serial failure to grasp from previous such disturbances just what is going on here, is a catastrophic combination of professional inertia and incompetence, serial eyes off the ball, paralysing political correctness, an apparent reluctance to identify, name and deal with subversive activity, a capital’s police force in systemic disarray, a criminal justice system that has become an insulting joke, a refusal from the top to draw clear lines in the sand and to exercise moral and political leadership, a pandering instead to mob rule, tyro politicians who have never had a grown-up job and couldn’t run the proverbial whelk-stall let alone get a grip on a culture teetering on the edge of the cliff, a third-rate civil service machine that no longer can be relied on to keep the show on the road, a culture of narcissistic selfishness on an epic scale and a general breakdown in education, morality and elementary codes of civilised behaviour, much of it deliberately willed on for the past three decades by a grossly irresponsible and politically motivated intelligentsia that set out to smash the west. And now London is being smashed as a result.”
Arnold Ahlert speaks to family breakdown and the debilitating effects of the welfare state: “Perhaps just as important is the destruction of the nuclear family. Fully 40 percent of all American children are now born out of wedlock, a figure which rises to approximately 70 percent among black Americans. In the UK, out-of-wedlock births now account for nearly 50% of all births, on track to becoming the majority of births (and in some areas, 75% by 2014). The societal wreckage this produces has been well-documented and will not be reiterated here, save for the fact that a wholesale breakdown in morality, like the technology that facilitates it, enables greater criminal activity….
“But there is a bigger consequence that arises from the expectations for, and the inevitable failure of, welfare-statism. Whether they realize it or not, many Americans, as well as their British counterparts, are undermining the social integrity of their own societies. Little incentive remains for providing for oneself — or for that matter, one’s offspring — when the grotesqueness of the ‘social safety net’ renders this virtue irrelevant. When society has removed all negative consequences to poor life choices, which keep people and their progeny nestled in the underclass (child abandonment, disdain for education, glorification of thug culture, etc.), it effectively rewards them. It is thus absurd to expect these behavioral trends to disappear rather than the reverse.
“The situation is all the more exacerbated by a culture that shields the very segments of society that perpetuate these trends from any scrutiny and responsibility — primarily due to cowardice over racial matters. Hence the sweeping media silence on the disturbing trend of minority-perpetrated mob violence, evident in most of the reportage on these incidents. Here again, on even this most rudimentary level, negative consequences for self-destructive behavior are lifted. We cannot even identify the source of such criminality, nor demand change on the part of the offenders.”
Leftist commentator Brendan O’Neill says it is “less political rebellion, more mollycoddled mob”. He explains: “The political context is not the [education] cuts or racist policing, it is the welfare state, which has nurtured a generation that has no sense of community spirit or social solidarity.
“What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. They live in urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state during the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of urban, less well-off people’s existences, from their financial wellbeing to their child-rearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain ‘mentally fit’, has undermined individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The antisocial youthful rioters are the end-product of this antisocial system of state intervention.
“The most striking thing about the rioters is how little they care for their own communities. You don’t have to be a right-winger with helmet hair and a niggling discomfort with black or chavvy yoof (I am the opposite of that) to recognise that this violence is not political, just criminal. It is entertaining to watch the political contortions of commentators who claim the riots are an uprising against the evils of capitalism, as they struggle to explain why the targets have been Foot Locker sports shops and why the only ‘gains’ made by the rioters have been to get a new pair of trainers or an Apple laptop. In the Brixton race riots of 1981, looting and the destruction of local infrastructure were largely incidental to the broader expression of political anger, by-products of the main show, which was a clash between a community and the forces of the state. But in these riots, looting and smashing stuff up is all there is. It is childish nihilism.”
He also speaks to the seeming inability for the English authorities to even offer effective crowd control and workable policing: “There is one more important part to this rioting story: the reaction of the cops. Their inability to handle the riots effectively reveals the extent to which the British police are adapted to consensual rather than conflictual policing. It also demonstrates how far they have been paralysed by the politics of victimhood, where virtually every police activity gets followed up by a complaint or a legal case. Their kid-glove approach to the rioters only fuels the riots because, as one observer put it, when the rioters ‘see that the police cannot control the situation, [that] leads to sort of adrenalin-fuelled euphoria’. So this street violence was largely ignited by the excesses of the welfare state and intensified by the discombobulation of the police state. The riots tell a very interesting story about modern Britain.”
Michael Ausli also comments on this disturbing feature of the riots: “As England is wracked by spreading mobs of anarchist youth, Britain’s Home Secretary reveals the rot at the core of the modern entitlement state. Responding to calls for a firmer response to yobs attacking private property and innocent citizens, Theresa May intoned, ‘The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon,’ she told Sky News. ‘The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.’
“She may not have noticed that major communities in Britain are under attack, and not just undergoing an Anglo version of Spring Break in Dayton Beach. May’s statement is nonsensical, for either she is talking about the very rioters themselves or assuming that private citizens too afraid to come out of their homes expect some type of dialogue with the Metropolitan Police. Worse, it sends the very strongest signal to Britons that their leaders no longer have the will to maintain public order, which is the very fundament of civil society.”
Short term issues can be addressed here, such as getting the police force to start acting like a police force. But the bigger, more entrenched problems which I spoke to earlier – the welfare state, the failure of multiculturalism, the de-Christianisation of England – will of course require much longer and deeper solutions.
melaniephillips.com/london-descends-into-anarchy
frontpagemag.com/2011/08/10/weapons-of-mob-destruction-2/
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/less-political-rebellion-more-mollycoddled-mob/story-e6frg6zo-1226111939883
www.nationalreview.com/corner/274069/how-societies-surrender-british-version-michael-auslin

Sharia Britain: the paradox of tolerance

2011-06-11T09:53:00.000+10:00

by Mark Durie

This week Baroness Caroline Cox launched a bill in the House of Lords to impose principles of gender equality upon the sharia courts of Britain.

This proposal reflects a growing groundswell of concern about the impact of these courts upon the lives of Muslim women.

This initiative is supported by a diverse coalition of human rights groups, including the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, whose director Dianna Nammi devotes much of her work to assisting British women who are intimidated and discriminated against by the rulings of sharia courts.

The sharia is a system of rules for all of life.

Developed by Islamic scholars in the first centuries of Islam, it not only regulates prayer and worship, but also family relations, welfare, criminal matters, food, financial transactions, politics and even warfare.

The new bill aims to outlaw such practices as valuing a woman's evidence at half that of a man's; it seeks to prevent the intimidation and victimization of women who come before sharia tribunals; it requires religious tribunals to inform women that their sharia marriage or divorce may have no standing in British law, leaving them without legal protection; and it makes it a criminal offense to falsely claim legal jurisdiction.

A study by the think tank Civitas reported in 2009 that 85 sharia courts were operating across Britain, some of which have legal standing as tribunals under the alternative dispute resolution provisions of the 1996 Arbitration Act.

In a pattern being repeated across Western societies, from Sydney to Ontario, Muslim communities have been asking for legal recognition of sharia law, in the name of tolerance and pluralism.

Critics object that sharia courts discriminate against women, and their expansion in Britain is entrenching a system of parallel societies divided along religious lines.

In 2008 the Lord Chief Justice of England, Nicholas Phillips recommended 'embracing Sharia law', saying there was 'no reason' why it could not be used to alternative dispute resolution, and the Archbishop of Canterbury commented, 'it's not as if we're bringing in an alien and rival system'.

On the other hand, the Grand Chamber of the European Human Rights court found in 2003 that a plurality of legal systems which accommodates sharia infringes rights to religious freedom, because a state would thereby pressure individual Muslims to live according to religious rules with which they may not personally agree.

A 2004 report by Marion Boyd, Ontario's former Attorney General, supported Canadian Muslim groups' call for the use of sharia to settle family disputes.

However it was Muslim women such as Iranian immigrant Homa Arjomand who spear-headed resistance to the move, arguing that sharia law denies women equality before the law.

Few governments have been as forthright as Australia, whose Attorney General, Robert McClelland, recently declared that 'Sharia law has no place in the Australian legal system' because 'men and women are equal before the law irrespective of race, religious or cultural background.'

British sharia courts are conducted behind closed doors. Reports indicate that women are severely disadvantaged by their rulings.

It is easy for a Muslim man to divorce his wife under sharia law, for no reason. For a woman divorce is much more difficult.

She must apply to a court, and only on the basis of a limited set of reasons, which do not include domestic violence or rape by the husband.

Often she must pay the husband money in order to be granted her divorce.

Furthermore, under sharia law a divorced woman has no right to a share in family assets, and a father has sole custody of any children after they turn seven.

Women are further disadvantaged by the sharia laws of inheritance and evidence, which value a woman's worth at half that of a man's.

Such principles are not an invention of marginal religious radicals.

The International Fiqh Academy is a group of distinguished jurists which operates under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

In 2009 it issued a formal ruling on domestic violence which endorsed principles such as those being applied in British sharia courts, including the right of a husband to use force to compel his wife to have sexual relations, even if she is 'unwilling', and the right of a man to discipline his wife by what it termed 'non-violent beating'.

It is an irony that a woman can be more vulnerable to discriminatory treatment in a legally authorized British sharia tribunal than she would be in some Islamic jurisdictions.

Islamic states often pass laws to lessen the disadvantage suffered by women under sharia conditions.

For example, since 2000, Egyptian law allows women to divorce their husbands without having to give cause – but not without a financial penalty – and in 2005 a law was introduced to extend the period of a mother's custody of a child beyond the age determined by the sharia.

In Britain tribunals with legal standing dole out a purer strain of sharia.

The proposed new equality bill represents a significant escalation of resistance to sharia creep.

It can only succeed with government support.

If it fails, this will mean perpetuation of second class legal status for many British women.

It is a paradox of tolerance that legal inferiority might to be deemed to be 'good enough' for Muslim women, in the name of minority rights.

Mark Durie is an Anglican pastor and author of The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom.

This appeared first on Jenny Taylor's Blog on 10th June 2011.
Exclusive UK rights assigned to Lapido Media.

European Court to rule on Christian discrimination cases - Christian Concern

2011-06-07T10:09:00.000+10:00

European Court to rule on Christian discrimination cases

Published: June 6th, 2011 In a significant legal development, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has requested that the British Government state whether they believe that the rights of Christians have been infringed in recent cases where individuals have been penalised for expressing their faith in the workplace.
The request has come because legal action is being taken by four Christians who argue that their rights have been infringed.
The four Christians are: Gary McFarlane, a counsellor who was sacked by a counselling service for saying that he would not give sex therapy to homosexual couples; Shirley Chaplin, a nurse who was banned from working on hospital wards for wearing a cross around her neck; Nadia Eweida, a British Airways employee who was prevented from wearing a cross; and Lillian Ladele, who was disciplined by Islington council for refusing to conduct civil partnership ceremonies for homosexual couples.
The Christian Legal Centre is representing Shirley Chaplin and Gary McFarlane.
The cases have been viewed by the European Court as being of such importance that they merit further investigation. Once British Government ministers have responded the Court will decide whether to hold further hearings. Many will be watching these developments closely, as the number of Christian discrimination cases in the UK appears to be continuing to rise.
It is hoped that the consideration of these cases will provide greater clarity as to how freedom of conscience for Christians can be preserved when it comes into conflict with UK ‘equality’ laws.
Earlier in the year, the ECHR ruled that crosses were allowed to be displayed on classroom walls after a case from Italy was heard. This decision appeared out of step with how British courts had ruled on the four cases, which were all lost on appeal.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of the Christian Legal Centre, said:
"These cases are massively significant.
"There seems to be a disproportionate animosity towards the Christian faith and the workings of the courts in the UK has led to deep injustice.
"If we are successful in Strasbourg I hope that the Equalities Act and other diversity legislation will be overturned or overhauled so that Christians are free to work and act in accordance with their conscience.
"People with orthodox views on sexual ethics are excluded from employment because they don't fit in with the equalities and diversity agenda. It is this which we want to see addressed. Such injustice cannot be allowed to continue."

Lean Years Ahead in the Middle East

2011-05-14T14:17:00.001+10:00

What is going on in the Middle East involves a tangled mess of intersecting factors. There is no single explanation for the unrest.

Factors include demographics, failing economic policies, oppressive regimes, radical religion, and food. David Goldman (who writes in the Asia Times under the name of Spengler) first drew my attention to the food issue. His latest writing on this, The Hunger to Come in Egypt makes very sobering reading indeed.

The problem of food is not only in Egypt - it will 'bite' elsewhere in the Middle East where there are not huge oil revenues.

Why is there a food issue? To put it in a nutshell, the rise and rise of the Asian middle classe has put dramatic upward pressure on global food prices, especially during times of shortage. Greater competition for the available grain resources, combined with growing meat consumption (animals eat the grain which otherwise might be destined for human consumption) as well as grain for ethanol exchange is causing widely global fluctuating grain prices. Poor people simply cannot afford the price of grain when the prices spike. I have collected here some statistics which provide something of the background to this.

First, we can note that the Middle East is in the peak of a population boom, with vast numbers of mouths to feed, especially among the cohort of young adults. At the same time, in the Middle East, youth unemployment is the worst in the world:

Unemployment rates for youth International Labour Organization (ILO),

Global Employment Trends for Youth (Geneva: ILO, 2006): Annex 1.

(MENA = "Middle East and North Africa")

The next graphic shows how, over 50 years, North Africa and the Middle East have taken up a steadily increasing share of world wheat imports, until over the the past decade their share has hovered around one third of the global total. The other big block of wheat importing nations — and the Middle East's main competitor for grain supplies – is South, East and South East Asia, where vast wealth has been accumulating during the Asian economic boom.

This next table shows the changes from 2004 to 2009 in the ranking of top wheat importers. Middle Eastern countries went from being 2 of the top ten importers to 5 of the top ten. Notice the top wheat importer in 2009 was Egypt! Where does the money come from to pay for all that wheat? Since January 2011, not from tourism revenues.

2004	2009
1. China	1. Egypt
2. Japan	2. Iran
3. Italy	3. Brazil
4. Algeria	4. Algeria
5. Brazil	5. Japan
6. Indonesia	6. Indonesia
7. Spain	7. Morocco
8. Egypt	8. Iraq
9. Mexico	9. Nigeria
10. South Korea	10. Turkey

This next chart shows the price of wheat in recent years. We are just now in another spike in prices.

What happens if you live on under $2 a day, the global price of grain more than doubles, your national currency collapses, tourism revenues dry up and the local economy fails? People starve. A lot of people get badly hurt in the scramble for food and the inevitable recriminations as desperate people and political opportunists look for scapegoats. You also could see a lot of starving people trying to make their way across the Mediterranean in leaky boats.

Goldman writes:

"Revolutions don't only kill their children. They kill a great many ordinary people. The 1921 famine after the Russian civil war killed an estimated five million people, and casualties on the same scale are quite possible in Egypt as well. Half of Egyptians live on $2 a day, and that $2 is about to collapse along with the national currency, and the result will be a catastrophe of, well, biblical proportions."

Response to Angus McLeay on the 'inherent requirements' test

2011-05-06T14:16:00.002+10:00

It is disappointing to see name-calling and misrepresentation in McLeay's recent article "HOT POTATO': Religious Freedom, the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act and the Inherent Requirements Test".

Using emotionally charged terms such as 'strident', 'lobbies' and 'unChristian', he claims for himself the moral high ground while regarding it as a virtue that in doing so he will win favour in the eyes of some non-Christians. But at the same time he misrepresents and vilifies fellow-Christians who disagree with him. For example:

1. It is not true to claim that religious groups have opposed the removal of the right to discriminate on the grounds of disability. I know of no Christian group who put such an argument forward.

2. It is a gross exaggeration to claim that "Those who opposed the recent changes claim that the true motivation for updating the Act was simply to harass Christians and enforce radical secularism". Some may take that view, but to attribute it to all opponents of the Act is to promote a falsehood. For example, I am someone who has vigorously opposed some specific feature of the new Act, and believe that it WILL encourage a climate in which secularism is enforced, do not and have not claimed that such an outcome is the 'true motivation' of the Act. I would acknowledge that even many of those who would wish, for example, that Christian schools should not be able to make faith a criterion when employing teachers of secular subjects are "motivated by ideals of dignity and a fair go for all". But I disagree with their conclusions in pursuing that agenda, and also with their assumptions about what constitutes a fair go.

3. It is also misrepresentation to claim that "the campaign against changes to the old Act would rather us not be upfront about why staff in Christian organisations need a faith-based foundation for their roles". As a counter example, the argument against the "inherent requirements" test, which the Anglican Diocese put in 2009 to the former Labor government when it was revising the old Act, was that a "genuineness" test was better suited to the need for transparency. In making this proposal, there was absolutely no desire that Christians not be upfront about the grounds for appointing people. The genuineness test, if accepted, would have encouraged both transparency and accountability.

4. It is not true to claim that opposition to the inherent requirements test is based upon an 'unsupported and wild assumption' about how it would apply. For example, the Anglican Diocese's submission opposed this test based upon a legal opinion prepared by a senior barrister (who soon after was appointed to the supreme court of Victoria). This opinion considered in detail how the 'inherent requirements' test has been applied in other legal contexts. The opinion pointed out multiple problems with this section of the act. One issue was ceding to a secular tribunal the right to decide which jobs within a religious organisation legitimately (in its view) require some sort of religious adherence or moral/ethical standard over and above the mere functional capacity to perform the job.

5. McLeay asserts that "if a maths teacher in a Christian school is required to share the faith of the school community, that would be stated upfront and there would be some reasonable justification." Is this not a wildy naive assertion? For, on the contrary, submissions by mainstream representative secular bodies to the Victorian parliament's review of the law in 2009 argued for an 'inherent requirements test' because they maintained it would mean quite the opposite, namely that the faith justification would NO LONGER be accepted for a position such as a maths teacher. And they backed the new law for this very reason, and oppose the recently proposed amendments also for this reason. I deplore the fact that McLeay flies in the face of clear evidence, to embrace limitless optimism. I also deplore the fact that, buoyed up by such naivety, and citing not even a shred of legal analysis to back his view, he vilifies those who disagree with him as 'unchristian', simply because he is aware of non-Christians who think the worst of them.

In a strange kind of fear-driven logic, McLeay's plight is that his heart leads his head. His heart fears that non-Christian people will think ill of him, and especially of his gospel. So his head appeals to this sceptical audience by denigrating other Christians, as if shouting out: 'Look at me, I am not a bad Christian like those other people.'

A better way is to stick to the issues and argue them clearly and simply.

Was Jesus an Equal Opportunity Employer?

2011-03-14T14:26:00.013+11:00

In the March 2011 edition of TMA (The Melbourne Anglican), Dr Muriel Porter published a piece (see here) arguing against further review of Victoria's anti-discrimination laws. TMA also published an opposing view written by me (see here). There was quite a lot of ground covered by Dr Porter's piece, and I wanted to expand on a few points, as well as give her theological argument the greater attention it deserved, hence this blog post.

Dr Porter was concerned that 'religious groups who claim to speak in Jesus' name have prevailed on the new Victorian government to give churches virtual carte blanche to discriminate against those they deem not acceptable.'

There are multiple errors and confusions in Ms Porter's piece.

It is simplistic to presuppose that the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 prevents churches from discriminating in employment. In fact the recently introduced Act allows religious groups to discriminate under certain circumstances on the basis of:
     "a person's religious belief or activity, sex,
    sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity,
    marital status, parental status or gender
    identity by a religious body"
It is a fact that the Catholic Archdiocese ended up supporting the changes introduced by the former Brumby government, precisely because it believed it would be able to continue to discriminate when employing people. Of course, there are others in the community who hope that the 2010 Act imposes severe restrictions on churches' ability to discriminate. I would say that, unless the law is changed, we are going to be in for some very interesting and intensely fought legal cases.
Dr Porter cites Rachel Ball who had commented that "religion is not an automatic, pre-determined trump." In reality, Attorney-General Robert Clark had only proposed to redraw the lines determining how religious exemptions apply. Religion was never a trump even under the pre-existing law, which preceded the 2010 Act, as a recent VCAT case showed.
Dr Porter cites Ball's argument that "church leaders would be rightly distressed if a secular organisation sought to discriminate against a Christian employee on the grounds that they did not want a believer in their workforce’. This is an invalid comparison. Religious organizations understandably want to be able to take into account religious considerations when selecting employees, just as a political party in Victoria will want to take an employee’s political views into account; a bank would wish to take into account someone’s views on banking; a pub would wish to take into account someone’s attitudes on the comsupmtion of alcohol; and an Aboriginal support group may wish to take into account someone’s attitudes to aboriginality.
Dr Porter is mistaken when she claims that 'No one is suggesting' that churches should not have full control over who they appoint as 'overtly religious leaders'. In fact the Human Rights Law Resource Centre (the organisation of Rachel Ball, who Dr Porter cites with approval) argued for that all exemptions should be removed from the Act (including the rights of churches in employing clergy).

Dr Porter writes:

“... who can occupy the many and varied secular roles within our large and diverse organisations should reflect the openness and loving acceptance of our Lord as far as possible. Our employment practices should clearly reflect our faith stance that all human beings are made in the image of God and deserve the fullest dignity.”

I am troubled by Dr Porter's conviction that a clear distinction exists between 'religious' and 'secular' roles in Christian organisations. The person who cares for the gardens of our church does not see her role as 'secular', nor do many Christians working in teachers in Christian schools. This distinction harks back to the old-fashioned idea that roles for clergy are religious, while roles for laity are not.

The contrast between sacred and secular is an important theological and social distinction, but it is a poor thing indeed to be inviting the state to impose its understanding of the distinction upon our institutions. It is unwise to invite the state to rule that a great many positions in our institutions, founded and sustained for Christian purposes, are 'secular' and could therefore be filled by people of any faith or none at all.

However, my greatest concern about Dr Porter's argument is her appropriation of Jesus. Yes, one must agree that Jesus opposed as a sin the exclusion of people by religious figures, as Miroslav Volf explains in Exclusion and Embrace (p.72):

"An advantage of conceiving sin as the practice of exclusion is that it names as sin what often passes as virtue, especially in religious circles. In the Palestine of Jesus' day, 'sinners' were not simply 'the wicked' who were therefore religiously bankrupt, but also social outcasts, people who practiced despised trades, Gentiles and Samaritans, those who failed to keep the Law as interpreted by a particular sect. A 'righteous' person had to separate herself from the latter; their presence defiled because they were defiled. Jesus' table fellowship with 'tax collectors and sinners', a fellowship that indisputably belonged to the central features of his ministry, offset this conception of sin. Since he who was innocent, sinless, and fully within God's camp transgressed social boundaries that excluded the outcasts, these boundaries themselves were evil, sinful, and outside God's will. By embracing the 'outcast,' Jesus underscored the 'sinfulness' of the persons and systems that cast them out."

But, as Volf goes on to explain (p.73), Jesus was no 'prophet of "inclusion", for whom the chief virtue was acceptance and the cardinal vice intolerance':

"It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from Jesus' compassion toward those who transgressed social boundaries that his mission was merely to demask the mechanisms that created 'sinners' by falsely ascribing sinfulness to those who were considered socially unacceptable. He was no prophet of 'inclusion' for whom the chief virtue was acceptance and the cardinal vice intolerance. Instead, he was the bringer of 'grace,' who not only scandalously included 'anyone' in the fellowship of 'open commensality' (Crossan), but made the 'intolerant' demand of repentance and the 'condescending' offer of forgiveness. The mission of Jesus consisted not simply in re-naming the behavior that was falsely labeled 'sinful' but also in re-making the people who have actually sinned or have suffered misfortune."

In these times, Christians in the West are being challenged to be more inclusive at the same time that they are being convicted – literally – of excluding others, a legal process which is gathering momentum in the UK.

A much-publicized recent example is that of Peter and Hazelmary Bull, whose Cornwall B&B was targeted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission because they would only hire out bedrooms to singles or married couples – and not to same-sex couples. The Bulls were convicted of breaking the law and had to pay thousand of pounds in damages to Mr Steven Preddy and Mr Martyn Hall, who had been refused a bed for the night. In an odd twist to this case, the taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission recently initiated proceedings (subsequently withdrawn) to increase the damages paid by the Bulls, arguing that the courts should have given no consideration at all to the Bulls' Christian faith. At the same time hotels advertising "gays only" are commonplace throughout Britain.

After targeting Christian hotels and B&Bs - by its own admission – and winning its case against the Bulls, the Equality Commission has said that, in the interests of 'objective balance' it will investigate these hotels to see if they too are in breach of the law. The Equality Commission also recently apologized for implying that Christian foster parents could 'infect' children with their moral values. (The senior Equality barrister who prepared the offending submission which used the word 'infect' was Koran Monagan QC, the European female director of the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association.)

In a public environment which is increasingly hostile to Christian values, and indeed to Christians themselves as individuals, the Victorian 2010 Equal Opportunity Act is a potential tool in the hands of those who wish to ramp up such lawfare here in Victoria. It is naive to pretend otherwise.

Yes, Jesus opposed exclusion, but he did not offer inclusion without boundaries as its alternative. It is profoundly unhelpful to compare those who have legitimate concerns about the Victorian law with the Pharisees of Jesus' day, and to say that Christians who have such concerns are guilty of "narrow-minded self-protection” who risk becoming “little more than a sect.” Such rhetoric only serves to muddy the waters of public debate.

It matters greatly how Equal Opportunity laws are worded. I am pleased that Christians have been expressing their concerns about this law, and I welcome the Ballieu Government's decision to reconsider the Equal Opportunity Act 2010.

Anti-discrimination Law and the Inherent Requirements Test

2011-03-14T11:43:00.000+11:00

This piece was published in the March 2011 edition of TMA (The Melbourne Anglican).

It is welcome news that the Ballieu government will review the controversial and ambiguous 'inherent requirements' test introduced in 2010 revisions to the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act.

A litany of incensed but ill-informed commentary gushed forth in response to this announcement.

Anti-discrimination legislation defines attributes which it is unlawful to rely upon when providing services or offering employment. For example, it is unlawful in Victoria to employ people on the basis of their race, gender or age.

All anti-discrimination laws allow exemptions. These allow an Aboriginal youth housing service to target its services both to Aboriginals and to younger people: it would otherwise be illegal to discriminate on the basis of race and age. Without an exemption, a synagogue could not require its rabbi to be a Jew.

Everyone accepts the need for exemptions, but there is disagreement about how to provide them. Part of the heat in the debate is that some see these laws as a mechanism to push people of faith, especially laypeople, back into their churches.

In July 2009 the Human Rights Law Resource Centre argued that all exemptions should be removed from the EO Act, including the rights of groups to employ religious leaders on the basis of their beliefs. They proposed instead that employers be made to apply on a case by case basis to VCAT for exemptions.

The rhetoric which claims that the Victorian government intends to give religious employers an "an automatic, pre-determined trump", is drastically overblown. This fantastical claim was put out by Rachel Ball, of the very same Human Rights Law Resource Centre which demanded zero exemptions.

Even before the 2010 amendments, religions did not have an automatic trump, as a recent VCAT case showed, when Judge Felicity Hampel found against Philip Island Adventure Resort for rejecting a booking from a gay suicide prevention group.

The issue at hand is quite specific. It is the recently introduced 'inherent requirements' test. This test means that to gain the benefit on an exemption, a religious employer must be able to prove that conformity with the religion is part of the inherent requirements of a position.

This innovation was initially proposed by secular groups who wanted to make it illegal, for example, for Christian schools to make faith a criterion when employing teachers.

At present there are thousands of students in Victoria whose schools require all their teachers to adhere to a faith statement. These schools would have to radically alter their ethos in order to survive after August, when the Brumby government revisions come into effect.

Many other organisations will also be impacted. World Vision has long required senior management to endorse a doctrinal position. But how can they argue that belief in Jesus Christ is an 'inherent requirement' of running a finance department?

In reality the Brumby government's innovations will lead to much confusion and a good deal of protracted lawfare before Victorians even know how they apply.

The Anglican Standing Committee of General Synod made a well-considered submission on this issue in 2008. It argued that an inherent requirements test was a poor option, because Christian organisations

'seek to maintain their distinctive religious mission and to avoid loss of effectiveness, by employing people throughout the organisation who adhere to religious purposes and hold the religious beliefs of the organisation';
'all action is done "to the glory of God"', and this 'makes it impossible to distinguish between specifically religious activities and other activities'; and
'the concept of Christian vocation is not limited to clergy or specific ministerial functions within the church, but it includes the work of lay people in whatever capacity they serve.'

There are better alternatives. Diocesan legal experts recommended to parliament in 2009 to define the religious exemption for employment in terms of a 'genuineness' test. An exemption could then be claimed if done in good faith, in accordance with genuinely held beliefs. This is no religious 'trump', but would be subject to scrutiny in a tribunal or court.

As a student at an Anglican grammar school I was grateful that my principal made it his policy to employ Christians throughout the staff. The character of the school was much better for it.

Aggressive secularists would be only too glad to see Christian agencies go the way of the YWCA, which has abandoned its Christian identity. The threat to religious institutions in Victoria's EO laws is not that they will be compelled to employ adulterers or gays. It is that they will have to secularise.

Those who cite the example of Christ in this matter may recall that he befriended prostitutes and tax-collectors to call them to repentance. It was the sick, he said, who needed the medicine he had on offer, not the well. His mode of evangelism does not justify the inherent requirements employment test.

We should be encouraging the Ballieu Government as it seeks a better way to provide the needed religious exemption.

Farewell to Robert Trumble

2011-01-06T09:00:00.000+11:00

Not all of us at St Mary's will remember Robert Trumble. He and Joan worshipped at St Mary's for many years, and made a huge contribution to our community. A few years back they moved over the Kew, and have been worshipping at Holy Trinity Anglican church. Robert passed away in his sleep earlier this week, and his funeral will be at Holy Trinity (corner of High and Pakington Streets) at 11am on Friday January 6.

Please pray for Joan and the family at this time. Their children are Simon and Christine.

Robert came from a large family of 8 brothers and sisters, of which he was youngest and the last surviving child. He was a renowned musicologist and author. A gentle and committed Christian, Robert had an inquiring mind, and included among his extensive library many works of theology, with pencilled marks on most of the pages.

Robert's father, Hugh Trumble, was a well-known Australian cricketer, and test captain, who retired from test cricket in 1904! Robert was truly the last of his generation, whose father was born before St Mary's old blue stone church had even been built.

Mark

The Unborn Paradox by Ross Douthat - NY Times

2011-01-05T07:51:00.000+11:00

"This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed."
Read the whole article by Ross Douthat from the New York Times: The Unborn Paradox.

Condolences for Al-Qiddisin Church in Alexandria and Copts everywhere

2011-01-04T11:21:00.003+11:00

I write to express my profound sorrow beyond words, and to extend condolences to the families and friends of the 22 martyrs killed and to more than 90 people who were wounded in the bomb attack on Al-Qiddisin (The Saints) church in Alexandria on New Year's Eve.

I also extend my condolences to the whole Coptic people, and the Coptic church and its leaders, including a community of over 100,000 Copts living in Australia. As an Australian Anglican priest, I wish particularly to express my support for Pope Shenouda at this time, and also for Bishop Suriel of the Diocese of Melbourne and Affiliated Regions, and for Father Tadros, Vicar General of the Diocese of Sydney and Affiliated Regions. These leaders carry a weighty burden of care for their people, as they prepare to lead them in celebrations of Christmas this Friday, January 7, 2011.

So many have been deeply affected by this shocking atrocity, which targeted peaceful worshipers in a way intended to exact maximum casualties. People came to pray, seeking peace for the new year ahead, and were instead subjected to an inhuman act of cruelty and hatred.

The Alexandria attack is the worst in recent memory of a series of assaults on Copts and their places of worship. Indeed the year of 2010 began with a shooting massacre of Christian worshipers outside Nag Hammadi Cathedral on January 7, the occasion of the Coptic Christmas Eve.

Although this latest attack has been denounced by Egyptian authorities, it has taken place in a climate of growing official discrimination against the Christians of Egypt, including against converts to Christianity.

I deplore the lack of freedom of religion in Egypt, the authorities' apparent unwillingness to protect the indigenous Christian minority and its places of worship, and the lamentable track record of the Egyptian justice system in securing criminal convictions against those who have targeted Christians for attack. I call upon Egypt's leaders to respond to these abuses honestly and with integrity, without making excuses or indulging in denial.

I also deplore the complicity of some Middle Eastern community leaders and media organizations, who have inflamed a climate of incitement against indigenous Christians, one of the worst recent examples being the interview of Mohammad Salim Al Awa by Ahmed Mansour on Al-Jazeera TV, which went to air on September 115, 2010. This interview made repeated outrageous and false allegations against the Coptic church and its leaders, which have subsequently even been invoked by Al-Qa'ida in connection with deadly attacks on Christians elsewhere in the Middle East.

The Copts are the direct continuation of the indigenous Christian community in Egypt, founded by St Mark. They have maintained a faithful witness to Apostolic Faith in Christ through two thousand years of trials and persecution. I am confident that this latest attack will not shake their will to maintain this witness in their ancestral land. In the spirit of Matthew 10:42, I call upon Christians throughout the world to offer compassion, practical support and prayers for the Copts, which they sorely need at this most painful of times.

Farewell for Ken and Allison Thompson

2011-01-04T08:41:00.000+11:00

A farewell and commissioning service for the Thompsons, St Mary's link missionaries to Cambodia, will be held this Saturday, January 8th at 4pm. Location is 63 Wiseman Road, Silvan, Melways 123 G5. It will be outdoors at the Thompsons' farm, so there is plenty of room. Please bring your own picnic blanket, chairs, picnic, plates, cups, food, meat etc. There will have a BBQ set up for those who want to cook meat and water and cold drinks are provided, Everyone is welcome.

Anti-Discrimination and the Victorian Christian Campsites Case

2010-11-25T10:04:00.001+11:00

This week I have been reading with interest Judge Felicity Hampel's finding in the case of Cobaw Community Health Services against Christian Youth Camps and Mark Rowe.

The case arose when CYC first rejected a camp booking from WayOut, a Victorian youth suicide prevention group which supports homosexual young people in rural areas.

It seems from the judge's findings that CYC did not handle the issue well. They should have anticipated that a complaint of this nature was likely to arise – based on many cases in other jurisdictions – yet the person who handled the booking did not keep adequate records of his conversation with the WayOut representative. CYC also had inadequate policies about who should be allowed to book the site. Futhermore although the campsite had refused to accept a booking from this group on the basis of beliefs about sexual practice outside marriage, it did not have a policy of informing other groups who booked the site that it was unacceptable for unmarried people to have sex on the site, or that groups which used the site should not promote sex outside marriage while using the site. Thus the judge concluded: "Their conduct in respect of bookings generally, and their requirements, or lack of them, in respect of the conduct of attendees at the adventure resort to which I have already referred is in stark opposition to such a contention.” [i.e. a contention that their religious doctrines compelled them to reject a booking from a group which affirmed sex outside marriage].

It also seems to have been a poor choice for CYC to employ a barrister closely connected with the Brethren church. In contrast CCHS was represented by a team from a well-resourced city law firm, led by Debbie Mortimer, who also represented the Islamic Council of Victoria in their religious vilification complaint against Catch the Fire.

It is quite striking in Judge Hampel's findings that she preferred the complainaint's evidence concerning the facts of the case, on almost every point. She also severely criticized the CYC's expert witness, Canon Peter Adam of Ridley College, while accepting the expert evidence of Dr Rufus Black of Ormond College given for CCHS.

The case was made out under the Victoria's 1995 Equal Opportunity law. A new EO law has been passed by parliament which will come into effect in 2011, so the future application of Equal Opportunity laws in Victoria will be judged by different criteria from this one. In the new law, the basis for religious exceptions has been broadened somewhat in some respects, and narrowed in others. For example, exceptions are no longer on the basis of the 'doctrine of the religion' alone, but also can be on the basis of the 'principles' or 'beliefs' of the religion.

Even though the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal is an inferior court, some benchmarks were established by Judge Hampel which could affect other cases.

Judge Hampel found that, based on Victoria's Human Rights Charter, principles protecting individuals from discrimination should be interpreted broadly, but exceptions (e.g. for consideration of religious freedom) should be interpreted narrowly. This has the effect, when balancing equality with religious freedom, that equality considerations have the stronger position.

Working from this position, Judge Hampel made findings on a number of issues which are significant for all Victorian religious bodies that offer services to the public, e.g.:

Judge Hampel argued that if a body offers substantial services with a secular component, this weakens any claim to be considered a body established for religious purposes, and the body is correspondingly less protected from discrimination claims by the exemptions in Equal Opportunity legislation.
Judge Hampel found that not everything in scripture is part of Christian doctrine. She found, for example, that Biblical statements concerning same-sex relations reflected prevailing cultural beliefs at the time, and are not part of doctrine. More generally, the 'absence of any reference to marriage, sexual relationships or homosexualty in the creeds or declarations of faith which Christians including the Christian Brethren are asked to affirm as a fundamental article of their faith demonstrates that the Christian Brethren beliefs about marriage, sexual relationships or homosexuality are not fundamental doctrines of the religion.' She is saying that just because something is in the Bible doesn't make it Christian doctrine. To be part of doctrine, it should be explicitly in the creeds or doctrinal statements of a religious group. On this basis, and the evidence given to her from Dr Black, she ruled that opposition to homosexual practice is not part of Christian doctrine.
The key word 'conforms' was important in Judge Hampel's reasoning. Acts which 'conform' to the doctrines of a religion have some protection under the law. However Judge Hampel accepted an argument put by the Equal Opportunity Commission that 'conforms' must be interpreted narrowly. Thus she ruled: 'conforms imports a sense that the doctrine requires, obliges or dictates that the person act in a particular way when confronted by the circumstances which resulted in their acting in the way they did.' In other words, someone is only protected by religious exceptions if their doctrine compels them to act in a particular way.

Here are a few general comments about these findings:

It does seem that the Victorian Human Rights Charter has had the effect of weakening the value of religious freedom provisions in Victorian Equal Opportunity law.
It is concerning that a secular tribunal is making rulings on what constitutes Christian doctrine, not just for an individual body, but for Christians in general. That VCAT will make theological rulings on doctrine is a inevitable result of the way the EO law is written, and we are likely to see more examples of this in the future. (In the case of the Islamic Council of Victoria against Catch the Fire, a VCAT judge also made theological rulings, in respect of Islamic doctrine.)
The role of the Uniting Church expert in this case is significant: as the respondent's expert, Canon Peter Adam, was rejected by the Judge, the views of Dr Black stood. Some might take the view that the Tribunal has turned Uniting Church theology into a ruling which will bind the adherents of other Christian sects. It is a pity therefore that other denominations did not make submissions to the Tribunal on this issue.
This ruling illustrates how denominations which have less detailed doctrinal statements are disadvantaged under by Equal Opportunity laws. The Catholic church, which has highly detailed declarations of doctrine should do much better in VCAT, because so much more will be included in what is obligatory for its followers to believe and do as part of their religion. Religious groups which have a much looser and more independent approach to doctrine, relying more on individuals and groups to interpret the scriptures, will be less protected from legal cases. This suggests, as I have argued elsewhere, that Equal Opportunity laws can have the counter-intuitive effect of privileging hierarchical authoritarian religions over ones which leave more to the individual's or the congregation's conscience. Non-conformist Christian groups - unless they have highly detailed doctrinal statements - are more likely to lose in complaints because they are less likely to be able to prove that their religion compels them to conform by acting in a particular way. Therefore groups which by their nature allow more religious liberty to their adherents will have less protection under the law from anti-discrimination claims. In this sense the EO law is against religious liberty.
The reasoning of Judge Hampel is further evidence that denominations will come under pressure to apply uniform standards on issues such as homosexual relations – and indeed any issue subject to anti-discrimination provisions – across all groups who come under their doctrinal umbrella. If protection only applies if the doctrine demands particular behaviour, then evidence that a group does not insist on conformity on a particular ethical issue can be used to prove that conformity is not required by the doctrine of the religion. This could put increasing pressure on groups like the Anglicans who currently have a diversity of views on anti-discrimination-related theological issues.
This ruling also has interesting implications for cases where the discrimination is based on religious rather than sexual identity attributes. E.g. is it demanded by Anglican doctrine that a church refuse a booking from a Wiccan group to use the church hall for a social evening? On the basis of the 39 Articles, the Creeds and the Prayer Books, I suspect not. So a parish which refuses such a booking might be breaking the law.
Finally I note that the Equal Opportunity Commission might consider itself entitled to inform Christian groups in future that discrimination in provision of services based upon sexual identity is illegal in the provision of facilities for hire. The Commission could be more entitled now to launch an investigation into provision of services by religious groups, a potential allowed for by the new Victorian law.

There are many things which are unclear from this ruling from Judge Hampel. Whether all her findings will stand remains to be seen. I do not know if CYC Is planning to appeal all or part of the ruling. In any case, this does seem to be a useful indication of which way the winds are blowing for religious liberty in the state of Victoria.

Making a Difference for Pro-Life This Sunday November 26 - Vic State Elections

2010-11-22T06:58:00.001+11:00

The site http://www.lifevote.org.au/ gives information on which candidates are pro-life, and how to assist them in the state election this Sunday. I encourage those who are concerned about this issue to visit the site and determined which of their local candidates have a track record of voting prolife.

On Abortion, Slavery and Censorship

2010-11-18T23:13:00.000+11:00

Abortion is one of the most challenging and troubling moral issues of our times. We should not be surprised, as is the case for most great moral challenges, that there are deep and powerful psychological pressures which work against abortion being openly considered, discussed and named for what it is.

I am convinced that if most Victorians reflected, on the basis of accurate factual information, on what late-term or even mid-term abortion consists of, as an actual medical procedure, from the perspective of the unborn child, they would be repulsed. We do not desire to undergo this dark act of contemplation, so instead we avoid it at all costs. We also banish contemplation of what it does to medical staff who are required to perform 'termination of pregnancy' procedures on a regular basis.

We have found many ways of censoring our thoughts on the subject of abortion.

One way is to accuse those who wish to raise the issue of being disgusting, dishonest, misrepresenters of the truth, fanatics, extremists, or some other cowardly label of abuse. The resistance against having the discussion is so great that it is more convenient to mount an attack against those who would bring the matter to our attention.

The main part of this is fear – fear that we will find ourselves to be barbaric.

Another way of silencing is to banish all concessions to the humanity of the unborn child from our thoughts. This is why Victorian abortion laws make no provision for pain relief for foetuses being aborted – despite evidence that they suffer pain – and we have no law which specifically protects the right to life of an aborted baby who has the misfortune to be born alive. The USA has such a law, brought in as result of evidence that such children were just being left to die – or worse, being killed – in America's hospitals. The censoring of compassion is all about aborting our mental acts – banishing anything from our thoughts which might cause us to look upon the unborn child as a human person. A a result, a newborn kitten has more legal rights in Victoria than an unborn human child: more right to live, more right to protection from physical harm, and simply more right to being treated with dignity.

Another censorship technique is to use the same old linguistic tricks which always cover over the shedding of blood. We prefer not to refer to foetal deaths, let alone killing the unborn, but instead speak of a 'common procedure', to 'terminations of pregnancy', or even more clinically just to "TOPs". Thus we tame with out tongues what our minds refuse to contemplate.

I have found it deeply disturbing that when I rose to speak on this subject at two Melbourne Anglican Synods, I was prevented from speaking each time because members of the synod introduced procedural motions to stop the debate. But I will not be silenced. I will not simply shut up and simply submit to the fact that that my own church has rendered itself officially voiceless on this subject. We Melbourne Anglicans, as a denomination, have blood on our hands. On my hands, if I remain silent. This is why I am writing now. Out of a sense of communal guilt.

The reasons for having the discussion are compelling. We repress them at our moral peril.

In this connection, I have been pondering the legal debates over slavery in American in the nineteenth century. It is striking that the arguments for slavery back then seem so eerily parallel to arguments for abortion today. Augusto Zimmerman has written persuasively on the subject:

In a famous case decided in 1857, the US Supreme Court declared that black people had no human rights and, therefore, were entirely subject to the rights of slave-owners. A century later, in 1973, this very court also decided that unborn children had no human rights and, therefore, were entirely subject to the rights of women. Similarities between both sentences are too obvious to be just ignored. One of the justices who gave his dissenting vote on the abortion case declared quite prophetically: "From now on, women are free to abort for any reason and for no reason at all."

In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its famous Dred Scott case, defended slavery in these terms: 1) black slaves belong to their masters; 2) black slaves are not human persons before the law; 3) black slaves can only acquire human rights if they become free individuals; 4) those who think slavery is morally wrong do not need to have slaves, but shall not impose their 'personal' opinion upon others; 5) masters have the right to do whatever they want with their property, including black slaves; 6) slavery is better for the black people. Otherwise, they would have to face complex moral choices which their so-called 'inferior' condition not allow them to resolve satisfactorily.

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Roe vs. Wade, employed these arguments to decriminalise abortion: 1) unborn children belong to their mothers; 2) unborn children are not human persons before the law; 3) unborn children can only have human rights if they are born alive; 4) those who think abortion is morally wrong do not need to have an abortion, but shall not impose their 'personal' opinion upon others; 5) women have the right to do whatever they want with their property (bodies), which includes unborn children; 6) abortion is better for unwanted and/or disabled children. Otherwise, they would suffer on account of maternal rejection and/or mental and/or physical condition.

As can be seen, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a similar reasoning in order to decide on both cases of slavery and abortion, with judges denying the moral status of black people and unborn children. If we compare the arguments used by the court to justify slavery and abortion, it becomes clear that unborn children were regarded as the same beings of an inferior order as black people from a century earlier.

The comparison was put movingly by former African-American US presidential candidate Alan Keyes, in a speech given in San Francisco on March 4, 2000:

See, people wonder why it is, Alan, everywhere he goes, he always brings up this issue of abortion. And I never go anywhere without mentioning it. Why? Because abortion is to our time what slavery was to the 19th century. If anyone of conscience went anywhere in the 19th century and did not confront the American people with the evil of slavery, then they were not doing what statesmanship required. Slavery was what discarded and rejected and denied the fundamental principle of right and justice in America. And what was done in the name of slavery then is done for the sake of abortion now. The paradigm of it is quite clear.

What is it that is the argument made in favor of abortion? You can see it in Roe vs. Wade and everything else. It's a privacy argument. And privacy based on what? "Well, this is the woman's body and she has the right to decide what goes on with it." You start from that. And this child, this babe, this fetus in the womb, what is it? "Well, it's a part of her body, utterly dependent on her body, not viable apart from her body. She has, therefore, absolute power over this being, and given that absolute power, she has the absolute right to dispose of it according to her will."

We don't recognize what that's saying. What that's saying is that power makes for right. Might makes for right. If I have you in my power, I may dispose of you and your life according to my will. And if that argument is now accepted and we have embraced it as a fundamental principle of law, then we have rejected the right principle. For, if our most basic and conditional right, the right to life itself, comes to us not from God but from our mother's choice, then there is no human right that transcends in its claim human choice and human power. Abortion is the paradigm – the ultimate paradigm – of despotism, tyranny, oppression, slavery, holocaust.

And I see this all the time. I was down in South Carolina not long ago, and a young lady comes up to me, after I had given a talk just like this, and she says, "I was listening to your speech, and I want to know how come you can prefer the rights of potential persons to those of actual persons." I'll never forget that moment, because she was the very paradigm. If you want to think of some little slip-of-a-thing that projected the very wonderful wholesome air of American womanhood--and she was speaking to me in, what? In the chilling language of holocaust and atrocity. And she didn't even know what she was doing.

I looked at her and I said, "You know, I have a 17-year-old son. How old are you?" And she said, "19." And I said, "You know you make a very rash assumption in what you ask me there," and she looked at me quizzically. And I said, "Because, given my experience with my 17-year-old son, I have to tell you, there are many days on which I'm not entirely sure that people of your age are actual persons at all."

And then to drive the point home even further, I looked at her and I said, "And I hope you don't think that I will hear those words and forget that 120, 130-odd years ago, Frederick Douglass had to go in front of audiences with a speech entitled, 'That the Negro is a man,' to prove that he and others like me were 'actual persons.'"

See, why do people forget this? They speak this cold-blooded language to people like myself, as if we're too stupid to remember that the day before yesterday we were not considered "actual persons," and that if today we deny the principle on which we stood in order to demand respect for our humanity, if we deny it to those human beings in the womb, it will be denied once again to us and to others. Because then it just becomes a matter of who you can get on your side to draw the line between humanity and non-humanity, personhood and non-personhood. And then the majority can oppress, and the powerful can abuse, and those who end up on the wrong side have nothing.

Of this I am convinced, that future generations will look back in horror upon us, and wonder at our callous cruelty. This is how I regard the state of Victoria today, at the present time. On this issue, our moral state is comparable to that of slave owning societies in North America before the civil war. No, it is worse. Their moral crimes resulting in the imprisonment of human beings. Ours result in deaths.

Not for the sake of politeness; nor for the sake of being well thought of by my peers; nor for the sake of avoiding offending the sensibilities of others; nor for the sake of wishing to appear 'moderate' – not for any of these reasons will I remain silent about abortion in this state.

Women's Health Victoria Media Release on Mark Durie disappears from their website

2010-10-17T22:29:00.005+11:00

Women's Health Victoria has apparently withdrawn its Media Release "Anglican minister spreading misinformation about abortion law" from the WHV website.

The WHV Media Release made serious allegations against me, and conveyed inaccurate information about Victoria's abortion law.

I refuted this Media Release in my previous post.

Now, as at Sunday October 17, the news event item link and the PDF link are no longer 'live' on the WHV site. There were fomerly accessible at:
http://whv.org.au/news-events/post/anglican-minister-spreading-misinformation-about-abortion-law/
and
http://whv.org.au/static/files/assets/d6238d60/MediaRelease_AnglicanMinisterMisinformation_07.10.2010.pdf

Other news items are still live on the WHV site, see e.g.:
http://whv.org.au/news-events

More on the Reported Explosive Growth in Victoria’s Late Term Abortions

2010-10-11T10:40:00.003+11:00

In a press release issued on 7th October 2010 ("Anglican minister spreading misinformation about abortion law") Women’s Health Victoria and its Executive Director Ms Marilyn Beaumont have made serious allegations against me, including:

I am spreading misinformation about Victoria’s abortion law;
I have put this misinformation ‘into the public domain without proper fact checking’;
I have a ‘tendency to inflate and take liberty with the facts’.

Ms Beaumont has also sent me a letter, which lays out her views in greater detail.

It is disappointing that in launching what amounts to a public attack on my reputation, Women’s Health Victoria has itself put out information containing serious omissions and inaccuracies. These give a misleading impression concerning both the abortion law in Victoria, and statistics for late-term abortions.

1. The Abortion Law Reform Act 2008

One of the claimed inaccuracies concerned a report, published in the Melbourne Age on 7th October 2010, that I had claimed conscientious objection by medical staff was now illegal in Victoria. This comment was reported in the context of the employment of hospital medical staff.

Ms Beaumont alleges that this is inaccurate, on the grounds that:

Section 8 of the Abortion Law Reform Act allows health practitioners to object to abortion.
However a health professional who has a conscientious objection to abortion is required to refer a woman for termination of pregnancy services.
Any conscientious objection to making such a referral ‘does not have merit’.
The Act’s rejection of conscientious objection in relation to referral is ethically correct, because in the context of referral, a woman’s right to make informed choices about her health must take precedence over the conscience of the health practitioner.

In response to this argument, I note first that Ms Beaumont has correctly conceded that it is illegal in the state of Victoria for a health practitioner to object, on grounds of conscience, to referring a woman for abortion services. In this respect, conscientious objection by health practitioners is illegal in Victoria. Ms Beaumont appears to regard this illegality as trivial – she maintains such an objection ‘does not have merit’ – however this value judgment relies upon a contentious ethical opinion about the moral value of abortion, which regards it simply as a decision made by a woman about her own body.

Second, and more importantly, the Section 8 concession to conscientious objection only applies in the case when a woman has requested a health practitioner to advise or treat her in relation to abortion. No such concession exists in the case of hospital staff – such as operating theatre workers – who do not have a direct relationship with the woman. In this context Section 8 is irrelevant, and conscientious objection by health practitioners receives no protection under the Abortion Reform Act 2008.

The comments attributed to me in the Melbourne Age were specifically in relation to hospital health workers. It is therefore disappointing that Ms Beaumont has misrepresented the scope and application of the Abortion Law Reform Act. Nothing in the WHV press release acknowledges that Section 8 of the Act does not apply to hospital health practitioners who have no direct relationship with the patient. This was a significant omission.

2. Government Statistics for Abortion in Victoria

Ms Beaumont stated that “A significant proportion of late-term abortions, including the 52 mentioned in this article, [i.e. in The Melbourne Age, 7th October 2010] are for congenital abnormality.” Based on this observation, she alleges that:

“The minister’s [i.e. Mark Durie’s] comments are not only inaccurate but grossly insensitive both to the health care providers and families involved in late-term abortions for congenital abnormality and the impact this can have.”

The rebuke appears to rely on an implication that late-term abortions in Victoria are primarily for congenital abnormality. This is not true. For example in 2005 there were 129 late-term abortions reported in Victoria for reasons of congenital abnormality, but 180 for ‘psychosocial indications’ (i.e. there was nothing wrong with the baby). The proportion between abortions for congenital abnormalities and psychosocial indications depends upon how late in the pregnancy the abortion takes place, as the following tables show:

TABLE 1. Late-term abortions conducted in Victoria at 23+ weeks, 2001-2007.
CA=Congenital Abnormality. PS=Psychosocial Indications
(Source: Annual Report for 2007 of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity, p.12)

TABLE 2. Late-term abortions conducted in Victoria at 20-22 weeks, 2001-2007.
CA=Congenital Abnormality. PS=Psychosocial Indications
(Source: Annual Report for 2007 of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity, p.12)

These charts indicate that:

Late term abortions in Victoria were dramatically increasing even before the liberalization of abortion laws in 2008.
The greatest growth was in late-term abortions for psychosocial indications. These went up by c. 400% 2001-2007.
‘Late’ late-term abortions (23+ weeks) are mainly for psychosocial reasons, but ‘early’ late-term abortions (20-22 weeks) are mainly for congenital abnormality.
It seems reasonable to speculate that the later a baby is aborted, the more likely it will be for psychosocial indications.
The most stable category of late-term abortions is congenital abnormality at 23+ weeks. Presumably this is because testing for congenital abnormalities keeps on getting better, and the resulting abortions are happening earlier as a result.

Victoria has seen explosive growth in late-term abortions for psychosocial indications. This trend was well underway before the Abortion Law Reform Act in 2008, and there has been an indication that it may be continuing.

A Channel 7 news report, aired on 17 April 2010, reported that late-term abortions at the Royal Women’s hospital had allegedly increased six-fold since the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 was introduced. This has to be considered on top of the previous 400% state wide increase in late-term abortions for psychosocial indications from 2001-2007. While it is impossible to be sure of figures without further information, the combined multiplicative effect of two such reported increases could be an overall 2400% increase in late-term abortions for psychosocial indications within a ten year period. Such a possibility caused me to move that the Melbourne Synod of the Anglican Diocese request a report from the Victorian State Government about the impact of its liberalization of abortion laws. (See my previous blog post).

The Abortion Law Reform Act went into force in late October 2008, so the full impact of Victoria’s liberalization of abortion laws on late-term abortion statistics will only be publicly known when the 2009 report of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity is released. This will presumably be sometime in late 2011 to early 2012. (The 2008 report has not yet been released as of October 2010, and the 2007 report was only released in April 2010).

I deplore the serious omissions and misleading information concerning the application of abortion law which were contained in the Women’s Health Victoria press release.

I repeat my call for the Victorian Government to report to the public on the impact of Abortion Law Reform, and specifically its impact on the frequency of late term abortions in Victoria. I remain deeply concerned about the implications of what appears to be explosive recent growth in late term abortions in Victoria, including the obvious potential of such growth to impact the recruitment and morale of health practitioners in those hospitals which perform late-term abortions.

A blacker shade of grey: a motion to Melbourne Anglican synod on late-term abortions in Victoria

2010-10-11T10:15:00.004+11:00

Last Saturday I had prepared a motion to bring before the Anglican Synod of the Diocese of Melbourne. Unfortunately it was not possible to present the motion. Here is the motion, and an edited version of the speech which I had prepared to present.

=========

The Motion

That this Synod,

a reported six-fold increase in late-term abortions being performed at the Royal Women's Hospital since the introduction of the Abortion Law Reform Bill in October 2008;[1] and
a reported 52 cases in 2007 of late-term abortions (15% of the total in that year) which resulted in babies being born alive;

calls upon the State Government of Victoria to investigate and report to the people of Victoria on the following matters:

How many late-term abortions are being performed in Victoria every week, and at how many weeks gestation?
What are the reasons these abortions are being performed, and in what proportions?
For those babies born alive as a result of a late-term abortion, were the neonates given the medical care at birth which a new born infant would normally be entitled to, and what was their cause of death?
What has been the effect on staff morale of the reported six-fold increase in late-term abortions being performed at the Royal Women's Hospital?
What impact has the reported increase in late-term abortions had on policies for recruitment of staff at the Royal Women's Hospital?

Moved: Revd Dr Mark Durie, St Mary's Caulfield. Seconded: Revd Mark Hood, St Mark's Camberwell.

[1] Channel 7 News, 17 April 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AeFdCG4gEg>

[2] Annual Report for the Year 2007, The Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity, p.11. <http://www.health.vic.gov.au/ccopmm/downloads/ccopmm_annrep07.pdf>

The Speech

Abortion is a vexed ethical subject. For women who make the choice to have an abortion, it can be one of he most difficult and painful decisions of their lives.

As with all challenging ethical areas of medicine, it is important for the community to be well-informed. This motion is not intended to incite tensions or cause anyone pain. Rather it is a request that the community be informed about what is happening in regard to late-term abortions in this state.

In 2008 the Victorian State Parliament passed an Abortion Law Reform Bill which decriminalized abortion in Victoria. One of the intentions of the reform, according to the Attorney-General, was that current clinical practice in the provision of abortions not be altered. The Attorney-General also stated that the intention in reforming the law was not to lead to more abortions being performed.

However, evidence has emerged that there has been an increase in the numbers of late-term abortions, and this is affecting the practice of abortion provision in Victoria.

A Channel 7 news report, broadcast on 17 April 2010 reported that there had been a six-fold increase in late-term abortions being performed at the Royal Women’s Hospital since the introduction of the 2008 Abortion Law Reform. Presenter Jennifer Keyte said “midwives and doctors feel traumatized” by having to perform so many late-term abortions at the Royal Women’s, and were unhappy that other hospitals were refusing to perform them. Journalist Louise Milligan said that there had been some ‘alarming requests’ for late-term abortions, including, for example, a request for a termination at 32 weeks because the baby had a hare lip

Earlier this year the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Pediatric Mortality and Morbidity published its annual report for 2007, which included a survey of perinatal and neonatal deaths. This report states that in 52 cases terminations of pregnancy due to congenital abnormality resulted in a live birth. In other words the baby died after birth.

It is important that we be sensitive about these tragic situations, and to acknowledge that in many such cases the abnormalities themselves, rather than the abortion, would have been the cause of death of the infant. It can be vitally important to grieving families to hold their live baby before it dies.

This same report reveals that from 2001 to 2007 the number of late-term abortions performed in Victoria for psychosocial reasons – i.e. there was no congenital abnormality – increased from 45 yo 164, an almost four-fold increase. The increase was greater at later stages of pregnancy: in every year from 2002-2007 psychosocial abortions from 23 weeks on took place twice as often (and in some years more than four times as often) as abortions for congenital abnormalities. Some of these late-term psychosocial terminations even took place after 28 weeks.

All this was well before the 2008 liberalization of abortion laws, and the reported six-fold increase in late-term abortions at the Royal Women’s Hospital.

My point in citing these figures is that late terminations of pregnancies appear to have been increasing in number in this state for quite some time. This is a serious matter, which deserves careful consideration. The public needs to be informed about what is happening, and particularly about the impact of the 2008 Abortion law reform, which was intended – according to the Attorney General – to result in no increase in the frequency of abortions.

Some newborns survive an abortion. Gianna Jessen is one such person, who has visited Victoria in the past to speak about her experience. As the numbers of late terminations seems to be increasing, with more and more abortions of viable babies, it is important that the public be informed about what happens in those cases when the baby is actually born alive.

To help show that the problem of late-term abortions resulting in a life birth is not a figment of the imagination, I note that in 2005 the Sunday Times reported a UK Government investigation to consider reports that late-term abortions in the UK were resulting in as many as 50 live-births a year. These cases were not because of congenital abnormalities – the situation already discussed – but because the baby was viable, yet its life had not been terminated before being delivered. I stress however that this was the UK, not Victoria.

Any increase in late-term abortions raises difficult ethical challenges for those hospitals which perform them. It is reasonable to ask, not only for what reasons they are being performed, but what affect does this have on staff recruitment and retention? This relates to the issue of conscientious objection. There is a conscientious objection provision in the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 for a health practitioner who has been requested by a woman to advise or treat in relation to abortion. However no such provision exists in the case of medical staff – doctors and nurses – who are working in operating theatres in hospitals and have no direct relationship with the women.

The Department of Human Services has written to the Australian Nursing Federation to say that, if a staff member has a conscientious objection based upon religious conviction, there is a provision in Equal Opportunity Legislation that employers are legally obliged to respect such beliefs. However not all conscientious objectors will be working from religious conviction. Indeed it would seem unfair to discriminate against those whose conscientious objection is not faith-based.

The ANF itself has guidelines designed to protect the right of nurses to conscientiously object to procedures and practices to which their conscience is opposed. However, it must be problematic, in a context of increasing numbers of late-term abortions, for a hospital to exempt some staff from participating in certain types of late term abortions, as this will increase the load upon the staff who are willing. Indeed health professionals at the Royal Women’s have reportedly complained about being asked to shoulder a growing burden of these procedures.

Such dynamics must surely also put pressure on the hospital to select staff on the basis of their willingness to participate in late-term abortions. These operations are disliked by many, and the more staff there are who can be exempted, the harder it will be for everyone else.

Fellow members of Synod, these are very painful and difficult issues. But this does not mean we should shy away from them. This motion is a request for information. It does not accuse or condemn. In a context of changing practice, in which late-term abortions are apparently becoming more frequent, it asks that we be fully informed about the impact of this change, including as it relates to the care of the new born, and to the morale and recruitment of medical staff.

Over the past few days I have received moving accounts of the emotional and moral complexities of late-term abortions. There are shades of grey, as one writer said. This motion is a request for light to be shone onto this difficult but highly important ethical issue, out of concern that, for lack of scrutiny, late term abortions have for us in Victoria become very black indeed.

I commend this motion to you today.

Footy Songs at Funerals (and the rest)

2010-09-11T19:22:00.002+10:00

I was interested to read a report yesterday that the Catholic church in Melbourne had banned footy songs and other secular songs from funerals, and instructed clergy that funerals must not be 'a celebration of the life'. Celebrity priest, Father Bob Mcguire said he though the guidelines were 'insensitive'.

Funerals are complex events. From the perspective of Christian faith, a funeral is a service of worship. As such it includes the three key universal elements of worship: praise of God, hearing the Word of God read and preached, and prayer. The themes of this worship will include reflection on the meaning of life and human mortality, the reality of death and divine judgment, the hope of the resurrection, and looking forward to the second coming of Christ. For some Christians this is an opportunity to pray for the dead person, but not all Christians pray for the dead.

Woven into all such acts of worship there is the ever-present dimension of grief, and the need to assist people to mourn and say goodbye. For believers, the acts of worship themselves are very comforting and helpful. Also, within the worship service which is the funeral, elements which celebrate the departed person's life can assist the process of grieving.

It can be difficult when a family is seeking a religious funeral, but has little appreciation – or even experience – of Christian worship. There can be a real possibility that the acts of worship become overwhelmed by the celebration of the person's life. At worst, the minister can end up acting as the hired religious help, adding a prayer to a wholly secular event. In this sense, I can appreciate the concerns of Archbishop Hart of the Victorian Catholic church. However the risk is that by rejecting all secular, and indeed personal elements in a funeral, the Catholics will alienate people from the ministry of the church.

It is very helpful that Anglican clergy have some some non-negotiable boundaries – one of these is the order of service found in the Prayer Book. When taking funerals we can manage these tensions within the bounds set by the Anglican order of service, which requires a Bible reading, a sermon based on this reading, and prayer. We are required to declare the hope of the resurrection, the inevitability of judgment, and the second coming of Christ. Aspects of celebration and remembrance of the person are focused in the early part of the service and not intertwined throughout the whole ceremony. Nevertheless, in reality every family's situation is different, and the human dimension requires flexibility, and, as Father Bob put it, 'sensitivity'.

Can Women - Or Men - Have It All?

2010-08-04T15:40:00.000+10:00

This week Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson has stated that women can't have the perfect family and a career at the same time. They can't 'have it all'.

A day I remember with great vividness was in March 1997. I was in training for the ordained ministry, and had a placement at Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School in Essendon (a girls school) under the supervision of the Revd Jean Penman. One day at school assembly there was a presentation by the students to celebrate World Women's Day (March 8). One of the students walked onto the stage one minute in a business suit, and the next she appeared as a mother holding a baby. The triumphant message was: "You can have it all!" The idea was that women should expect to be able to combine career and family with great confidence and even ease.

Personally I found the presentation traumatic. I do believe women can do amazing things, as great as any man. They can and they do, all the time. But I knew the message was a false one. Being the father of three young boys (who were 7, 9 and 11 years old), and having watched my male and female colleagues juggling family and work requirements, I knew that virtually no-one can 'have it all'. People have to make hard choices all the time about how they balance work and personal life.

I had also met a number of young adults who were poorly parented by 'absent' fathers who were so devoted to their work they had successful careers but lousy families. Those men hadn't managed to 'have it all'. I felt they should have sacrificed some career achievements for the sake of their children.

I had also found that I couldn't have it all. There were work opportunities I could not take up because of family needs, and family opportunities that went missing because of work. Much of my planning around the years of preparation for ordained ministry had been shaped by a need to make caring for my family my first priority.

At that school assembly, me sense of trauma was for the students themselves, that they would grow up with unrealistic expectations of life, trying to cram too many things in, and getting badly hurt in the process. If they truly believed they could have it all, they might, for example, delay having a family until their late 30's or early 40's, when everything becomes much harder and riskier – including conceiving. On another level, people usually can't 'have it all' because opportunities in life are competitive, and the race goes to the swiftest. It is not true that everyone can win every race, and people need to be able to find happiness without conquering all.

What I saw unfolding on the school stage just looked cruel to me. It seemed to me that the baby boomer teachers, who themselves had certainly not 'had it all' (although teaching is by no means the worst profession for balancing work and family) were pushing their overblown and even hubristic expectations upon the students in their care.

Making life choices can sometimes be incredibly difficult. If you choose A, then you must forgo B. There is a sense of loss, even in choosing one career over another. Training young people to have inflated expectations of life is a form of abuse. They need to be equipped to make carefully thought-through choices, and know how to live with the consequences of their choices with grace and without resentment or a misplaced sense of entitlement.

It is wrong to deny people opportunities or to force them to set their sights lower than they should. It is good to inspire people and encourage them to achieve great things. But being a healthy human being means learning what it means to live within one's limits.

I hope that young women are afforded more dignity and respect these days.

On Julia Gillard's Atheism

2010-07-28T00:11:00.007+10:00

On Sunday 18 I was quoted by John Elder, a Melbourne Age journalist, concerning Julia Gillard's faith, or lack of it. Elder gave the impression that my view on Gillard's atheism was rather more negative than it was. As he said to me "much got cut from everyone's remarks".

What I had written to Elder was:

"I think most people of faith recognise that we need leaders who are capable and honest. Just because someone is a Christian, or an adherent of any other faith, doesn't make them a a good leader or even a good person.

There are also prominent examples in the Bible of admired leaders, like Nebuchadnezzar, who were pagans, and both St Paul and St Peter tell Christians to respect authorities (even though they were pagans and were even persecuting Christians).

I don't think the question is really about whether someone believes in something or nothing. It's about what the person actually believes in, as much as the fact that they believe in ANYTHING. ...

It does depend a lot on what you think of the religion itself. Some would be nervous about a Muslim prime minister, because many see Islam as a political system, and they would fear that the leader's faith will end up directing policy to reshape society towards the Islamic sharia.

Differences between religions aside, there is a monumental struggle of values going on in society between a purely materialistic view of the human person on the one hand — for which the philosopher Peter Singer has become the favourite pinup boy — and views which take the dignity of the human person as a God-given, and an absolutely non-negotiable value to be protected at all costs. Singer's ethics, which have become embedded in the policies of the Greens, could take humanity into some very dark places indeed. We are seeing this unfolding already.

If you believe we are all just lumps of dirt, the result of a series of evolutionary accidents, of course this affects how you value the dying, the unborn, the disabled, the environment, human sexuality and marriage.

Pure materialism will inevitably undermine human rights and erode justice, reducing the worth of people to what they produce or consume. We saw this very clearly in the bitter fruits of Marxist atheism, which treated human lives as the raw material for political progress. In the name of such 'progress', millions of lives were cruelly degraded and destroyed.

The big question in my mind about Julia Gillard is not the fact that she is an atheist, but what kind of atheism does she stand for? Will she stand up for and defend values which ultimately are based on Biblical ethical foundations, such as marriage, the right to life and the equality of all people before the law? Or will she march to the drumbeat of pure materialism?

The home values which have formed our Prime Minister – and which she has emphasised in her speeches – include hard work, the value of an education, optimism, and respect for others (that is, not thinking of yourself as superior to others, no matter what their attributes). These are good values, but what are they based upon? They sound a lot like the product of the Welsh protestant revival of a century ago, which reformed Welsh society, shutting pubs all over the country, and improving the lot of many. Such values as a protestant work ethic and the dignity of the human person, inherited from our forebears, are the fruits of the faith of preceding generations.

But the question is what legacy will Julia pass on to future generations, because even good values, if disconnected from their moorings in faith, do not easily or automatically replicate themselves. They can even be dangerous. An evil person can do a lot of damage through hard work and a good education.

These days the aggressive drumbeat of atheistic materialism sounds enticing and compelling for many. What I do not know is whether Julia Gillard is going to march in step with this increasingly confident beat, or will she more or less hold to the values of the Welsh Christian soil from which she grew but has now become disconnected.

So yes, I am uneasy about Julia. But what her legacy will be, only time will tell."

I have had a few interesting responses from atheists to The Age article. One person wrote respectfully asking whether my comments, as quoted, were taken in or out of context. An email conversation ensued, and we could agree on many things.

Someone else wrote what could best be described as hate mail. Some atheists assume that if you have faith, you must be a) an idiot b) a bigot, or c) both. This sentiment is deeply held by more than a few in Australia. I am troubled by the intensity of this hatred which a minority of atheists seems to hold towards people with different views from their own.

I do remain curious about Julia Gillard's world view. What are her foundational values and beliefs – apart from derivative motherhood values like hard work, respect for others and optimism? Upon what fundamental assumptions or presuppositions does she base her take on the meaning of life?

Take respect for others, for example. Julia Gillard regards this as a Good Thing. People can adopt this as a foundational principle of their own personal life-journey, but as a value, it is normally something secondary, which is based upon other beliefs. For example many Christians base this belief upon the idea that all people are made in the image of God, and so they share a universal dignity and worth, no matter what their race, ethnicity, language, religion, wealth or capabilities may be. I can see how a materialistic world view could produce different conclusions. For example, if you wanted to argue that it is our capacity for cognition which is the basis of human dignity (by this view a whale would have more worth than a snail because the whale is more intelligent) then you might conclude that an unborn foetus or a intellectually disabled person has less inherent worth as a human being than Mr or Ms Jo(e) Average. Abortion and euthanasia of the disabled might appear more reasonable to someone who evaluates human dignity in terms of the capacity for cognition.

What does our Prime Minister think about the meaning of life? This is a question I'd be keen to have answers for from any politician, but I'm particularly curious to know more about Julia's world view.

However, I'm not holding my breath to have deeper questions answered this side of the election.

Stan Nicholes' Passing - farewelling a St Mary's Parishioner

2010-06-25T15:21:00.001+10:00

A funeral service will be held for Stan in St Mary's on Thursday 1 July 2010, at 10.30 am.

================

Tennis coach and sports scientist Stan Nicholes dies, aged 91

FROM THE HERALD SUN, Friday 25 June.

Stan Nicholes has died, aged 91.

AUSTRALIAN sport is mourning the death of Stan Nicholes, one its greatest figures. A coach and sports scientist, Nicholes is a member of the Australian Sport of Fame.

He died at his Caulfield home today, aged 91.

A former weightlifter, Nicholes rose to international acclaim because of his work with Australia's most illustrious champions.

His clients included Olympic gold medallists Herb Elliott and Peter Antonie, grand slam tennis champions Margaret Court and Frank Sedgman and a host of AFL luminaries, including Tony Lockett, Ron Barassi, Tom Hafey and Kevin Sheedy.

As an athlete in his own right, Nicholes held the Australian record for the single arm swing of 81 kilograms.

The event demanded athletes swing a dumbell from the ground, between their legs, to above their head - using only one arm.

Nicholes retired from competition as a 32-year-old and set about changing the face of international sport.

"He was years ahead of his time," said tennis coach Bob Brett, whose credits include major victories with Boris Becker and Goran Ivanisevic.

"In 1945 or '47, a 15-year-old was sent by Harry Hopman to work with Stan. That 15-year-old was Frank Sedgman.

"People now talk about the importance of fitness and conditioning. Stan was doing it more than 60 years ago."

Hopman, Davis Cup's most eminent figure, used Nicholes' conditioning as a crucial edge in Australia's astonishing run of 15 Cup victories in 20 years between 1950-69.

Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, John Newcombe, Neale Fraser, Ashley Cooper, Peter McNamara, Paul McNamee, Darren Cahill, American Chris Evert, Croat Mario Ancic and Ukrainian Andrei Medvedev all worked with Nicholes.

Nicholes was involved in two Richmond premierships.

According to the Australian Sport Hall of Fame, Nicholes had a hand in the careers four Olympic gold medallists.

Nicholes was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his service to sport as a fitness consultant in 1986.

In 2000, he took part in the Sydney Olympic torch relay.

A Review of The Rage Against God, by Peter Hitchens, brother of Christopher Hitchens

2010-06-14T18:18:00.000+10:00

Zondervan, 2010. (Available in Australia at Koorong Books)
Review by Bill Muehlenberg, from CultureWatch
Atheist Christopher Hitchens has just released his memoirs, which has generated a lot of interest. His brother Peter has also released his story, but much of the media seems uninterested in the book. Perhaps it is because Peter has moved on from atheism to Christianity.
A largely secular mainstream media just does not know what to make of such conversions. It is happy to promote Christopher’s rage against God, but less willing to push a book which repudiates atheism and celebrates God’s existence.
In this brief volume Peter recounts his early turn toward atheism, and his later turn back to God. In it he also takes on the ongoing atheism of his brother. Although this is certainly a case of a house divided, it is not a polemical attack on his sibling’s unbelief, but a plea for some realism and rationality in this important debate.
The first half of the book recounts his own story, and how he became a devout atheist and Marxist in his teenage years. His story is in part a mirror image of what happened to Britain. From a great nation it has faded into obscurity, with a loss of saving faith and a loss of face-saving.
He tells how his generation largely abandoned religion, preferring instead the supposed liberation of atheism. He mentions how for twenty years he hardly ever met a religious person, and how all his peers shared in his unbelief. He is honest enough to admit that his rage against God was all about the elevation of self and hedonism.
He quotes a character in a Somerset Maugham novel: “He could breathe more freely in a lighter air. He was responsible only to himself for the things he did. Freedom! He was his own master at last.” This was the joy of his new-found atheism.
His experience of freedom was really antinomianism. Says Hitchens, “There were no more external, absolute rules. The supposed foundation of every ordinance, regulation, law, and maxim … was a fake.” He continues, “I did not have to do anything that I did not want to do, ever again. . . . I could behave as I wished, without fear of eternal consequences.”
This ‘liberation’ from moral law was supposed to mean freedom, but as he explains, all he did was move into bondage of self and sin. He went on a bender, indulging in debauched and debased rebellion. Shaking his fist at God meant living like a totally self- absorbed hedonist.
His story is the story of countless post-war Englishmen. A large abandonment of religion was coupled with a wholesale embrace of sensuality, irresponsibility and selfishness. The radical rebellion of the 60s was simply the fruit of this widespread rejection of God, authority and law.
But just as I too was once a part of this counter-culture, and now I look back in shame and despair at what I helped to unleash, so too Hitchens. He recalls his path back to God, and how he now regrets the libertinism and nihilism that his generation inflicted upon a once great nation.
He notes how his peers saw his return to God as incredulous, inexplicable. A person today can embrace any cause and engage in any activity, and we are supposed to celebrate this. But dare to affirm the Christian faith, and all hell breaks loose.
When he was a Trotskyite, celebrating the tyranny of Soviet Communism, he was seen as clever, hip and cool. But now that he realises what an abysmal police state the Marxist vision really was, and how a return to God is our only real hope of freedom and meaning, he is treated as a pariah and outcaste.
And of course his famous brother is one of these voices of misotheistic hatred. Blaming religion for all our ills is a reckless and foolhardy charge to make, but the atheist fundamentalists do not bother with actually making this case with hard evidence.
Indeed, as Peter shows, the atheistic regimes of the last century have been the real sources of death, bloodshed and barbarism. Yet his atheist brother cannot bring himself to see this. Thus Peter spends a number of chapters recounting the horrors of atheistic communism, and the dystopian brave new world that was the Soviet Union.
And he notes that all secular utopians must end up in the same way. By seeking to bring heaven to earth and create the new man, but without the help of the only one who can make this possible, we only end up enslaving ourselves. And that is why the secularists so hate Christianity.
They know it is the one thing that stands in the way of their coercive utopianism. Says Hitchens, “The Christian religion has become the principle obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power.” Indeed, because he lived in the Soviet Union for several years, he witnessed firsthand the cruelty and ugliness of state-enforced utopianism.
And he sees it all happening again in England and the West. As we abandon God and moral absolutes, the raw power of the state emerges. The vacuum created by the dethroning of God does not last long. It is soon filled by false claimants to the throne.
“Only one reliable force stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. Only one reliable force forms the foundation of the concept of rule of law. Only one reliable force restrains the hand of the man of power.” It is Christianity which offers a check against this power-worship, and acts as a brake on the rush toward the deification of man and state.
And Hitchens demonstrates how so many atheists are at the same time strident leftists. The dictatorships of last century clearly confirm this, but it continues unabated today. “God is the leftists’ chief rival. Christian belief, by subjecting all men to divine authority and by asserting in the words, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ that the ideal society does not exist in this life, is the most coherent and potent obstacle to secular utopianism.”
With the widespread rejection of Christianity, all we have left is the power-hungry Muslims and the power-hungry leftists battling for supremacy. Both reject the message of Jesus as they seek to pursue their power grabs. Indeed, the “Bible angers and frustrates those who believe that the pursuit of a perfect society justifies the quest for absolute power.”
Peter is amazed that his brother has not yet grasped that “Utopia can only ever be approached across a sea of blood” and that “Atheist states have a consistent tendency to commit mass murders in the name of the greater good”. Indeed, “terror and slaughter are inherent in utopian materialist revolutionary movements”.
Hitchens concludes his book by mentioning a public debate he had with his atheist brother in 2008. He was pleased that it remained a rather civil affair, but his brother shows no signs of abandoning his atheistic faith. Yet he takes some hope: Christopher has abandoned his chain-smoking, which in itself seems to be quite a miracle.
If he can make this move, then perhaps he can also make a move concerning the object of his faith and devotion. Peter has made such a move, with telling results, and it is hoped that his brother will as well. In the meantime, what we have here is yet another atheist who has bit the dust.
There has been a steady stream of such conversions out of unbelief. Undoubtedly many more are yet to come. And as a result, many more books such as this will emerge. He concludes with these words: “On this my brother and I agree: that independence of mind is immensely precious, and that we should try to tell the truth in clear English even if we are disliked for doing so.”
Peter has certainly done that here, and his atheist detractors will as usual unleash their venom and hatred on him for daring to think independently, and for his apostasy from the religion of militant atheism. Well done Peter. We await your brother following suit.

Pentecost and the Gift of Other Languages

2010-05-27T21:52:00.002+10:00

This is one of the more 'unusual' stories in the New Testament. On the Day of Pentecost (Shavuot), the Holy Spirit comes upon 120 of Christ's disciples gathered in Jerusalem, and they spontaneously begin praising God. What is remarkable is that all the people in the streets around hear this praise coming out in their own native languages - and these bystanders were from all over the Roman Empire, Jews come to celebrate Pentecost in Jerusalem, who spoke a multiplicity of languages.

What is the meaning or significance of these 'other languages', also referred to as glossalalia and speaking in tongues? Peter's sermon at the time says this fulfils a prophecy in Joel that your 'sons and daughters will prophesy' (Joel 2:28-32). Presumably this just means that the words the disciples were uttering were given them by the Holy Spirit. This was not prophecy as in 'foretelling the future' or prophesy as a word of rebuke to the nation or a call to justice. The words God gave were pure praise.

Some have suggested these 'other languages' were a kind of missionary gift: a marvellous short cut to language proficiency. C.T. Stud was an English cricketer who played at the 1882 test match with Australia which gave rise to the 'Ashes'. Studd became a missionary to China as one of the 'Cambridge Seven' (see photo). These young men all went out as missionaries after studying at Cambridge. Studd prayed for a supernatural gift of being able to speak Mandarin Chinese, on the model of Acts 2, but ended up having to follow the usual laborious route of language study!

No-one takes this interpretation seriously today. There is no suggestion in the New Testament that people were given additional language skills, e.g that when Paul speaks of speaking in other languages, what he meant was that he had an additional language to use in his preaching. In fact there is no evidence even on Pentecost day that the disciples understood what they were saying – the miracle was reported to be in the ears of the listeners, who recognized their own languages come from the disciples' mouths.

Another explanation is that the languages were a kind of mending of Babel: instead of speech being confused after Babel into a multiplicity of mutually incomprehensible languages, God was removing language barriers. This is a repair of the effects of sin, a kind of eschatalogical healing of the world. However the focus in Acts 2 is not on people communicating with each other. Rather the disciples are crying out praise TO GOD – who would understand them anyway. The others who just happened to be listening in were – completely unexpectedly – able to understand what they were saying in their own native languages.

Another explanation of the languages links them to a Jewish belief that at the giving of the law on Mt Sinai (celebrated at Pentecost), God's voice was heard in 70 languages. This was believed to be the total number of the world's languages (actually there are thousands). If God spoke on Mt Sinai in multiple languages all at once - because the law was given for all the nations – then it would be no surprise when the Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost of Luke 2, that the Spirit's voice was also heard in all known languages.

The interpretation I prefer is that the 'other languages' represent a renewal of creation. The truest and ultimate purpose of the gift of speech is to praise God. Sadly human beings use this gift for much baser purposes, such as slander, cursing and telling lies. However Psalm 2 states that God ordains praise from the mouths of infants and babies (Psalm 8:2). In the book of Revelation, the vision of the heavenly city has God's people speaking – in praise and worship to God. The gift of other languages on Pentecost was an in-breaking of this eschatalogical purpose for human language. It was God 'ordaining praise' and renewing the purpose of speech.

In both the New Testament and contemporary experience, the phenomenon of 'other languages' is associated with two functions. One is spontaneous praise, rather like the accounts of Acts (Chapters 2, 10 and 19). The other is prayer, which is more in focus in Paul's writings. Such prayer is also a manifestation of the Spirit's voice, as God himself prays through us (Romans 8:26).

Both praise and prayer are God-directed speech acts, and are also described in the Bible as God-breathed. By this line of thinking, the 'other languages' of the New Testament represent an in-breaking of God's future, through the renewal of language as an anticipation of God's future renewal of all creation. This manifestation is an example of what the writer to the Hebrews calls a foretaste of heaven and the powers of the age to come (Hebrews 6:4-5).

For more on this subject, and last Sunday's sermon on the pentecostal manifestation of 'other languages', see the audio recording at Tongues of Fire.

Equal Opportunity Law Revisited

2010-04-17T01:00:00.008+10:00

This Thursday the Equal Opportunity Bill 2010 passed through the upper house of Victoria's Parliament, the Legislative Council. It has now passed into law. The following day I read some of the Upper House speeches with particular interest. Members of the Legislative Council reported that they had received thousands of submissions from members of the public who were concerned about the new Bill.

The major focus of public concern has been whether Christian organizations will be able to employ like-minded people to their organizations, for example: Can a Christian school favour Christians when filling teaching staff vacancies? Can a Christian aid agency favour Christians in senior management roles?

The issue is particularly pointed for Christian schools, because thousands of students in Victoria attend schools where up until now every member of staff has been required to adhere to religious and ethical principles as part of their employment contract. Tens of thousands more attend schools where there has been a tradition of favouring teachers who share the religious and ethical values of the school. Since the passing of this new bill, it is unclear whether these employment arrangements have now become unsustainable.

The crux of the controversy is just a few paragraphs relating to employment, which mean that a religious organization can discriminate on any grounds at all in employing someone if

a) "conformity with the doctrines, beliefs or principles of the religion is an inherent requirement of the particular position," and
b) the person's "religious belief or activity, sex, sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity, marital status, parental status or gender identity means that he or she does not meet that inherent requirement."

This means that if someone does not meet a religious test related to the position – defined in terms of 'inherent requirements – they will have no protection from discrimination.

Something about this puzzles me greatly. Let me explain. If being a Catholic is an 'inherent requirement' of a position, and someone occupying the position renounces Catholicism, then the employer could discriminate against this person on the basis of their age, or physical impairment, or indeed any other attribute. This seems unfair. As another example, if being a Buddhist is an inherent requirement of a particular position, but parental status is not, then a Muslim single mother who happened to occupy the position could be discriminated against on the grounds of her parental status, but a Buddhist woman in the same position would have full protection from discrimination on grounds of parental status.

I expect that the Government intended something else. They probably meant that discrimination would be allowed on the basis of the attribute which caused the person not to meet the inherent requirement of the position. Unfortunately, this is not how the law has been written.

However the reason for the general public's sense of alarm over the law is not the issue I have just raised of clumsy drafting, but that the 'inherent requirement' test will be interpreted narrowly by our courts, and in a very secular way.

An 'inherent requirement' of a position is a core essential component. The concept of 'inherent requirements' developed in relation to accommodating people with disabilities. Someone with an impairment might need to do a task in a different way, but the important thing is whether they can do the task, not how they do it.

Disabilities are one thing. What is really very unclear is how the concept of 'inherent requirements' will be extended to religious requirements of positions. In the Legislative Council speeches there seemed to be confusion around this subject. For example Labor Member, Mr Johan Scheffer, speaking in favour of the Bill, confusingly stated that:

Where a religious body or school wishes to discriminate in the employment of a person on the basis of the person’s conformity with the relevant religious doctrines or their religious belief, sexual orientation, marital status or gender, they will be required to demonstrate that the basis of the discrimination is an inherent requirement of the religion.

This is not correct. The test is not whether the basis of the discrimination is an inherent requirement of the religion, but whether it is an inherent requirement of the position.

The problem is, no-one really knows what this will mean in practice. I have had some interesting conversations with a lawyer friend who is confident that:

If there is clear evidence that the way in which a school or church group is conducted is genuinely informed by faith-based principles on the sanctity of marriage or some other matter, so that those values are taught by maths teachers as well as religious studies teachers, then I don’t see why we need worry that they would be found to be unlawful if they insisted on such matters in their employees.

The multi-million dollar question here is what does 'taught' mean? Does it mean, for example, that if a school wants to employ teachers who believe the Nicene Creed, that this will only be possible if the mathematics or chemistry teachers actually 'teach' the Nicene Creed as a formal part of the mathematics or chemistry curriculum? If a school wishes to prefer to employ Christian teachers, must they make every teacher a religious education teacher?

I paid particularly careful attention to the statements of Mr Brian Tee, Labor party member of the Legistlative Council:

... what it demands is a degree of transparency and a degree of accountability. What it says is that if you are going to discriminate on those grounds, then that discrimination must be justified or must be in conformity with the religion, and it must be an inherent requirement of the job. So if we are going to allow a school to deny a job to a woman, to a mother, to a wife, then I think that discrimination should have been justified by reference to the nature of the job and by reference to the religious doctrine.

If you are going to deny someone a job because they are gay, if you are going to deny them that opportunity, then what the bill does is say you need to demonstrate that that decision is made in accordance with the religious doctrine; and the nature of the employment means that the person is not suitable.

Talk about having it both ways. This is quite clever. Those who are concerned about being discriminated against – for example gay people or single mothers – will hear that this can only happen if it is justified because the nature of the employment means they are unsuitable for the work. How attractive this sounds! On the other hand the religious employer is meant to hear that discrimination will be possible if it is justified by their religious beliefs. Again, how attractive this sounds!

The difficulty arises that people do not agree on what is justified. Both sides will have their hopes raised by this law. But no-one really knows whether a Muslim school will be able favour Muslims in employing its VCE mathematics or science teachers. In the end, the courts will have to decide, and because their decision will be contingent on the particular doctrines, beliefs and principles of the school, the courts will have to decide on a case-by-case basis.

This will not be easy. In each case, at least three doctrinal issues will need to be resolved

The first doctrinal issue will be to determine what is 'the religion' of the organisation. For a Catholic body this will be straightforward, but for many Christian agencies it could be quite difficult. One can think of a recent case involving the Wesleyan Mission in Sydney (in relation to gender identity discrimination). At first the courts decided the religion was 'Uniting Church', but the Appelate Tribunal decided that the religion was 'Wesleyanism' [(Members of the Board of the Wesley Mission Council v OV and OW (No 2) [2009] NSWADTAP 57 (1 October 2009]. If an evangelical Anglican parish is taken to VCAT, will the religion be 'Anglican' or 'Evangelical Anglican'? And what about parachurch agencies, with no denominational identity. What will 'the religion' be in these cases? 'Vanilla Christian?'

The second doctrinal issue will be what are the 'doctrines, beliefs or principles' of 'the religion' as they apply to "religious belief or activity, sex, sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity, marital status, parental status or gender identity". Again, the Catholics will do well on this one. They have a detailed catechism which dots every i and crosses every t. But for some 'religions' this will be a big ask. I say - good luck to them! A lot of people will be interested to discover from our courts' rulings what is the doctrinally correct Anglican, Baptist, Unity Church or Lutheran position on gay marriage.

The third doctrinal issue will be whether faith-related attributes are an 'inherent requirement' of the particular position. A key question will be to what extent the religious doctrines, beliefs and principles of the organization can impinge upon the 'inherent requirements'. Is the religious character of an organization enough to justify the claim that employees should be religious too?

I am grateful to Cameron Macaulay for drawing to my attention a case where the right of the Army to discharge an HIV positive soldier was upheld (McHugh J in X v Commonwealth [1999] HCA 63; 200 CLR 177 at [31] ff). The ruling includes some relevant comments about the importance of context in determining inherent requirements of positions:

31. Whether something is an "inherent requirement" of a particular employment for the purposes of the Act depends on whether it was an "essential element" of the particular employment[24]. However, the inherent requirements of employment embrace much more than the physical ability to carry out the physical tasks encompassed by the particular employment. Thus, implied in every contract of employment are obligations of fidelity and good faith on the part of the employee[25] with the result that an employee breaches those requirements or obligations when he or she discloses confidential information[26] or reveals secret processes[27]. Furthermore, it is an implied warranty of every contract of employment that the employee possesses and will exercise reasonable care and skill in carrying out the employment[28]. These obligations and warranties are inherent requirements of every employment. If for any reason - mental, physical or emotional - the employee is unable to carry them out, an otherwise unlawful discrimination may be protected by the provisions of s 15(4).

32. Similarly, carrying out the employment without endangering the safety of other employees is an inherent requirement of any employment. It is not merely "so obvious that it goes without saying"[29] - which is one of the tests for implying a term in a contract to give effect to the supposed intention of the parties. The term is one which, subject to agreement to the contrary, the law implies in every contract of employment[30]. It is but a particular application of the implied warranty that the employee is able to and will exercise reasonable care and skill in carrying out his or her duties[31].

33. It would be extremely artificial to draw a distinction between a physical capability to perform a task and the safety factors relevant to that task in determining the inherent requirements of any particular employment. That is because employment is not a mere physical activity in which the employee participates as an automaton. It takes place in a social, legal and economic context. Unstated, but legitimate, employment requirements may stem from this context. It is therefore always permissible to have regard to this context when determining the inherent requirements of a particular employment.

34. So much was recognised by this Court in Qantas Airways Ltd v Christie[32]. Although at age 60, Mr Christie undoubtedly still had the physical ability to fly 747's, the age limit of 60 imposed by other countries on pilots in their air space meant that, if Mr Christie were to be continued to be employed by Qantas, he could only be assigned to a restricted number of routes - a situation which would cause great disruption to, and perhaps the ultimate failure of, Qantas' roster system for assigning pilots to routes. In this context, the Court held that Mr Christie was unable to carry out an inherent requirement of his position, namely, the capacity to fly to all (or at least a reasonable number) of Qantas' international destinations. I said[33]:

"It was plainly an 'inherent requirement' of the position of such a Captain that he or she should have the capacity (physically, mentally and legally) to fly B747-400 flights to any part of the world. That was an indispensable requirement of the position."

35. Christie stands for the proposition that the legal capacity to perform the employment tasks is, or at all events can be, an inherent requirement of employment. It shows that in determining what the inherent requirements of a particular employment are, it is necessary to take into account the surrounding context of the employment and not merely the physical capability of the employee to perform a task unless by statute or agreement that context is to be excluded. Far from rejecting the use of such context, s 15(4) by referring to "past training, qualifications and experience ... and all other relevant factors", confirms that the inherent requirements of a particular employment go beyond the physical capacity to perform the employment.

There is a paragraph in the new Bill which appears to strengthen religious organizations' ability to invoke this idea of context being part of 'inherent requirements':

(4) The nature of the religious body and the religious doctrines, beliefs or principles in accordance with which it is conducted must be taken into account in determining what is an inherent requirement for the purposes of subsection (3).

However, even if the religious nature of a body is taken into account, this is not going to ensure that religious principles will take priority in determining what is an inherent requirement.

In any case, resolving this will ultimately require a ruling on doctrine. A relevant theological question might be: for a Christian, is teaching mathematics an act of worship?

I am put in mind of a recent case in the UK where the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, ruled that requiring a Christian Islington registrar, Ms Lillian Ladele, to officiate at same-sex civil partnership registrations did not in any way interfere with her 'worship' as a Christian: "the effect on Ms Ladele of implementing the policy [of requiring her to officiate at civil partnerships] did not impinge on her religious beliefs: she remained free to hold those beliefs, and free to worship as she wished." Lord Neuberger decided that Ms Ladele's Christian view of marriage was "not a core part of her religion, and Islington's requirement in no way prevented her from worshipping as she wished."

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, has objected to Lord Neuberger's 'disparaging' presumption that Ms Ladele's view on marriage was 'not a core part of her religion', and has asked that Lord Neuberger, together with other judges who hold similar views, excuse themselves from further cases to do with religious liberty. It is extraordinary that a former Archbishop of Canterbury has lost confidence in some of Britain's most senior judges: the judges believe they are giving fair and impartial rulings, but prominent British church leaders believe they are irredeemably biased against Christians.

The theological issue which Lord Neuberger was addressing is what constitutes the 'core' of religious devotion: what determines the boundary between worship and the rest of life. For a secular person, teaching mathematics has nothing to do with religion. However, for a religious person – and indeed for a religious organisation – all actions can be considered to be worship. What distinguishes many relgious organisations is that they see their whole activity as a corporate act of worship, done in devotion and service to God, in accordance with the doctrines and principles of their faith. One reason they want to employ people of faith is that they want the whole organisation to corporately serve God through its activities. The secular judges regard faith as an essentially personal and individual affair, and cannot understand this perspective because their religious worldview cannot comprehend it.

This same theological issue was emphasized in a recent submission from the Standing Committee of General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, entitled 'Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century' submission. The Anglican submission responded to a proposal made in the Australian report Article 18: Freedom of Religion and Belief that:

4.1.1. A distinction, exclusion or preference in respect of a particular job based on the inherent requirements of the job should not be unlawful. Preference in employment for a person holding a particular religious or other belief will not amount to discrimination if established to be a genuine occupational qualification.

In response, the Anglican submission stated:

In many religious contexts (including congregations, schools, missionary organisations and other charitable organisations), R.4.1.1 is not meaningful or relevant. In these organisations there is no distinction between those positions where religious belief is a 'genuine occupational qualification', and other positions. The attempt to make such a distinction is not meaningful because:

i. These organizations may seek to maintain their distinctively religious mission, and avoid loss of effectiveness, by employing people throughout the organisation who adhere to the religious purposes, and hold the religious beliefs, of the organisation.

ii. For Christian organisations, all action is done 'to the glory of God'. This makes it impossible to distinguish between specifically religious activity and other activities.

Clearly the Victorian Labor government disagrees, for it has chosen to make rely upon the 'inherent requirements' distinction, which the Anglicans had declared to be 'not meaningful or relevant'.

I believe, without a shadow of doubt, that both the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, and higher courts of appeal will have great difficulty ruling on the three doctrinal questions which must be resolved in order to apply an 'inherent requirements' test. Despite the Victorian Government's blasé confidence that actions which are 'justified' will be protected by the law, determining what is in fact 'justified' will require complex theological rulings to be made by secular courts.

I am particularly concerned about one specific implication of the new Bill in relation to employment.

This is that the concept of 'inherent requirement' is an all-or-nothing thing. Either an attribute is an 'inherent requirement', in which case discrimination MUST be applied – for a person with the 'wrong' attribute(s) would by definition be unable to do the job, or it is not an inherent requirement, in which case discrimination will be forbidden.

This means an organisation must always discriminate or not at all. What will be illegal will be to prefer Christians for positions in Christian organisations.

When I was a student at a Christian high school, I observed that the principal employed a considerable number of Christians to teaching positions. Indeed the Physics teacher, English teacher and French teacher were all ordained ministers. Under the new Victorian Equal Opportunity Law, if the principal wanted to discriminate in favour of a Christian teacher, the only way he or she could do this would be by declaring faith to be an 'inherent requirement' of the position. But this would make it very difficult for the school to employ non-Christians, as they would not meet this 'inherent requirement'. The idea of maintaining a balance, where some, but not all, of the teachers are Christians, would be ruled out.

This outcome seems to be an extreme one, which is intolerant of the realities of how religious organisations actually function. It will force a kind of ghettoization of religious institutions. In order to maintain their religious identity, they will need to be 100% religious in their staffing practices, or have no religious employment preferences at all.

Clearly religious rights cannot simply trump all other rights. Some religious practices are illegal and should always remain so. But what the past decade of watching Victoria's attempts to regulate religious manifestations has convinced me of – first through the lamentable outcome of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, and now through the Equal Opportunity Bill 2010 – is that the Victorian Labor Government has little clue about the problems inherent in requiring our secular tribunals and courts to rule on doctrinal issues. There is a desire that religious bodies and individuals be more accountable, but little clue about how to do this efficiently and effectively.

In watching all this unfold, the weak response of churches to these threats to religious harmony has been, to say the least, disappointing.

If the Equal Opportunity Bill is as bad as I believe, then possibly the very best thing that can happen now is for a series of high profile Equal Opportunity cases to be started up, making use of the new religious provisions, which pit secularist-minded complainants against religious respondents. The doctrinal issues will prove to be controversial and divisive, even within religious communities, and the public will be divided as the cases progress through the inevitable appeal processes. The problem of conflicting and irreconcilable presuppositions about the role of religion in life will cause the government to founder on the shoals of controversy and outrage, as both sides discover that the law has not provided the legal clarity which everyone had hoped for.

I do hope I shall be proved wrong.

Reflections on the Proposed Victorian Equal Opportunity Bill 2010

2010-03-15T17:58:00.002+11:00

The Victorian Attorney General has put out a new Equal Opportunity Bill which is currently before the Parliament. This follows on from extensive consultation by the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee in the second half of 2009. There is a lot that is new in the Bill, but I am just commenting here on the changes to the religious exemptions.

Religious exceptions in the 1995 Equal Opportunity Act gave religious groups and individuals a broad freedom to discriminate. For example, a religious school can select a teacher on the basis of their faith, or a congregation could reject someone for an ordained position based on their sexual orientation or 'lawful sexual activity'.

It is widely accepted that some level of religious exception is warranted, but the question is now narrow exceptions should be. The proposed changes to the exceptions achieve a narrowing, but the question is: Have they gone too far?

The key changes are:

1. Narrowing of areas where exceptions apply
Apart from the appointment of clerics and those involved in religious rituals – where an unlimited exception will still apply – the non-employment areas in which religious bodies can discriminate have been limited to "religious belief or activity, sex, sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity, marital status, parental status or gender identity", provided that what is done conforms to the "doctrines, beliefs or principles of the religion" or is "reasonably necessary to avoid injury to the religious sensitivities of adherents of the religion".

For example a synagogue can still choose not to hire their hall out to a Christian group, provided that this decision is in conformity with their doctrines, or is necessary to protected the religious sensibilities of their congregants.

This seems to be an inconsequential change. The Act has retained particular areas of exceptions precisely because these are the areas where doctrinal considerations apply. The omitted areas (such as race, disability, age or breast-feeding status) are left out precisely because they are unrelated to doctrinal distinctions: it seems highly implausible that religious groups would have ever relied on exceptions for other areas under the old Act.

2. Introduction of an 'inherent requirements' test for employment
In the case of employment a narrower exception will apply. With employment, what is done must additionally must meet two conditions:

"a) conformity with the doctrines, beliefs or principles of the religion is an inherent requirement of the particular position; and

(b) the person's religious belief or activity, sex, sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity,
marital status, parental status or gender identity means that he or she does not meet that inherent requirement."

This is a significant change. There is a good deal of law on the issue of what is an 'inherent requirement', but I am unaware of much which has addressed faith-related considerations.

An inherent requirement of a position is a fundamental task which defines the work, and which must be carried out in order to get the job done. This is about achieving results rather than the way of doing a job. For example someone with a disability may be able to do a job in a different way from usual: the means they use is not an inherent requirement – what is important is the outcome.

A number of employment practices of religious groups will have to be reconsidered in the light of this new law, if it is passed. Positions where religious tests are commonly applied include:

CEOs and senior staff of church organizations such as schools, missions and welfare agencies.
For example many church schools include in their constitution a rule that the principal must be a communicant member of a Christian church, or adhere to particular doctrinal positions. Such restrictions will in future have to satisfy the test that this is necessary to fulfil the 'inherent requirements' of being a principal.

As another example, World Vision requires senior staff to adhere to a doctrinal statement. In future such a policy will need to be justified in terms of 'inherent requirements' of the specific positions. It might be argued, for example, that the head of finance does not need to hold or follow particular religious beliefs, as this does not impact on their ability to fulfil their core duties.

Teachers in religious schools are a category of special interest (and likely legal action). It will, for example, become difficult to require a maths teacher to adhere to certain religious or ethical principles.

An inherent requirements text was one of the outcomes sought by the Victorian Independent Education Union in its submission to the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee in 2009:

"The inherent requirements of a job in a religious school should be defined by the fundamental duties that must be carried out in order to get the job done. It is submitted that the inherent requirements of a job in a religious school will vary depending on the role the employee is engaged to perform. Personal lifestyle choices relating to marriage and sexuality, it is submitted, will not be relevant factors in determining whether or not the inherent requirements of a job will be able to be performed or not.

For example, a maths teacher who is living in a de facto relationship in a Catholic school might be required to participate in school mass and prayer assembly with students and will be able to do so. In these circumstances, the maths teacher will still be able to get the inherent requirements of the job done in that he/she can teach the students maths and participate in the religious life of the school in relation to its students. It would, Victorian Independent Education Union Submission July 2009 therefore, be unlawful to refuse to deny that teacher a job simply on the grounds of his/her marital status."

In essence VIEU is saying that requiring a teacher to attend and take part in religious services could be an 'inherent requirement', but requiring them to live by religiously determined sexual ethical principles would not.

The same could be argued in respect of personal religious beliefs: a maths teacher could be an atheist or follow some non-Christian religion, but this, it might be argued, should not impact on their ability to fulfil the 'inherent requirements' of their position.

This could mean major changes for those Christian schools which currently require all staff members to adhere to certain religious beliefs and ethical principles. Currently there are thousands of students who attend such schools in Victoria.

This new Bill will also raise expectations among those who have been unhappy with employment practices of religious groups. The VIEU, in its submission, has made clear that it would interpret an 'inherent requirements' limitation in a restrictive way. Hopes will be raised by this innovation, and this means that the issue will be tested in the courts. A possible scenario could be a group like the VIEU taking a Catholic or independent Christian school to the Tribunal.

Another possible scenario is that the EOC could conduct an investigation of employment of teachers in religious schools. (The new bill will give the EOC such investigative powers.) In this scenario, must of the cost of bringing legal pressure to bear on religious schools would be born by the state, through the EOC.

Another possible scenario could be that of a teacher of another faith taking legal action against a religious school. In 2009 the local Melbourne media publicized a case where a Muslim teacher trainee was unable to secure a placement in a Christian school because of her religion.

The new bill does provide that:

"The nature of the religious body and the religious doctrines, beliefs or principles in accordance with which it is conducted must be taken into account in determining what is an inherent requirement"

However taking doctrines and beliefs into account does not guarantee that the religious consideration in question will be judged to be among the inherent requirements.

Another significant category is that of non-'religious' appointments by local churches and other religious groups. In the past congregations have often recruited co-religionists to such positions as administrators, receptionists, playgroup or kindergarten coordinators, finance officers or site managers. Many congregations have employment contracts or codes of conduct which specify the doctrinal and ethical commitments expected of all church staff. Such contracts and codes of conduct may become illegal. They may need to be tested in the Victorian courts. Legal action is less likely than in the area of educational employment, but the same issues will apply.

One consideration which has perhaps not been adequately covered in the preparation of this new law is the implication of the right to Freedom of Association. The preference to employ believers by local churches or certain religious schools is a manifestation of this right. It is striking, by way of contrast, that the exception in the new Bill for political employment does not include the stringent 'necessary requirements' test:

"27 Exception—political employment
An employer may discriminate on the basis of political belief or activity in the offering of employment to another person as a ministerial adviser, member of staff of a political party, member of the electorate staff of any person or any similar employment."

It seems that a politician will be able to employ a receptionist who is a member of their party, but a Catholic priest might not be able to employ a Catholic receptionist.

3. Introduction of the phrase 'reasonably necessary'
At three points the new Bill introduces the terminology of 'reasonably necessary' in relation to the exceptions. This is to make the tests more 'objective'.

In law an 'objective' test appeals to the idea of the 'reasonable person', and how he/she would act or think. English humorist Sir A.P. Herbert wrote:

"[The reasonable person] is an ideal, a standard, the embodiment of all those qualities which we demand of the good citizen ... [he] invariably looks where he is going, ... is careful to examine the immediate foreground before he executes a leap or bound; ... neither stargazes nor is lost in meditation when approaching trapdoors or the margins of a dock; ... never mounts a moving [bus] and does not alight from any car while the train is in motion, ... uses nothing except in moderation..., and even flogs his child in meditating only on the golden mean."

But the question to be asked is: "Can the reasonable person 'get' religious doctrines?"

In order to apply this test in courts, theological arguments will need to be put and considered. Some might say that religion is itself unreasonable, by definition. My hunch is that the "Australian reasonable person" is an avowed secularist, and either has little patience for religious distinctions, or is overly deferential toward them, but only because they can't understand them. They are not someone whose opinion I would chose to rely upon in religious controversy.

We have already seen the difficulty caused by an 'objective' test in the case of The Islamic Council of Victoria vs Catch the Fire. The Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 allows exceptions if conduct is done 'reasonably and in good faith'. In his discredited findings Judge Higgins was forced to make theological judgments in a number of contexts where an objective test was called for, and his judgment was partly derailed because of this. Unfortunately Judge Higgins' 'reasonable person' was not very good at understanding theological arguments.

It is a great pity that the Attorney General chose not to use a "genuineness" test instead of a "reasonableness" test. This could have allowed the genuineness and relevance of a conviction to be tested, without subjecting religious mentalities to the test of essentially secular concepts of reasonableness, as worked out in the mind and worldview of the 'reasonable person'.

4. Will 'the religion' please stand up
There is a difficulty with the meaning of the term 'religion' in the Bill. There is no discrimination, it is said, when something is done to conform with the 'doctrines, beliefs or principles of the religion.'

Truth be told, the exceptions in the 1995 Act were so broad that the meaning of 'the religion' has not needed to be tested. However the operation of new Act will be tested, and quite soon. The issue of who speaks for 'the religion' will quickly emerge as an issue. This will not always be a straightforward matter. For example, in the case of a non-denominational Christian school, will 'the religion' be Christianity, the common beliefs held in the school community, the Christian creeds, or the faith statement of the school's constitution?

In identifying 'the religion', existing diversity within Christian denominations is likely to arise as a problem. Many denominations have doctrinal documents or principles which may not be followed exactly by individual churches or bodies, and major disputes can exist within a denomination over how fundamental principles are to be interpreted. This is particularly the case in relation to sexual ethics, which is one of the areas which the Act will be applied. (The American Episcopal Church is even now in the process of dividing over the issue of same-sex relationships.) It is absolutely clear that in particular denominations, different congregations will apply different doctrinal principles in the employment of staff. But which congregation is acting in accordance with 'the religion'? Will VCAT be able to help churches find the answer to their troubling debates over sexual ethics?

Suppose, for example, that a local Anglican parish sacks a lay employee because of their extramarital sexual relationships (gay or heterosexual), but another parish in the same denomination has no problem with employing people in this very same circumstance. This issue comes to VCAT, or ultimately to a higher court, and testimony is given on the doctrines of 'the religion'. The evidence is divided. One side cites the views, say, of Bishop Shelby Spong, whilst another quotes, say, Archbishop Akinola, Primate of Nigeria. Lengthy submissions are presented on the teachings of the Bible, and how these should be interpreted. The judge will be asked to make a ruling on what are the 'doctrines, beliefs or principles' of 'the religion'. This will need to be done with a view to the sensibilities of the 'reasonable person' (the objective test described above). The judge will find this more than a bit odious. Perhaps the denominational head could be asked for an official view. At this point, all hell breaks loose in the denomination, as both sides of the controversy start fighting their theological battles in the public media.

It must be emphasized that the ambiguity in meaning of 'the religion' has existed all along, but because it never mattered, the issue has never arisen. Now that the government is providing sufficient legal ambiguity for parties to take these matters to VCAT for decision, the issue will emerge from the shadows.

The new pressures raised by this problem of what 'the religion' means will be felt least by those denominations which are able to assert a high degree of internal doctrinal conformity. The Catholics and the Presbyterians could fare better and extract a higher degree of exceptions from the Act than the Anglicans or the Uniting Church.

All in all this Act could have the effect of pressuring denominations to be less diverse in their theology: otherwise they might only receive the 'lowest common denominator' exception, which will be the minimum needed by their least rigorous adherents.

The legal processes triggered off by the new Act could increase pressures on denominations like the Anglicans or the Uniting Church to divide rather than continue to tolerate their internal theological diversity. This is a law which – unwittingly – could penalize religious diversity.

Conclusion
This new Bill will raise the expectations of those who have long been seeking to restrict discrimination by religious bodies. If the Bill is passed, Victoria can expect a fairly active period of complaints and litigation as ambiguities are brought to VCAT and higher courts for clarification. The months and years ahead will be a time of religious instability and heightened religious tensions. The government will suffer in popularity, especially in the light of the retention of a more generous exception for political employment.

If this Bill is introduced, religious groups will need to develop defensive strategies to protect their freedom to employ co-religionists with compatible ethical principles. Playgroup Coordinators will become 'Playgroup Evangelists', and Site Managers will become 'Facilities Ministry Team Leaders'. But even with such changes, many religious groups could experience real difficulties maintaining their spiritual identity in their workplaces. Those religious groups with more backbone, and more clearly defined theological boundaries could fare better, because they have a greater chance to extract exemptions based on clearly articulated doctrines. Those groups which with vaguer and perhaps more 'inclusive' theologies, and greater internal theological diversity, will come under greater pressures to secularization of their employment practices.

The Victorian Labor Government has gone a long way down the track in committing itself to this Bill. It has already considered extensive advice. I hope that they will, even at this late stage, reconsider the religious aspects of this divisive law, which will soon incite new levels of legal and spiritual conflict in Victoria.

Jesus the Jew

2010-03-14T22:27:00.001+11:00

Someone recently asked me if I had seen "Jesus the Jew" - the Compass episode featuring Howard Jacobson from last Sunday night (May 7). So with considerable interest I looked up the video and watched it on the internet.

Of course Christianity is absolutely founded on Judaism. It's no secret. The Christian faith is grounded upon the promises of God communicated and manifested in 2nd Temple Judaism, including the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus' bible included the Torah and indeed all the Hebrew scriptures, which Christians refer to as the "Old Testament". Jesus was a Jew - he was not a 'Christian'. The concept of a distinct 'Christian' identity did not arise until after Jesus' death. Jesus did not found a new religion or set out to do so. Also the core rites of Christianity – baptism, the communion, the structure of Christian worship itself – all these are grounded in and developed out of Jewish religious traditions.

None of this should be controversial. It is good that the Compass show points out such things.

It is also good that the show pointed out the theological roots in Christian tradition of European anti-semitism. Good, not because this is a pleasant one – it is indeed shameful and appalling – but because it is true. The truth is a good thing.

Nevertheless the program is not without flaws. It is wrong to claim, for example, that followers of Jesus became known as 'Christians' only after the fall of Jerusalem (Acts 11:26 indicates that this happened much earlier, in Antioch). It is not true to say that it was Paul who innovated the message that Jesus was Lord and Messiah (Acts describes this message as being first preached by Peter on the day of Pentecost). It is not true that Christian baptism was a Pauline innovation (the tradition goes back to Christ's command at the end of Matthew to baptize the nations). A long list of such errors could be drawn up. So the program is not a reliable source of information on the New Testament, nor on what Christians teach and believe. This is partly a reflection of the Christian scholars whom Jacobson chose to interact with.

But more serious than such errors was the tendency, all through the program, to speak as if the Jewishness of Jesus, and indeed of Christianity itself, was a hidden thing that Christians did not recognize, and would be shocked to hear about. That is not at all my experience of 50 years of worship and study in Christian contexts. I spent three years studying Biblical Hebrew as part of my theological training: there was no cover up about what the foundations of our faith were. The Shema is a daily part of the Anglican communion service - I always knew where it came from and what it meant in Judaism. In recent years there have also been a veritable avalanche of books written by Christians which emphasize the Jewishness of Jesus, and indeed of Christianity.

One can only agree that Christians have struggled with the Jewishness of Jesus, and have often actively downplayed this. A good example is the history of 20th century Christian scholarship on the parables, much of which tried to prove that Jesus was different from Jewish rabbis. In pursuing this track, much of the meaning of Jesus' parables was obscured. It is good that the Israeli scholar Professor David Flusser debunked this flawed scholarship. Yes, supersessionist theology IS still a problem in Christian thinking, even to this day. But such observations do not express the whole story.

I can understand the bitterness of centuries of rejection which Jacobson has brought to the creation of this program. The way Christians have treated Jews has been terrible. But the program profoundly misleads the audience when it implies – with all the breathless intensity of a news flash – that Christians do not accept Jesus' Jewishness.

Yes, Jesus was Jesus. He is Jewish. He always will be a Jew. It is a Jew who sits at the right hand of the throne of God the Father. It is a Jew who will come again as the Messiah to save people from their sins. It is a Jew who is the second person of the Trinity. It is a Jew who will judge the world.

========

While I am on this theme, I would like to respond to a passage in the program where the curse 'his blood be on us and on our children' is discussed. This is reported in the mouths of a mob in Jerusalem by Matthew (27:25).

How do I read this, as a Christian? Yes, it is a curse on one's generations. These are terrible words to say, or to put in anyone's mouths. Yet they are more than counteracted by Jesus' words from the cross 'Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing' (Luke 23:34). That expresses the heart of God. In my understanding, Jesus' words broke that curse, and it had no applicability at all even from the day after Jesus' death on the cross. Christians who have invoked those dreadful words against Jews down the centuries have been in rebellion against God's own heart for the Jews, and in rebellion against Jesus' own words on the cross.

In every respect the libel that Jews are 'Christ-Killers' is absurd, wicked and indeed unspeakably evil. It is also nonsensical. It was the Romans who executed Christ. Pilate could wash his hands all he wished: that act of moral cowardice doesn't change the fact that it was his command, and Roman soldiers executed it. So should today's Italians be called 'Christ-killers' because of what Pilate did 2,000 years ago? The whole idea is contemptible.

There has been a great deal of cooperative theological work done by Jews and Christians together on such issues over recent decades. It is a great shame that Howard Jacobson did not interact with or even acknowledge this important work. His silence about the positive cooperative advances which have been made in addressing the theological roots Christian anti-semitism is most disappointing.

It's Advent Again

2009-11-30T00:01:00.001+11:00

Advent - the start of the church's year, comprising four Sundays before Christmas - is upon us. 'Advent' means 'coming', and refers to the coming of the Messiah, both his first coming in the incarnation, and his return. These are the first and second Advents.
The service readings set for this season do two things.
On the one hand they take us back to the prophets, to Isaiah, Malachi, Jeremiah, standing with Israel looking forward to her redemption. The call is to get ready, to prepare for the Day of the Lord, when he will visit and rescue his people. This is a time of both liberation and retribution, a season of great joy, and also the most painful regret over sin unrepented.
On the other hand, the set readings take us to Jesus' announcements of future judgment, when he tells of his return as judge, to complete the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. His reflections are full of foreboding and concern lest his listeners be found unready on that great and terrible day. These tie back into the prophets, as their culmination.
In Advent the church looks forward to the incarnation – to the first coming of the Messiah – as if standing with Israel centuries BC, but the key energy in the season of Advent, the great power which speaks from the readings, is a focus on his Second Coming. The sense of anticipation originates with the Hebrew prophets, and flows through the gospels towards God's future for the world.
The thing is, the Christian church in the West today seems to find it a lot easier to focus on the incarnation and Christmas during Advent, than on the Second Coming and future judgement. So Advent gets subverted into a kind of pre-Christmas shopping, cooking frenzy, instead of a season of fasting, self-examination, repentence and solemn reflection, which is where a focus on the Second Coming leads us. What we end up with is a truncated, frozen-in-time perspective on God's saving plan, held in suspended animation somewhere near Bethlehem. It is good - indeed essential - to remember, to reflect deeply on the incarnation, but the amazing event of the birth of the Messiah is a signpost into God's future, to his saving intentions for the whole world. For this season, let our focus be to look forward at this time, towards Christ's Second Advent. Let us get our hearts ready, not simply to celebrate Christmas, but to await his Second Coming. The real question for each heart who follows Christ in this season is not 'Am I ready for Christmas, celebrating Christ's First Coming' but 'Am I ready for his Second Coming.'

A Seed Sown Bears Much Fruit

2009-11-13T10:55:00.000+11:00

While I was in Korea recently, speaking on the contribution of St Mary’s to the Korean church, I had a memorable conversation about mission. This was at a Presbyterian church in Busan founded by Australians, where they have a memorial in the grounds dedicated to J.H. Davies. I pointed out that five young missionaries who went from St Mary’s—including Davies—lost their lives soon after reaching their field of work: two from sickness in India and Korea, and three from violence in China.

At the time St Mary’s vicar, HB Macartney, was criticized by the press for sending these young people as if to their deaths. Even in St Mary’s Jubilee booklet of 1908 there was relatively little attention given to these five, and no mention of the three China martyrs at all. It was almost as though this sacrifice was not something to honor.

How different was the reaction of the congregation to the loss of lives in World War I: the magnificent plaque set up on the back wall records their names for perpetuity. Yet from the perspective of the Koreans, J.H. Davies’ mission to Korea was a remarkable success. Over twelve million Korean Christians today are testimony to the fruitfulness of his vision, as many others were inspired by Davies’ example to follow in his footsteps.

The lives of the five young missionaries from St Mary’s were sown deep into the fertile soils of India, China and Korea, and even today they continue to bear a plentiful harvest for the Kingdom. My heart is grieved that people in Melbourne may have regarded the loss of these lives as a mistake.

Jesus said “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:23-25)

New Blog and a New Site

2009-11-02T10:28:00.003+11:00

I'm reorganizing my blogging. From now on I'll be using this Vicar's blog for issues related to St Mary's, life as a Christian in Melbourne and anything which might be of interest to friends of St Mary's Caulfield.

For issues to do with responding to Islam, and other more general issues, I'll be using markdurie.blogspot.com.

For links to all my blogs, and information on my books, articles etc, visit markdurie.com.

Big Problems, Small Solutions

2009-10-31T11:50:00.005+11:00

Sometimes very big problems need only small solutions. I learned of a case in Vietnam, where the horrendous problem of child malnutrition can be substantially solved by encouraging families to add tiny shrimps, small fish and crabs found in the rice fields and ponds to their meals. See Recipes for Success Improve children's nutrition in Vietnam.

Another great example could be the 'ridge blade', a turbine electricity generator which sits on the ridge of a building, and collects the wind using the slope of the roof. The prize-winning ridge blade can generate the electricity requirements of a residence, and works 24 hours, even in light wind conditions.
It is also visually unobtrusive. Surely this clever idea could revolutionize the way green power is generated across our cities.

Spiritually it seems true too, that seemingly insurmountable problems can find profound but 'small' solutions. A good example was the heart-rending persecution of Christians under Communist China, and confiscation of church properties and institutions by the state. The solution? Humble house churches: people meeting to worship, learn and pray in each others' homes. The church in the end didn't need its hospitals, schools, universities and so on to survive. It just needed people meeting together in the presence of God, living Christian lives.

Often we cannot see just what wonderful resources God has placed in our own hands, because our ways of thinking have become tangled with other priorities, or we have just become accustomed to fear and defeat.

Be on the look out for that small solution to your next big problem.

Short Video on the Equal Opportunity Laws

2009-07-18T17:12:00.003+10:00

Here is an 8-minute video interview on the Equal Opportunity Law Review.

Talk on Tuesday June 23 2009

2009-06-23T18:51:00.002+10:00

Attached here is a PDF of a talk given today on the Exceptions and Exemptions Review.

Exemptions to Equal Opportunity Laws

2009-05-24T13:28:00.006+10:00

A committee of the Victorian parliament is currently conducting a review of 'exceptions and exemptions' to Victorian Equal Opportunity laws. The Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee has produced an Options Paper, outlining ways in which the laws could be revised.

The issues relating to religious freedom and human rights are complex and poorly understood in Australian society. There is also a rising sense of anxiety about religious freedom at the grassroots level among many (but not all) Australian Christians. At the same time among secularists there is a good deal of hostility to church's claims for exemptions from human rights legislation.

A position argued for by an Anglican 'taskforce' has been that protection of human rights through legislation could be desirable, but only provided that the standards set in the International Covenant and Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are followed, and adequate safeguards are built in to protect freedom of religion and conscience. For example, anti-incitement legislation could be supported, provided that incitement was narrowly defined (in terms of the ICCPR protocols) and not loosely as in the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act. To protect religious rights it is also necessary to provide reasonably broad exemptions to anti-discrimination legislation. At present religious bodies enjoy such exemptions in Victoria. However there is a strong push from secularists to remove these exemptions, or severely curtail them. The list of options in the review of exceptions and exemptions to the Equal Opportunity Act (currently before the Victorian Parliament) reflects this push.

The recent Victorian abortion law reform, which did not allow doctors to follow their conscience in the matter of assisting a patient procure an abortion, is a symptom of the prevailing current sentiment against making allowances for religious freedom. Not a word in the Act was changed, despite the most intensive lobbying.

Human Rights and responsibilities can conflict with each other. If one right is fully granted, another will be limited. For example the right to privacy can impinge upon the right of a community to live in safety. The right to equal opportunity in employment can conflict with the rights of religious groups to organize themselves in accordance with their doctrines, as it could limit their ability to use a religious test when employing staff.

Legislation and regulations to manage conflicts between human rights has been called 'balancing' of rights. This balancing process can implement a 'hierarchy' of rights: some rights will trump others, so to speak.

For example the exemptions and exceptions for religious groups in equal opportunity legislation mean that religious freedom rights can overrule equal opportunity rights, under some circumstances. For example, churches and some church agencies can employ staff, such as receptionists and counsellors, using religious tests.

Up until now religious rights, through the exemptions and exceptions system, have tended to rank high in the hierarchy of rights. There is pressure to downgrade this status.

The argument for this downgrading is essentially a) there is a view that religious groups have resorted to special pleading to avoid their human rights responsibilities and this now needs to be corrected, and b) religion is essentially a private matter, and full religious freedom should be granted only to those functions which are 'internal' to the faith.

For example, it is claimed by secularists that when a church offers a public service, such as a playgroup, a counseling centre, or an adoption agency, then religious considerations should give way to other more 'public' rights. For example, the church might not be able to insist on having a Christian playgroup coordinator, as playgroups are claimed not be a core internal function of the religion. The church might be instructed to take religious slogans off the walls of the playgroup space, because this discriminates in some way against non-Christians accessing the service.

The pressure to downgrade religious rights will be greatest on 'public authorities' (defined in the Victorian Human Rights Charter. These are basically bodies providing a service to the public, and especially those in receipt of government funding to meet what is regarded as a responsibility of the state. At present religious schools are not considered to be public authorities, but this could change.

These developments are highly significant.

The evidence from overseas is that the impact of these changes could be far-reaching.
In the UK and parts of the USA the Catholic church has moved out of adoption services altogether because of the implications of such developments (they decided that accepting government regulations for adoption, including to same-sex couples, would violate their conscience). A Church of England Bishop was fined over £50,000 for sacking a gay church youth worker. These are both cases where the rights to anti-discrimination on the ground of sexual preferences took precedence over rights to religious freedom.

In a worst-case scenario, the churches might need to withdraw from providing services across a wide range of areas, or else surrender their Christian character, or only offer these services in very limited fashion to members of their religious community, and on explicitly religious terms. Whether or not the agency is under the direct control of a religious body could be a critical factor. For example one of the options before Victorian parliament is to award a higher level of religious exemptions only to schools which are under the direct control of a religious body. A parish primary school might be able to insist on its Christian character in employment of teaching staff, but an independent church school might not.

We in Victoria could be facing a significant threat to our liberties. One of the problems in achieving a coordinated response is that comfortable middle-of-the road Christians tend to just assume everything will continue on for ever as in the past. This could be a great mistake.

The determination with which the Victorian Government brought in the abortion law reforms, trampling on religious rights of conscientious objectors to abortion, suggests to me that Victorians cannot afford to fall asleep on the watch with this issue. We must take it extremely seriously.

I have prepared a briefing paper for Christians, which be downloaded here.

Does God judge nations today?

2009-02-15T21:26:00.005+11:00

Like many other Melbourne pastors I was disturbed by Danny Nalliah's press release, issued to the nation on February 10, which asserted that the Victorian Bushfires were the direct result of Victoria's abortion laws. This was based, he said, upon a dream he had last November.

It was irresponsible of Nalliah to release his message without first submitting it to church leaders for evaluation, including those of recognised prophetic insight (1 Corinthians 14:29-32). Danny states that his desire was to call the church to repentance, but by rejecting the oversight and testing of the church in Victoria, he has undermined and greatly damaged his credibility, and shut the ears of many to his voice. The timing of the message right in the middle of the most profound suffering and agony, and the idea of issuing it as a 'press release' was hurtful.

I don't disagree with Nalliah that our abortion laws are 'incendiary', nor that their passing was a dark day for our state, but such concerns do not give him the right to pour further pain and suffering upon the bushfire victims right at the time when body counts were mounting day by day. His actions have been interpreted by many as a form of spiritual grandstanding.

It is hardly surprising that atheists on the blogosphere compared Nalliah to Islamist jihadists, such as those who found in the bushfires evidence of Allah's punishment of Australia. (Local Muslims rejected these claims.)

Yet, having expressed my deep concern about Nalliah's chosen path, I was also disturbed to read respected Christian leaders, in opposing Nalliah, appear to deny God's sovereignty and justice, even to the extent that they appeared to question the possibility of judgement in this life at all.

Dr Wynand De Kock, Dr John Capper and Pastor Mark Conner all seemed to be saying that since Christ came, God no longer acts in this world to judge people for their sins.

De Kock and Capper, both of Tabor College, seem to reject the idea that any disaster can be attributed to God. Such an understanding would be "a misunderstanding of both God's purpose and God's nature." They say that the people of Israel "in the early days" had such a view – here De Kock and Capper seem to be implying that this was only what the Israelites thought, not what the Bible teaches – but today it seems we should know better. Although they allow that some Christians "may still be of this opinion", they seem to be saying that since the coming of Christ this view has become invalid.

Conner explains his views as follows:

"...we need to realise that we are in the time of God’s favour NOT of God’s judgment. ... Jesus introduced a day of grace and mercy for people, and we are still living in that time. ... That doesn’t mean that people today won’t at times suffer the consequences of their actions but this is not the day of God’s judgment."

I certainly do not support Nalliah's statements, but to deny even the possibility that God's actions might include sending judgment upon communities is a very strange claim indeed. Many atheists, responding on Barney Zwartz's blog, were incredulous that Christians might happily accept blessings as coming from God's hands, whilst fervently rejecting the possibility that God could have a hand in disasters. They found it hypocritical that Christians might thank God for rain, but reject the possibility that God withheld rain in a bushfire.

I suspect that these leaders do not fully believe what they are preaching. (Indeed Conner, in a subsequent post, seems to have retreated from his earlier statement.) Do they really wish to imply that since the time of Christ, God will not bring retribution against tyrants? That God now stands so aloof that the only judgement in this world takes the form of 'consequences of actions'.

I suspect that these Christian leaders feel themselves pushed into downplaying the sovereignty of God at this time because they are appalled at the negative pastoral impact of Nalliah's press release. This is part of the collateral damage of Nalliah's actions: he has polarized people, and shut off avenues for important discussion and theological reflection. His timing was excruciating.

The question of the character of God and the extent of his responsibility for disasters is indeed a very painful one. (Many Jews became atheists during the Holocaust.) But despite what some Christian leaders are saying in response to Nalliah, the possibility of judgment has always been at least one of the factors which Christians have considered in times of disaster. Even Christ and the apostles make references to God's judgment in this life.

Clearly the question of suffering is a deeply sensitive one. (I discuss it at greater length in my recent sermon.) I would encourage people, in this time of great sorrow and distress – a season of ashes and tears — to take the time to consider it deeply and thoroughly, taking into account the many and rich contributions which the scriptures make. Nalliah's action was unwise, but so is rushing in to provide rather-too-comforting theological assurances.

People in crisis do ask profound questions about God. They deserve Biblically-grounded answers which can provide the solace and support to sustain them through the desolation of grief. For an example of such an answer I can commend readers to Tim Anderson's opinion piece of this past week, which was published by the Herald Sun.

Peace now a Distant Hope

2009-01-10T17:09:00.006+11:00

Letter to the editor
The Herald Sun.

From
The Revd Dr Mark Durie

I was shocked to read your editorial of 9 January 'Peace now a distant hope'.

Did you seriously mean to imply that the road to peace was beautifully 'passable' until just a few weeks ago? That peace was no 'distant hope'? That Hamas had been on the verge of accepting peace conditions?

The references to settlers was bizarre. Surely you cannot have meant to refer to Gazan settlers, as no Jews are resident in Gaza any more - the Israelis having unilaterally extracted all the settlers by force three years ago.

No, you must mean your readers to regard all the state of Israel as 'their (i.e. Palestinian) lands',
and all the Jews in Israel are to be considered as 'settlers'! At least your bias is clear!

Most distressing of all, as a Christian pastor, I found it deeply offensive, that you could equate the Jewish King Herod - as a would-be killer of Christ - with the nation of Israel (and Mary and Joseph with the rocket-launching Hamas jihadis).

I never thought I would see the Herald Sun seeking to exploit the ancient 'Christ-killer' libel in such a way. To do so during the week of the celebration of the Christian festival of the Epiphany (which commemorates the visit of the Magi and the flight of Jesus' family into Egypt) is reckless and cruel. Your editorial only adds credibility to this kind of visceral hatred.

There has been a flood of antisemitic incidents around the world this past week, including many attacks on Jewish properties. Hamas, for example, on its official website (posted December 31, 2008 at the site hosted by Emirnet, United Arab Emirates) urged Muslims to attack Jews across the world, claiming that,

…a Jewish adolescent boy in an Australian synagogue, a Jewish minister in the Georgian government, a Jewish businessman at the New York Stock Exchange, and an illiterate Jew from the Ethiopian desert… they all belong to the same gang and the same nation, apart from the rest of humanity.

Have you not read Hamas's constitution or considered the clearly stated and long-held positions of its leaders on the issue of Israel's existence and on the Jews? The sad fact is that Hamas' positions on these issues are exactly the same now as they were a month ago. And they are the same as those held by for decades by Muslim Brotherhood (the organization from which Hamas emerged).

Please, in the name of all humanity, reconsider your deceptive rhetoric, which can only inflame dangerous passions at this painful time.

Sincerely,

Mark Durie

Redigging the Wells

2008-12-13T23:09:00.004+11:00

As I sit here at my desk late on a Saturday evening, I am enjoying the wonderfully constant sound of rain falling. It has been coming down steadily these past few days. My sons, now young adults, can hardly remember what a wet season is like in Melbourne. It has been so dry. The experience of lying in bed night after night hearing the rain softly falling has become a rare one in this drought-stricken city.

God's mercies, like the rain, appears to come seasons. At times a flood, at others a drought. As Jesus said, the 'times and the seasons' belong to the Father.

I have attached here a copy of a small booklet which St Mary's produced recently to commemorate 150 years of Anglican worship in Caulfield. St Mary's has seen been some wonderfully wet seasons in the past - where the rain of God's Spirit was abundant indeed, and this little book seeks to honour that heritage.

After the vote: the dilemma of late-term abortions

2008-10-15T22:10:00.005+11:00

Last week the Bible lectionary I was following for a mid-week service had Psalm 139:13-18 as one of the set readings:

13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

It sat up and took notice, for this was the week leading to the final vote in the Victorian State Parliament on our new abortion law. This passage reflects on God's guiding hand and foreknowledge of the human person, and his or her destiny, while they are being formed in the womb. It is one of the clearest reflections in the Bible on the personhood of the unborn child.

There is of course, something quite hidden and secret about an unborn child. Not yet crying. Not yet needing to be held in arms, clothed, wrapped and fed. It's features are unseen.

What a painful debate this has been on abortion. On the one side the pro-choice advocates insist that the debate is about a woman's right to choose what happens with her body, without fear of criminal sanctions. On the other the pro-lifers insist that the debate is about the right of the unborn to live. Neither side grants any quarter to the other. In this end, in Victoria, the pro-choice position won the political struggle in an utter and complete rout. Now in our state abortion is legal without any reason needing to be given, as long as it is conducted by medical personel, and authorized by two doctors after 24 weeks gestation.

This is quite an extreme law. Some would say it is wonderfully progressive, an example to be emulated by other states. Others have visions of full-term babies dismembered in the womb, with no rights, not even to a pain-free death.

Why do we have this law? In 2006 the Labor Party debated their abortion policy at their annual state conference. Their policy had been: "Labor will amend section 65 of the Crimes Act to provide that no abortion be criminal when performed by a legally qualified medical practitioner at the request of the woman concerned." In other words, abortion on request, provided that it is done in a qualified medical way. So it was written, so it has come to pass.

One of the Labor politicians, Christine Campbell, opposed the law at the time, stating "Advancements in medical technology have resulted in babies surviving months before a full-term delivery. These premature babies are sentient. They feel pain and suffering and react to stimuli. This policy will allow abortion from conception to the time of full-term delivery, including partial-birth abortion." She called this 'abortion on demand.'

Was she right? Well, some say that 'on demand' is emotive language. Technically the Labor Party's wording was ' at the request' of the woman. The law as actually implemented goes further than decriminalizing abortion, and requires that any medico in Victoria who is approached by a woman seeking an abortion must refer her to someone who will not have a conscientious objection against doing it. So this is more than a request: it is one which must be obeyed. Requests which must be granted are reasonably called demands. Mirriam-Webster defines demand as asking 'with authority' or 'claiming something as a due'. That is the state of the matter in the state of Victoria. Women have the authority to ask for an abortion as their due. The Labor party promised it, the people of Victoria voted for it (by electing Labor). And they got what they asked for. Labor delivered on its promises.

One of the most interesting things about the debate has been its intensity, specifically the tendency to utterly reject the basis of the other side of the debate. Pro-lifers reject that a pregnant woman could choose. Pro-choicers reject that the unborn has any of the rights of a living person. This was illustrated in the parliamentarians' rejection of amendments to require the foetus to be anaesthetized for late-term abortions, even though the fact that it can feel pain was not disputed. In this state it is illegal to subject a pet to pain, but an unborn child cannot be granted any such compassion. The reason for this is surely not that the pro-choice advocates do not understand pain. Nor do they want to inflict it on the unborn. What they feel compelled by is the imperative to utterly deny the premise of their opponents, that the unborn have any humanity. It is necessary to insist on this, to maintain the pristine purity of denial of the humanity of the unborn, in order to arrive at the pinnacle of complete freedom of choice for the woman. This ethical stance to the unborn is shaped by political necessity: the imperative that women must have the right to choose what happens to their own bodies without being treated as criminals.

If it was a matter involving two independent adults, then the right of one to life would not impinge upon the body rights of the other For example, if I was dying of kidney failure, and there was only one person in the world whose kidney donation could save me, this other person could not be compelled to open their side and surrender their kidney in order to save my life.

In a sense the pro-choicers identify with the donor. It is the donor's choice that is sacrosanct, so they put the baby in my position, with my dud kidneys: 'Baby, it's tough you can't live without a womb, but you have no business imposing yourself on her. You can't infringe on her rights over her own body. She has a right to choose what happens to it, just as much as any organ donor would. And she doesn't want to provide her womb to you. As she will not sacrifice her bodily autonomy to you: you must be the sacrifice.'

I think I can follow such logic. The thing is, there is all the world of ethical difference between letting die and killing, and the Victorian law permits a baby to be killed in the womb which could be viable outside it.

How small a difference there is between killing a viable foetus in the womb, and doing the deed in the light of day. The difference is a few moments. But in the state of Victoria, one act would be a woman's right (as long as there is somewhere in the state a doctor to do the deed) whilst the other would be murder.

This distance between two procedures - abortion and infanticide - could be measured, empirically at least, in seconds. But under our law the moral difference is supposed to be vast - one is a right which all doctors must assist in providing, whilst the other is among the most heinous crimes we can imagine.

This ethical stretch will place great moral strains on medical workers, nurses, midwives and doctors. Some will, I am sure, avoid practising obstetrics and midwifery in our state.
This will also place a burden on our collective conscience which I don't believe we will easily be able to bear. It will create an ethical pressure which will demand resolution. There will be pressure to eliminate the huge moral difference between the two O-so-similar procedures. Either we back down on late term abortions, or we extend the freedom to terminate life to apply to those who have already been born. Some philosophers argue that infanticide is defensible on the same grounds that abortion is defensible.

When I was a trainee pastor, I spend some time working in a maternity hospital. I heard there from another carer of women who abort their late-term babies, and then want a funeral, photos, foot-prints, the whole deal. I can completely understand this. I'm sure that when the Cathaginians sacrified their children (including miscarried foetuses, the archeological evidence tells us), the lost babies were grieved. We too will grieve our missing children.

Surely it is a great folly we have committed, to place such an unbearable pressure upon our consciences, through this collective act of sacrifice.

A Brutal Bill

2008-10-04T23:53:00.002+10:00

On 11 September the Victorian Lower House passed the Abortion Law Reform Bill. It comes before the Upper House (the Legislative Council) on 7 October.
I am very deeply concerned about this law. If it is passed, unborn babies will have no rights at all under law, and abortion providers will be able to perform abortions with no effective constraints right up until 40 weeks gestation.
This new law allows abortions for any reason up to 24 weeks. No consultation with a doctor is required: a nurse or pharmacist can supply or administer a drug to cause abortion without reference to a doctor.
After 24 weeks, all that is necessary is that two doctors agree that the abortion is appropriate in all the circumstances. These two doctors could be employees or owners of the abortion provider business (and thus recipients of the fees generated by the abortion). Under the Evidence Act 1958, it will not be possible to test the beliefs of these two consenting doctors because of doctor-patient privilege. This means that there could be no evidence by which proceedings for professional misconduct could be brought. This in effect means we will have abortion on demand up to 40 weeks gestation. There is a Victorian doctor who has gone on record as saying that he is willing to perform late abortions for socio-economic reasons. Many commentators have pointed out that this law appears as if it was written by the abortion-provider industry.
The law compels a nurse or pharmacist employed by a hospital or day-procedure centre, if directed in writing by a doctor, to administer or supply a drug to case an abortion, right up to 40 weeks gestation.
It also requires doctors, nurses, pharmacists and psychologists who have a conscientious objection to abortion, to refer a women requesting an abortion to another practitioner who the practitioner knows does not have a conscientious objection to abortion. Failure to refer could result in a charge of professional misconduct, resulting in loss of employment or even deregistration
The law does not impose any constraints on the method of late-term abortion: some techniques for terminating a late-to-full-term baby’s life and removing its body from the uterus are shockingly inhuman, such as the ‘partial-birth method’.
I watched the Grand Final between Hawthorn and Geelong, and was conscious of the thousands missing at the event: these are the potential players and spectators who were not present because their life was taken away before birth. Hundreds of thousands of our children have gone missing. When Jesus said ‘Let the little children come to me’ he expressed compassion for the weak and the vulnerable, who were seeking his blessing. From the earliest times, Christians were known for their opposition to infanticide and abortion. During the Roman Empire they use to rescue babies abandoned on rubbish heaps.
One of the reasons I oppose this law is due to my experience of working as a trainee chaplain in a women’s hospital. Australian mothers and fathers generally regard late-term foetuses as their children. When they are born prematurely and die, they are grieved, named, held in their mother’s arms, and funerals are conducted for them. For this law to treat the unborn as having no rights or identity goes against decades of pastoral experience caring for women and babies, and it goes against ethical common sense.
There are many ethical complexities associated with abortion, yet we have apparently swung so far towards making ‘choice’ an idol that we are willing sacrifice our children to this monster through an amazingly brutal law.
-------------
Further Resources and Action Points
I can commend Archbishop Hart’s pastoral letter, at: http://www.cam.org.au/abortion/pastoral-letter-and-day-of-intercession.html
There are also useful resources at:
http://www.mattsprotest.com/
‘Matt’ is a business man who is protesting the law on the steps of parliament every day until the matter is resolved in Parliament. Why not drop by during the day and encourage him.
A double-sided information sheet from FamilyVoice is at the back of the church, with contact details of Legistlative Council members – please consider writing to them this week.
Sunday October 6 is a Day of Prayer on this issue. There is a prayer event from 1.45 to 2.45 pm on the steps of Parliament House. Please consider attending. One politician said ‘Unless I see 10,000 or more Christians on the steps of Parliament, then I'm not listening, because they obviously don't care.’

A letter to parliamentarians on abortion

2008-08-26T10:43:00.001+10:00

To: Mrs Helen Shardey
Mrs Andrea Coote
Mr David Davis
Mr John Lenders
Ms Susan Pennicuik
Mr Evan Thornley

==========

Dear Mrs Shardey and Members for Southern Metropolitan Region,

As a resident of Caulfield and pastor of a local church, I am writing to express my great concern over the proposed changes to the way abortions will be conducted in Victoria.

Abortion is not simply a medical procedure like any other procedure: it is a life and death decision after conception has already taken place. Consequently, abortion can be one of the more distressing experiences which women can experience. It can be an extremely painful decision to terminate the life of one's own child, and in my years of pastoral experience, including a period working as a pastoral carer in a maternity hospital, I have observed that the emotional pain of abortions are deep and can endure for many years.

Many thousands of abortions are performed in Victoria each year, and only a tiny proportion of these are due to rape, incest or risk to the life of the mother. I believe just about everyone in the community - except the commercial abortion providers - would agree that the number of abortions is too high.

It is deeply distressing that the proposed changes to abortion laws in Victoria will make it easier for medical practitioners to sign off on abortions, without ensuring that the woman receives adequate support, such as counseling or provision of information to ensure 'informed consent' and that she understands the options available to her.

When abortion rates go up after these laws are brought in, the community will not consider that the Government has acted honestly in assuring the electorate that their intention was not to increase the abortion rate.

I am particularly concerned that abortion clinics - which exist solely to perform abortions, for profit - will only give token attention to counselling and equipping women to give their informed consent. The new laws will make this situation worse, by lowering the bar of consent for abortions (to varying degrees in the three options). The financial interest of such clinics in the termination of the unborn makes them the least suitable group to take responsibility for signing off on the procedure, especially in the case of late-term abortions.

I strongly believe that it is necessary to retain the concept of risk of harm to the mother, and if this is removed in some cases (such as in the first two trimesters) then it would be disastrous to remove this principle up to full gestation.

In the case of late-term abortions, I am particularly concerned for health professionals, who spend great efforts in some cases to save the lives of the unborn, and to nurse premature babies to life and health, and at the same time are asked to terminate the lives of other unborn children who are equally viable as living human beings. At 9am they may be operating in utero to save one life, and at 10am terminating another life by dismembering or 'euthanasing' a late-term, viable foetus, also in utero. It is, I believe, cruel and inhuman to encourage a system where medical professionals are both killers and saviours of the lives of the unborn, especially if we remove existing ethical protections for them in this work - such as ethics panels to assist in making these onerous decisions.

I believe that many people in the community consider that once a foetus reaches the later stages of development, they are no longer simply a part of the body of the woman, but are regarded as a living human being and a future child with individual characteristics - albeit legally not a person and still dependent upon their mother whilst in the womb. The practices, widely encouraged by hospitals, that mothers of still-born infants would name their child, hold a funeral service for him or her, retain images or impressions of the footprints or hand prints of their deceased, and cuddle the baby's body - all to assist with their grieving - are clear evidence of this perception. These practices have been introduced based on long experience with caring for the trauma of parental grief. If anything this grief can be more conflicted and complicated when it is the woman who has made a choice for termination.

In the light of such community understandings and practices surrounding the death of the unborn - which the Law Reform Commission's report took no account of - I am deeply concerned about the idea that late-term abortions might be solely at the discretion of pregnant woman, even if assisted in this decision by one or two doctors. Women need more support that this, and there is more at stake than the woman's right to choose about what happens to their bodies.

I remain deeply sceptical and concerned about the proposed changes, and ask the government not to accept changes which reduce abortion to simply a woman's choice, without regard for the rights and dignity of the unborn, or for the deeply troubling ethical issues associated with the practice of aborting late-term foetuses. I also reject the idea that we as a community should be taking steps which will make abortions more frequent, and grant less respect and dignity to life of the unborn.

Sincerely,

Mark Durie
Vicar, St Mary's Caulfield

Melbourne's Water Troubles

2008-08-15T08:28:00.003+10:00

The Pacific has now moved out of its La Nina weather pattern, which is associated with wetter conditions over Eastern Australia. Although rain has been falling recently, Melbourne's water supply conditions have worsened after a dry Autumn. The catchments have been so dry that the winter rains are not running down into the reservoirs in anything like their usual fashion: the thirsty ground is just soaking up the water.

The climate gurus say that we are now in a ‘neutral’ weather pattern, and another La Niña could develop in 2009, which would bring back the drought.

Over the past twelve years, Melbourne’s water supply has been dropping by about 5% a year. There have been two years when our water supply dropped 20% in a single year (1997, 2006). For this year our water inflows seem to be a pattern similar to 1999 and 2002, the years when the water supplies dropped by 10%. On the other hand, there has only been one year in the past twelve with an increase of more than 5%.

If we don't get above average falls in the next three months, and are unfortunate enough to have another year in 2009 like 1997 0r 2006, Melbourne’s water supplies could drop down to 10% by Christmas 2009. I suppose that at that point, the water in our reservoirs will just be mud.

I am no expert on long-term weather trends, but just based on recent years, there would seem to be at least a one-in-five chance that Melbourne will have no water at all in two years’ time. On the other hand an increase in reservoir supplies of even 10% seems a very remote possibility indeed.

In any case, within five or so years we will have run out of water, based on recent patterns. BUT the good news is, Victoria is planning a water desalination plant, which will produce 150 billion litres a year. This is due to start construction in 2009, with water on tap by January 2012. Still, questions abound. Will it be finished on time? Will there be any water left in our dams when it starts up? Will 150 billion litres be enough? This water is supposed to supply parts of Gippsland, Philip Island and Geelong, as well as Melbourne If, say, 100 billion litres comes to Melbourne, that is only 6% of total reservoir capacity, which is about what we have been short each year on average. So even with this extra water, it might take us a hundred years to fill up the reservoirs again! We would also still be highly vulnerable to a sequence of dry years. We can look forward to decades of water shortages.

Then there is the cost factor. Once the desalination plant is built, the main running cost is electricity. The price of power will definitely go up, as oil prices spiral upwards and the government implements a carbon tax. Although the Victorian Government has promised that the cost of water will no more than double after the desalination plant comes on stream, it seems more likely that cost increases will be much greater than this.

There are some ‘known unknowns’ here. Perhaps our decade of drought will be broken, and we will have a decade of rain, and all will be fine for a few more decades. On the other hand, perhaps power costs will shoot up, water consumption will rise, the drought will worsen, and we’ll be trucking in water from the Northern Territory or dragging in icebergs from the Atlantic! No doubt our planners are hoping for wet years ahead.

Prayer seems a very wise policy. And a water tank.

Whither GAFCON and the Anglican Communion?

2008-07-12T22:44:00.004+10:00

There has been much media attention in recent days to the state of the world-wide Anglican communion, when a large gathering of more than a thousand Anglicans took place in Jerusalem. The Global Anglican Futures Conference (or GAFCON for short) was convened just two months before the Lambeth global conference of Anglican bishops, about to commence in Canterbury. GAFCON issued a declaration of identity and purpose which challenges the Anglican status quo.

Despite the media’s focus on the issue of the ordination of practicing gay clergy and bishops (in the USA and Canada) the GAFCON movement states that its main focus is on two key challenges a) to continue to reach unevangelised peoples with the gospel, planting churches among them and b) to ‘restore authentic Christianity to compromised churches.’ The second challenge arises from a conviction that secularism and pluralism have enfeebled and weakened the church in the most developed nations.

The Anglican movement is diocesan in structure. The Communion is an association of dioceses (defined geographical regions), each of which is led by a bishop. The movement is essentially not hierarchical above the diocesan level. Although there are ‘primates’, who are senior bishops associated with a grouping of dioceses, the whole movement relies for its unity, not on conformity with top-down commands, but on sustaining a theological and pastoral consensus between diocesan bishops and their communities. The key instruments of this consensus have for centuries been the Bible, the English Book of Common Prayer, the ‘Thirty Nine Articles’ and the Ordinal, which contain the job descriptions for bishops, priests and deacons. The Lambeth meeting of bishops once every ten years at Canterbury England, hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is another important mechanism for keeping the whole thing together.

In recent decades Anglican the will to remain in unity has become increasingly strained. Whilst the Christian church in general – including the Anglican movement – has been expanding rapidly in the developing world, there has been a spiritual free-fall in the West. This has meant that English-speaking Christians have become a minority of the world-wide Anglican communion. There are a greater number of active Anglicans in Nigeria than in the whole of the English-speaking world put together. There has also been a growing awareness among the Anglicans of the developing world – the majority – that Anglicans in the economically developed nations have lost their way. More than this, Christians in the developing world believe that there is an urgent need for the West to be re-evangelised. They are not alone in having this concern. I share here three experiences.

I remember in 1985 visiting the cathedral of St John the Divine in New York, where shrines had been erected around the sanctuary dedicated to various religions, such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It was extremely distressing to see that this magnificent building, built and dedicated for the worship of the Triune God, had been turned into a temple for a multiplicity of gods and goddesses in this way.

In 1985 I spent a year living in Leiden, Holland, where one of the most magnificent churches, the Pieterskirk, had been handed over to the city for a token sum, simply because there were no more worshippers and the church could no longer maintain the building. This is a historic church: indeed it was from there that the pilgrims departed to the New World. The Pieterskirk is now used as a marketplace, an art gallery, and an event space for various community events. As I stood in that empty building, I could almost hear the angels weeping.

On New Year’s Eve at the end of 1978 I attended Cologne Cathedral for Sunday morning worship. There had been a heavy snow fall the night before, and I made my way across the Rhine to the cathedral for the service. Inside that imposing building, which could seat thousands, was a tiny congregation – perhaps a dozen people. I seemed to be the only person under 60 years of age. As I was listening to the sermon – which happened to be about the need for more young people in the church – one of the ushers came up to me and, seeing me praying, thought I had sought out the cathedral as a place to sleep. He roughly ordered me to leave the building. Saddened, I got up and walked out into the sunny snow-white morning, with people all around me cheerfully shovelling snow. The contrast between the dying church, lamenting the loss of its generations while quietly expelling them, and the vital friendly atmosphere out on the streets had a deep impact upon me.

The reality that the Western churches have lost their way –not only the Anglicans – is simply that: a reality. This is not the same for world-wide Christianity, which is as dynamic as ever. Spiritual decline is above all a disease of the Western churches. For the Anglican communion this has caused particular difficulties, as the wealthier, older minority by and large have less confidence and spiritual vitality than the majority of Anglicans in the developing world. The West, and specifically the English church, no longer has the spiritual vitality, the credibility or the proven fruitfulness to provide leadership to the rest of the Anglican world.

Historically, the Anglican movement grew out of the Church of England. By convention the Archbishop of Canterbury has continued to host the global gathering of Anglican bishops. Tensions developed when the Episcopalian church in Canada and the USA (the north American Anglicans) went out on a limb and acted against Lambeth resolutions to began ordaining practicing gay clergy and bishops, and even solemnizing gay unions. For many Anglican Leaders, Anglican movement’s slow response to the theological divergence of the north Americans has been deeply disappointing. They regret the fact that Canterbury continues to invite the north Americans to Lambeth, despite their renegade actions.

Whilst the issues of gay bishops and blessing gay unions has been a trigger point, the theological concerns are much deeper than the issue of sexuality. Many north American Anglicans had for their own part become disillusioned with their Dioceses and their bishops, and have separated themselves from the Episcopalian church. Congregations all across north America have sought Episcopal oversight from African bishops, and are establishing an emerging alternative Anglican community in the US and Canada.

GAFCON represents a conservative response by the global Anglican church to these changed and changing circumstances. There is a belief, expressed in the GAFCON resolution, that ‘we are a global Communion with a colonial structure’, referring to the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury remains host to the Lambeth meetings, despite the growing spiritual self-marginalisation of Anglican churches in economically developed nations. This is increasingly seen as an anomaly, as leadership from a position of manifest weakness.
The GAFCON declaration invited Anglicans throughout the world to affirm their theological roots, and to join together in giving a clear witness to Christ throughout the world. It rejects what it calls the ‘false gospel’ of the spiritually struggling West, specifically focussing on two issues, i) the loss of confidence that Christ is the only way to God amidst growing spiritual pluralism, and ii) shifting moral boundaries for expressing human sexuality.

The most significant structural change established by GAFCON is a new Primates’ Council which essentially is a new oversight body for Anglicans who wish to identify with this movement.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s response to these developments has been brief. No doubt he is waiting for the Anglican bishops to engage these issues at Lambeth. He was unhappy at the implication that those outside the GAFCON movement are promoting a different gospel. He was concerned about the emerging complexities of competing jurisdictions. He rejected the idea of a self-appointed council of Primates, which he felt could not achieve legitimacy. He felt that the GAFCON people should be focussing on renewing the existing structures, not setting up an alternative. He was unhappy about the label of ‘colonialism’, suggesting that the way forward was to forge a community of equals, not a ‘reversal’ of power, effectively marginalizing the Western churches in the communion.

There seems to be more than a whiff of denial in Rowan Williams’ responses. When he writes that the ‘absolute imperative of evangelism’ and the ‘uniqueness of Christ as Lord and God’ are ‘not in dispute’ in the ‘common life of the Communion’, what does he make of the statement on his own turf, just a month earlier by the newly appointed English Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, Stephen Lowe, rejecting a call from Bishop Nazir-Ali to share the gospel with Muslims? Bishop Lowe had stated that ‘This demand for the evangelisation of people of other faiths contributes nothing to our communities.’ Such double-speak seems incomprehensible. The imperative for evangelism IS in dispute in the Church of England, among the Archbishop of Canterbury’s fellow bishops.

I can understand how it would deeply pain and offend fellow Christians for it to be implied that their witness was false, and they were promoting a false gospel. Rejecting people of sincere Christian faith simply because they do not belong to one’s own brand of Christianity is repugnant. As Bishop NT Wright put it ‘GAFCON leaders can’t have intended to imply … that they are really the only ones who believe all this.’ One can see how Rowan Williams could have found the GAFCON rhetoric disturbing. But what is also disturbing is his apparent lack of acknowledgment that confidence in the uniqueness of Christ, and the imperative of evangelism ARE waning in the West, and that this is an issue of genuine concern to Anglicans throughout the world. Bishop Spong's public retreat from doctrines he swore to uphold in his consecration is not an isolated phenomenon.

Whilst Williams is understandably troubled about how church discipline can be achieved in the emerging environment of competing jurisdictions, he does not acknowledge that it is the failure of church discipline in relation to the US and Canadian churches’ innovations – flying in the face of the Lambeth bishops’ agreed position – that has helped lead the Anglican communion into its current difficulties.

Rowan Williams’ call to the GAFCON Anglicans is to ‘wait for us’ – in other words to allow due process to proceed, and to work for renewal from within existing structures. The question however is whether the waiting has already been too long, and whether the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Western bishops will willing to pay the price to rescue the existing structures.

For the time being at least, it does not seem that these global developments will impact in any significant way upon the Diocese of Melbourne. Much depends upon our Episcopal leadership in the future. One of the real risks for us is that conservatively minded Anglicans will focus their energies in the GAFCON network, and withdraw from active participation in Diocesan and national Anglican structures. This could help bring on the very problem which GAFCON is trying to address.

Certainly, if we were faced with the extreme theological and pastoral issues of the American Episcopalians, many Anglican leaders and congregations in Australia would be seeking alternative episcopal oversight. However we are nowhere near that situation at the present time, and I hope and pray we will never come to that point.

In the mean time, let us pray both for unity and passion for the gospel to flourish in God’s church. I remain committed to the theological foundations of the Anglican tradition, but watchful as to the road we will find ourselves travelling on. Above all, I agree with Archbishop Keith Rayner, former Diocesan Bishop of Melbourne, that it is necessary to be a Christian first, and an Anglican second. Ultimately it is our faith and union with Christ which keeps us together, not institutional structures or traditional denominational identity. These are good and worthy of preserving as long as they can serve godly purposes.

Let us also pray for the Anglican bishops, gathering in Lambeth, and also for those who are not in attendance, that the Spirit of Christ will move them in wisdom and courage to care for and build up God’s church.

Caulfield Grammar Founder's Day Sermon

2008-04-21T11:43:00.002+10:00

A Founder’s Day Service Sermon
Delivered on Sunday, April 20, 2008, at the Caulfield Grammar School Founders’ Day Service, held in St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus gave a commission to eleven disciples. Today you have heard his words read out in the Mandarin language – it is known as the ‘Great Commission’ – and from this small beginning the Christian church was established. Today hundreds of millions of people around the world have been baptised in obedience to Christ’s words.

I would to take you to another commissioning event, not the founding of Caulield Grammar School in April 1881, but to another event which took place five years earlier, on a Monday evening, August 27, 1876. A young school teacher was being farewelled from St Mary’s vicarage in Caulfield. His name was Joseph Henry Davies, but people just called him Henry. He was about to set sail for India, to join his sister there in missionary service.

Why was he going? Well for one thing the need was very great. Reports had been coming to Caulfield of hundreds of Indians becoming Christians. They needed care and instruction. And Henry was concerned for them. As he explained that night: ‘… when I turn my thoughts to the Saviour’s love, and the deep need … the desire is strong within me to go and tell them of the love of Jesus.’

During the course of that same evening, the Reverend HB Macartney, vicar of St Mary’s, read out to Henry a solemn charge, commissioning him for the challenging task which lay ahead. In sending this young man out, Macartney noted that he would be sorely missed, in Caulfield, for he was, in Macartney’s words: ‘both by nature and grace peculiarly qualified to preach the Word, and to attract multitudes to the cross of Christ’.

Without a doubt, Davies had been very active in Melbourne: a preacher at St Mary’s local mission chapel, an active member of the YMCA, a university student in Parkville, and teacher at Toorak College. Yet, for all this, Henry Davies was still a teenager. On the eve of sailing for India, he was only nineteen.

It is hard for us to imagine today the courage of this young man. Henry was going out with what was diplomatically referred to as ‘no fixed salary’. In other words he had nothing to live on. All he had in his pocket was faith, and the love of God.

But, as Henry told the gathered crowd, he had been wanting to be a missionary for six years, since the age of thirteen. He was more than ready!

==============

The past can have a strange way of influencing the present. I have in recent years spent many hours investigating St Mary’s history the church, where I have the privilege to serve today. Among other things, I inquired into the land titles, and the covenants attached to them.

A covenant on land is a set of conditions on the use of the land in the future. One of our parcels of land has a covenant which states that the land must be used for a church or a parsonage. Nothing else is will do.

Over the years I have come to see that it is not just land which can have covenants attached. And not all covenants are legal: some are spiritual. I am convinced that there are spiritual covenants attached to institutions, to families and even to nations.

In the case of a school, like Caulfield Grammar, you could think of the spiritual covenant which shapes its destiny in terms of the prayers of the founder. Today we stand upon and are shaped by the founder’s prayers and intentions. This is a serious and important matter. I know that God is faithful, and listens to people when they pray. I have no doubt that Caulfield Grammar school is shaped by the vision that was poured into it so long ago by its founder.

Of course the school’s founder is our Henry Davies – the young missionary to India. What sort of prayers would he have offered to God in founding this great school? What were his values, the things he ate, slept and dreamed for?

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Davies was formed and shaped as a young Christians at St Mary’s Caulfield during a most fascinating and exciting period in its history. There is no doubt that it impacted him deeply. I wish to focus on three values of that time and place, which influenced him.

• First and foremost was Henry Davies’ Evangelical Christian Faith.

• Another core value was Ecumenism – this was a conviction that Christians could and should work together in unity across denominational lines.

• A third was Globalism – Davies was a person of the whole world, a pioneer missionary to India and later to Korea. His vision included Australia, but it was much larger than it.

==============

We have already seen that the young Davies had evangelical convictions. He had a passion to take the love Christ to the world.

But why do I say Ecumenism? We often think of Australia’s past as plagued by sectarianism. Not so Caulfield in the 1870’s. One day, while I was rummaging through boxes of old papers and books in the hall, I found the proceedings of Australia’s first ecumenical Christian convention, held at St Mary’s church in 1874.

What was remarkable about the conference proceedings is that no denominational details are recorded for any of the speakers. It just wasn’t important which church they came from, and now, over 130 years later, you can’t tell who came from which church. Out of that meeting, important cooperative ventures were started, including the founding of the YWCA here in Melbourne.

It seems that the Davies’ children, Henry and his brothers and sisters, were attending those early conferences at St Mary’s. It was at the second, in 1875, that Henry’s sister Sarah received her call to go to India.

This spirit of unity at the conferences was the same one Davies had when he was about to set sail for India. He said on that auspicious evening in the vicarage:

‘I have met and worked with all denominations, speaking in Presbyterian, Wesleyan and Congregational churches. And … I am fully persuaded that the Lord’s people can harmoniously work together to a far greater extent than they have heretofore done’.

Davies, it is true, was formed and shaped as a teenager at St Mary’s – a Church of England parish – and was sent out to India by Anglicans. But he was later to go out to Korea as Australia’s first missionary to that nation, sent out, not by the Anglicans, but by the Presbyterian church. Although Davies died from pneumonia soon after arriving in Korea, he is credited with being one of the founders of the Presbyterian church there. Inspired by his example, six young Presbyterian men from Victoria followed soon after to continue his work.

I mention these things to make clear that Davies was no sectarian. One year he was founding what was to become a significant Anglican school in Australia. Eight years later he was helping to found a new national Presbyterian church in Korea.

Such was the breadth of his vision and his spirit of Christian love.

============

Davies’ globalism was another key to the meaning of his life. In this he was also the product of his environment. In the 1870’s and 80’s, the people who gathered in the Caulfield area had come from all over the world. One hundred and thirty years ago, St Mary’s was a church in a paddock surrounded by gum trees. Yet it had a vision to reach the world.

One of the senior members of St Mary’s congregation during Davies’ time in Caulfield was Sir George Stephen. He was a committed Sunday School teacher, and most likely he taught Henry in his class for young men.

I first came across Sir George’s name when investigating titles. It was he who gave the first parcel of land to the church, and attached a covenant to the land for this very purpose. But, as I was to discover, there was more to Sir George than this.

Born in the West Indies, and raised on both sides of the Atlantic, Sir George was a global Christian if ever there was one. He happened to be the nephew of William Wilberforce, recently celebrated in the film Amazing Grace. Just as his uncle William had fought for the abolition of the slave trade, so Sir George had battled for the full abolition of slavery itself in the British Empire. In his he was successful in 1833, due to a highly innovative nation-wide political campaign.

Sir George, was already an old man by the time Henry Davies went to India in 1876, but, like the young Davies, he had a global vision. He had fought for the liberation of millions of the world's citizens from the bitter curse of slavery. And he had won!

It was among people such as these that Henry Davies grew to manhood.

The words of the Great Commission of Jesus, which you have heard read out from Matthew’s gospel, are inscribed in gold letters above the arch of St Marys church. They say:

“All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore and teach all nations.”

And so they did. Some were young men like Davies, but many of the early missionaries who went out were women, like his sisters Sarah who went before him to India, and Mary, who was with him in Korea. That generation achieved great things.

I believe in spiritual destiny. I believe in the purposes of God, reaching down through history. In believe in spiritual covenants which influence our children and our children's children. Caulfield Grammar's founding was remarkable in its spiritual roots. It was a world-changing spiritual covenant which birthed it. That covenant has been established in prayer, and it cannot be changed.

==============
And today, how the world has changed! If you fly into Seoul, the capital of South Korea, at night, you will see the night sky lit up by a galaxy of neon crosses, raised over the chuches and houses of the city. For South Korea is now 40% Christian. And Henry Davies, the founder of Caulfield Grammar School, is remembered in that nation as one of the founders of the Korean church. His example has led the way for millions of Koreans to follow Christ.

Today the Korean Presbyterian church is the largest in the world, and there are over ten thousand Korean missionaries scattered around the globe You are as likely to meet a Korean missionary in Kazakhstan or Ghana, Moscow or Kathmandu.

Students of Caulfield Grammar School, you have an amazing legacy in the life of your founder.

==============

Let us now return to the proceedings of that farewell to Henry Davies, as he departed from Caulfield for India. Henry was going, as he told the gathered crowd, with but one regret, that he had done so little for God in, Australia, which he called ‘my own country’.

Yet, the Reverend Macartney prophetically announced, “We will expect that you will exercise no ordinary influence over the young men of Australia.” And also “You may return to us some day from India, to bless thousands,” So it was to be, for just five years later – and still not yet 25 years of age – Davies founded Caulfield Grammar School.

Caulfield Grammar is a place where thousands of young lives have indeed been blessed. The young Henry Davies’ did indeed exert ‘no ordinary influence’.

May God continue to bring great blessing to this school as it fulfils the prophetic, world-changing vision of the man who founded it, on the 25th of April, one hundred and twenty seven years ago this Friday.

Bishop Tom Wright on Redeeming the Arts

2008-04-01T16:13:00.003+11:00

“The church should reawaken its hunger for beauty at every level. This is essential and urgent. It is central to Christian living that we should celebrate the goodness of creation, ponder its present brokenness, and, insofar as we can, celebrate in advance the healing of the world, the new creation itself. Art, music, literature, dance, theater, and many other expressions of human delight and wisdom, can all be explored in new ways... The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are highways into the center of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions. But the present world is designed for something which has not yet happened. It is like a violin waiting to be played: beautiful to look at, graceful to hold - yet if you’d never heard one in the hands of a musician, you wouldnÆt believe the new dimensions of beauty yet to be revealed. From Simply Christian.”

Redeeming the Arts

2008-03-27T08:09:00.003+11:00

We have had a wonderful journey through Holy Week at St Mary's in these recent days. I count it a privilege to have been a part of it. How beautiful to celebrate a meal together on Thursday night, modelled on the Passover, remembering the Last Supper of our Lord. Then on Friday morning we traveled through a beautiful and deeply moving narrative centering on the cross of Christ, with drama, dance, procession, music and readings from the scriptures. Sharing in Hot Cross Buns after the service—traditional Good Friday fare—drew us into a precious time of fellowship. Friday evening’s Tenebrae service embraced us in a moving reading of John’s Gospel, as the sun set and the darkness of dusk fell over the city, bringing Good Friday to a close. Then on Easter day, the magnificent floral cross declared God’s gift of exuberant irrepressible life. How lovely also to hear the rebuilt organ pumping out the Messiah’s praises for the first time!
The Good News declares that the renewal of the world has begun in Jesus Christ. This Easter we have been celebrating the full majesty and power of the King breaking into and renewing this world. The Resurrection demonstrates the intention and power of God to redeem and renew his world. The book of Genesis describes the creation of a good world: again and again it is said ‘it was good’. Part of the goodness of this world is the gift of beauty. This is why, in the Christian faith, it is right and good for us to celebrate every beautiful thing in this world. God did not place us in a dull, drab and ugly world. He made it beautiful and wonderful. The use of flowers on Easter Day, and all the expressions of dance, drama and music which we been touched by in recent days—these express confidence that God is redeeming his creation. As part of this redemption, he is releasing the arts, for there is no good and beautiful thing which does not have a place in his new world.
It has indeed been a blessing that so many people with creative gifts have gathered in St Mary’s congregation. What a delight to see the Lord releasing these gifts into his service during Holy Week and Easter.

On Trees and Things

2008-03-26T17:14:00.003+11:00

While I was in New Zealand recently I familiarized myself with the characteristics of the Kauri pine. The Kauri is one of the great trees of New Zealand.
We have a very large one at the front of our property (on the right as you come in the driveway). It seems ours is just coming out of its ‘juvenile’ phase, even though it is already the tallest thing on the site! After 100 years, the tree probably has another 900 or so years of life ahead of it, and will expand century by century to be 2-3 metres diameter at the base. The lower trunk will lose all its branches, and a huge crown will expand at the top coming to dominate the site, from 20 metres up in the air (see photo - a Kauri pine in New Zealand). This is already taking place, as the tree is losing its conical shape and thinning out the lower branches.
It really amazes me, the capacity for vision of someone who would plant a tree like that. Jesus several times compared the Kingdom of God to a tree. A single tree can be host to a huge community of wild-life, with birds and animals finding rest and protection in its cover. Do you think about what the seeds you sow in Jesus’ garden might turn into, even years after you are long gone? We know that some seedlings do not survive — as Jesus'parable of the Sower explains — but others have a vast impact in their season. Jesus compared faith to a tiny seed: small in size, but huge in impact for God.

The tempation of being awesome

2008-02-27T20:43:00.003+11:00

I've seen a few things over the years. I meditate sometimes on the tangles people - me included - can get themselves into. Usually, right inside, at the heart of the tangle, is a lie. A big fat deception. One of the tangles Christians - and not only Christians - can get into is the desire to be awesome.

I've been looking around, and can confidently declare that wanting to be awesome has become an epidemic. It is highly contagious. The blogosphere is full of the confessions of addicts:

'Please help, I desire to be awesome and unfortunatley I am already light years ahead of all my professors.'

You have to feel sorry for the poor guy. Here's another:

'I have an intense desire to be awesome at everything I do. I'm finance major who likes to read books on leadership and just about anything else.'

There are also pages of advice out there in the ether on how to be awesome. One expert suggests fireworks: 'Irresponsible use of pyrotechnics is clinically indistinguishable from being awesome.'

Wikihow - a site I never knew existed - explains how to create your own clique at school by manipulating the desire of others to be awesome: 'Do you want to be in that clique but don't know how to get your friends to commit? Heres how to subtly make your friends want to be awesome...'

In the Christian faith, people interested in the prophetic and the miraculous can succumb to this epidemic big time. The goal of seeking prophecies, healings or other signs of God's grace can end up being reduced to the pursuit of personal awesomeness. Other more ordinary souls, who at the start simply want to lead some people to Jesus, or to become good preachers can end up in this trap. It becomes not enough to lead a healthy church, or to teach faithfully, they long to be an AWESOME leader, or an AWESOME teacher.

It's a very bad deal. A very unawesome dead end to get into.

The scriptures have a simple, ugly word for this 'wanting-to-be-awesome' condition. It is pride. And the fruit of pride is complete and utter unawesomeness - fallen people embarrassing themselves before a holy, righteous and ... totally awesome God.

There is a lot in the Bible about awesomeness, but the truth which undoes the lie of this condition is that Only God is Awesome. He is the Awesome One. Our goal should never to be awesome, because all the awesomeness is totally, only and forever His. If someone does not believe this to the depth of their being, then the entangling desire to be awesome can overtake them and bog them down in spiritual irrelevancy.

A Word for Lent - identifying with Jesus

2008-02-27T20:38:00.002+11:00

Here is a meditation by St John of Dalyatha, on identifying with Christ in his incarnation. May it be a helpful resource for you during these days of prayer and fasting, as you draw close to Jesus in his spiritual struggle in the desert against the powers of darkness, and may the Lord grant you victories in prayer.

Homily on Meditation on the Economy of the Lord

Hold him in your arms like Mary his mother. Enter with the Magi and offer your gifts. Proclaim his birth with the shepherds. Proclaim his praise with the angels. Carry him in your arms like Simeon the Elder. Take him with Joseph down to Egypt. When he goes to play with little children steal up to him and kiss him. Inhale the sweet savour of his body, the body that gives life to every body.

Follow the early years of his childhood in all its stages, for this infuses his love into your soul. Cleave to him: your mortal body will be scented with the spice of the life in his immortal body. Sit with him in the temple and listen to the words coming from his mouth while the astonished teachers listen. When he asks, when he answers, listen and marvel at his wisdom. Stand there at the Jordan and greet him with John. Wonder at his humility when you see him bow his head to John to be baptized.

Go out with him to the desert and ascend the mount. Sit there at his feet in silence with the wild beasts that sought the company of their Lord. Stand up there with him to lean how to fight the good fight against your enemies. Stand at the well with the Samaritan woman to learn worship in spirit and truth. Roll the stone from the tomb of Lazarus to know the resurrection from the dead. Stand with the multitude, take your share of the five loaves and know the blessings of prayer. Go, wake him up who is asleep at the stern of your boat when the waves beat into it. Weep with Mary, wash his feet with your tears to hear his words of comfort. Lay your head on his breast with John, hear his heart throbbing with love to the world. Take for yourself a morsel of the bread he blessed during supper to be one with his body and confirmed in him forever.

Rise, do not keep your feet away that he may wash them from the impurity of sin. Go out with him to the Mount of Olives. Learn from him how to bend your knees and pray until the sweat pours down. Rise, meet your cursers and crucifiers, surrender your hands to the bonds, do not keep your face away from the slapping and spitting. Strip your back to be lashed. Rise, my friend, do not fall to the ground, bear your cross, for it is time for departure. Stretch your arms with him and do not keep your feet from the nails. Taste with him the bitterness of gall.

Rise early while it is still dark. Go to his tomb to see the glorious resurrection. Sit in the upper room and wait for his coming while the doors are closed. Open your ears to hear the words of peace from his mouth. Make haste and go to a lonely place. Bow your head to receive the last blessing before he ascends.

A Common Word Between Us and You

2008-02-05T14:43:00.002+11:00

I have prepared some notes on the Muslims' letter to Christian leaders "A Common Word Between Us and You".
My notes can be found here.
A group of Yale scholars have written a response.
My reflections on the Yale Response can be found here.

I hope these may be of assistance to Christians.

Christmas in Gaza: the silence of the bells

2007-12-26T22:38:00.000+11:00

It was very sad to read, in a BBC report, that the church bells in Gaza have fallen silent under Hamas rule. The BBC correspondent, Katya Adler, reported that instead of ringing the bells, a nun was quietly playing a cassette tape (see photo): "I thought how this reflected the situation in Gaza in Christmas 2007 - that while the muezzin were on loudspeaker, the church bells here are played from a cassette tape. A nervous young nun adjusted the volume - loud enough to peel through the church but not to penetrate its walls - it might risk offending Muslim Gazans passing by."

I was reminded by this story of the text of the 7th century "Pact of Umar", in which Chrisitans, when surrendering to Islam, agreed to silence their bells: "We shall use only [wooden] clappers in our churches very softly."

The prohibition on ringing bells was one of the universal restrictions imposed by Islamic law upon 'dhimmis' - non-Muslims living under Islam after conquest. The bells of Middle Eastern Christians fell silent for more than a thousand years, until the European Powers dismantled the dhimmi system during the 19th and 20th centuries. Now the age-old discriminatory laws are being enforced again, and Hamas is proving as good as its word, for when it took power in Gaza the local Christians were told that as they were now in a full Islamic system they 'must accept Islamic law'. The silence of the bells bears witness that Hamas has told the truth about its intentions.

The silence is bad enough, but what distressed me most about Adler's report was her claim - paradoxically in the very same article - that "There is no evidence to suggest the Hamas government here officially discriminates against Christians…"

This Christmas season Gazan Christians are being resubjected to the odious, humiliating discriminations of the dhimmi system. This makes Christmas a very good time for the rest of the world to wake up and pay attention to the stark historical reality of dhimmi Christians' lives under Islamic rule, and to the intolerable reimposition of these conditions in many Muslim societies in the present day.

The Tyranny of the Irrelevant

2007-11-06T22:29:00.001+11:00

I have decided to coin a phrase, the 'tyranny of the irrelevant'. This refers to clutter, junk and tasks which fill our days but add nothing to them.
I remember my grandmother's laundry: there was a copper - nothing like today's hot tubs - under which you had to light a fire and in which clothes were stirred in the heated water to get them clean. I also remember the kitchen - a wood-burning stove! More hard work. The memories are symbolic of a tough life. No modern appliances for Grandma Durie. There was just such a LOT to be done around the place, to keep everything going. Cows to be milked, horses to be saddled, wood to be split, milk to be delivered to neighbours. Life was very, very busy. Yet although the days were full and tiring, they were never so cluttered as the lives we live today.
It seems that all around us there are marketers of distraction, standing ready to bombard us with choices, all the while telling us at the tops of their voices that choices are what WE want. It's got so that for me, shopping in Aldi's is pure relief, after enduring one too many choice marathons at the local shops. These days, the advertisers tell us, if you are not exercising choices every split second of every day, your life is not worth living.

Then there is all the physical clutter which a consumer society generates. It too is oppressive, as cupboards gradually accumulate diverse but useless contents, and our rubbish bins fill up daily with the most inventively diverse collection of junk.

So much of it is irrelevant. And this you may count on, that all this clutter has been sent to oppress us, to rob us of the gift of simplicity. This is the tyranny of the irrelevant. And as is the way of all tyrannies, it must be overthrown. Here's to a uncluttered life!

Transforming the Soul

2007-10-24T23:16:00.000+10:00

One of the pinnacles of the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount. Edward 'Weary' Dunlop, was an Australian who became famous for his leadership of prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma railroad. Jesus' Sermon on the the Mount affected him profoundly. He read it in a most unorthodox fashion. There was a great shortage of cigarette papers in the camp, and Weary was smoking his way through a Bible. He would memorize significant verses as he incinerated the pages. The Sermon on the Mount he kept until the very last. Indeed its simple but powerful message convinced Weary that he had to love his neighbour more than himself.

Although Dunlop experienced and witnessed the most appalling cruelty and degradation at the hands of the Japanese overseers, his daily choice was to affirm the humanity of all people. As he said "in suffering we are all equal". Dunlop was called by one of his men "a lighthouse of sanity in a universe of madness and suffering".

Although Dunlop was not an orthodox Christian, the words of Christ impacted his whole outlook. He decided to embrace the values of the Sermon on the Mount and simply to live them. One of the fruits of this was his life-commitment to build relationships between Australia and Asia.

Our society has been deeply impacted by the person and message of Jesus Christ. Our lives are much the better for it. There is a little of Jesus in all of us, one could say. Even a non-believer like Dunlop was transformed by the message of Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount.

The world is changing. Today, one might wonder what would have been the outcome if Dunlop had been smoking his way through a Qur'an instead of a Bible. Would he have found in those pages the same message of reconciliation and love for one's enemies? Surely not, for the teachings of Christ are unique.

Blog from the Beach - 14th of September

2007-09-18T22:33:00.000+10:00

It is good to be taking some time out with Debby here in sometimes sunny Queensland. Everyone needs to draw apart from time to time, to find a quieter place to think, to recuperate, to let all the busy-ness of life settle down around you, and just to be.

Whilst relishing this time of rest and solitude, I am all the more conscious of the precious gift of relationships. One of the most amazing messages of the Bible is that we are made in the image of God. In the Christian understanding of God, that image is not just of a single entity, but of a dancing complexity: the Father, Son and Spirit in vibrant, loving relationship together for all eternity. We are made in this image, of God in relationship in eternity.

Human experience of the world is of damaged relationships. Yet in Christ, we are called to something better, to transforming, life-giving relationships. This is not always easy. It is costly and challenging. It requires vulnerability and strength. It demands hope. Yet as we seek for Christ to be formed in us, renewing us from within, we must seek to encounter Him in each other.

St Mary's is a rich tapestry of relationships: children making friends in Sunday Club, small groups meeting and sharing life's joys and sorrows during the week, fellowship together over a cuppa on Sunday mornings, hopes and prayers shared over the phone, a husband and wife catching up at end of a frantic day, people making new friends and honouring old ones: the body of Christ is held together and expresses itself through our connections with each other. How precious these are! Our relationships are the domain in which the inner life of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - manifests itself among us. Nurturing Christian friends is itself an act of worship of the living God.

As we say, week by week, 'We are the body of Christ'.

Alive and Kicking

2007-07-19T19:25:00.000+10:00

Where is the most unsafe place for a human being to exist in the State of Victoria?
The correct answer is: In his or her mother's womb.

Each year, it is estimated that around twenty thousand abortions are performed in Victoria alone. An abortion can in principle take place up to 28 weeks gestation. (After 28 weeks, the 1958 Crimes Act deems the indictable offense of 'child destruction' to have taken place.) Past 20 weeks gestation, public hospitals will normally only do abortions if there are fetal abnormalities. However this could be something as minor as a cleft palate, which is easily corrected by surgery.
Private clinics are a different story.

I just can't comprehend how, in one delivery suite doctors could be delivering a baby which is to be killed during or after delivery, by lethal injection or dismemberment in utero, or simply by being left on a shelf to die, whilst in the delivery suite next door, a premature baby of the same gestation and health is delivered and kept alive to grow up to vital, healthy adulthood.

The Victorian Parliament is contemplating decriminalizing abortion, based on a bill introduced by Candy Broad. (However the ban on 'child destruction' after 28 weeks is not affected by the proposed changes.) To find out more, and consider whether you wish to take action, visit Alive and Kicking and follow instructions about how to contact your local politicians.

Shrek sells his soul for a buck

2007-07-16T00:16:00.000+10:00

Everywhere you turn these days the face of Shrek appears: in the supermarkets the shelves are full of Shrek-branded merchandise.

It is a great irony that someone who began his film career just wanting to be left to himself in his own piece of swamp has ended up selling his image to endorse a thousand and one products.

A good example of how show business can undermine your character!

Mission-minded? A message from Africa to the West

2007-07-10T15:38:00.000+10:00

Oscar Muriu from Kenya spoke to an Intervarsity meeting in December 2007, in St Loius.
Some of his points:

• There were nine million Christians in Africa in 1900, over 360 million today.
• There are more Anglicans in Nigeria than in all of North America and Europe.
• Kenya has more people with a personal faith in Christ than the whole of Western Europe.
• The largest congregations in Kiev, London and Zürich are led by African pastors.
• African has the fastest church growth in the world.
• For every North American or European Christian who drops out of church (6000 a day), 4 are added in Africa (23,000 a day).

The centre of gravity of Christianity has moved from the ‘north’ to the ‘south’, and it is the Christians of the non-Western world who will increasingly define what it means to be a Christian in the world today. Muriu asks: “If western models of church are not working in the west ... should he church of the two thirds world copy the models of the west or embrace western theologies?”

On the other hand, we still all need each other. Muriu spoke about the absolute importance of building genuine partnerships between Christians across the world. Although Africa is now sending missionaries to the rest of the world, missionaries are still needed in Africa. We all need each other. (1 Corinthians 12:14-27).

Muriu stated: “The mission industry of the last 200 years was hugely successful. ... We who come from Africa will always be eternally grateful to your forefathers who sent out their very best, their own sons and daughters, and resourced them to bring the gospel to us.”
=======

Well - what do you think?

At the first church I served in as an ordained minister, the whole path of the congregation was turned around by a visit from an African, Bishop Alexis Bilindabagabo. We had invited him to come and lead a mission, then we got cold feet, and disinvited him. He wrote to us and said that if we could not fund his visit, there were African Christians in Kigali who had a mind to support mission, who would send him. And so he came, and we all had a wonderful time enjoying God's grace through Bishop Alexis’ preaching.

I have two thoughts. One is that we in the West should always remember and give thanks for the many missionaries who have been sent out, and who sowed the seeds of faith in Christ into the 2/3rds world, often involving great personal sacrifice. These seeds are now bringing forth sweet and wondrous fruit all over the earth. The students have surpassed their teachers. This should never cease to give us joy.

The other is that we have great cause for confidence. The gospel is going out to the nations. It is being presented by the power of the Spirit of God, as He enables ordinary men and women, boys and girls all over the nations to confess Christ boldly. Let us do the same.

Help us to change

2007-06-25T15:46:00.000+10:00

God help us to change.

It is good to be away on leave. Down by the sea, I arrived to find that a storm the night before I arrived had swept away most of the beach. It is a weird feeling to be walking along what is left of a beach, one you have walked hundreds of times before, and to be about 2 metres lower than you should be. Your head is where your feet ought to be. Two metres of sand got swept away in this storm.

So I've been walking on the beach, and going to church. Part of my holiday is to go to church.

Going to church is, in my experience, a risky business. You never quite know what agenda God has for that day, or for you personally. Do you know the feeling? Sunday morning, it’s out of bed and off to church. Normally it's not a big decision to go to church, because I’m the vicar, and things might become a bit grim if I didn’t turn up. In reality it is a delight to worship our great God. Nevertheless, one of the things about going to worship Him, is you never quite know what He'll be up to.

Two things hit me at church this week. One was the readings. There was Jesus’ deliverance of the demoniac who was infested with a legion (thousands) of demons, and another was from the books of Kings about the flight of the prophet Elijah after his show-down with the prophets of Baal.

What took me aback was, at the end of both readings, there is a command is ‘Go back’. I said to the preacher afterwards that it was a bit rough to come on holidays and have not one but two readings tell you to ‘Go back’. I’d only just arrived!?!

Anyway, I could relate to the Prophet Elijah. He flees, exhausted, and spends time eating, drinking and sleeping before God sorts him out on Mount Horeb. Yes, that is something I can relate to at the moment. Elijah didn’t have an eroded beach to walk on out there in the desert, or else I’m sure that would have been in the story too.

The other thing that struck me at church was that the congregation was growing, it was full of life, and it was happy. There was a prayer in the weekly bulletin, which they quaintly called the ‘pew sheet’. (Actually it should have been ‘pew sheets’, because I got three pieces of paper. But that was all. I did feel a bit naked coming in without getting a prayer book and hymn book. The welcomers saw my hand reaching out for a hymn book, and proudly assured me I wouldn’t need one: everything would be on the big screen. And so it was. And it was great.)

Anyway, the pew sheets’ prayer read: Parish Mission and Evangelism Prayer. “God help us to change. To change ourselves and to change our world. To know the need for it. To deal with the pain of it. To feel the joy of it. To undertake the journey without unerstanding the destination. The art of gentle revolution. Amen.”

What a great prayer. Yes, change does bring joy. It does bring pain. It does take courage. You can never anticipate completely in advance where it will take you. It begins with us, and reaches out to others. My only quibble came at the end. I thought: truly blessed are those who can keep on changing God-wards in ‘gentle revolutions.’ My own experience is that there can be so many of those storm-tossed God moments when the whole beach gets swept away.

It was very encouraging to see this small country church coming alive. May all our churches be able to pray such prayers, to the honour and glory of the Name of the Lord.

What do we love the most?

2007-06-05T15:32:00.000+10:00

A deep problem with the west today is that we appear to have lost our capacity to love others. We love things more than we love people. We love our own ideas more than we love people. We love our money, possessions and fame more than we love people.

We love the idea of freedom more than we love setting people free. We love gratifying our feelings of compassion more than actually doing something for those in need. We speak highly of the emancipation of women, but continue to imprison them in the distorted, contorted body images of the catwalk We love the idea of choice, but deny the unborn the right even to breathe. We love our freedom of speech, but are indifferent to the victims of pornography. We love our cherished, ever-so correct political stances, but are indifferent to the people whose lives are wrecked by them. We give to others as if we were scratching an itch, and not as if we are sharing of ourselves. We love to be thought well of. We love to be right. We love to know that others are wrong. We love to preserve our own world view, even at the cost of the freedom of others. We love our own comfort above all. Our happiness is our highest goal.

My thoughts today have been stirred by watching a preview of the film Amazing Grace, telling the life-long battle of William Wilberforce against slavery. He loved others enough to dedicate his life to countless millions of ones he would never see: human beings sold into slavery.

If you can get to see this film, do so. It is a story of one man's Christian convictions, and the cost and fruit of his decision to remain true to them. St Mary's indeed has a special interest in William Wilberforce, because it was William's nephew George who bought and donated the first piece of land to start St Mary's almost 150 years ago. St Mary's will be organizing a viewing at the end of July - if you are interesting, contact us via www.smac.org.au.

"Turn the other cheek"

2007-05-18T23:58:00.001+10:00

The other day, listening to the local radio station, I heard the two hosts chatting about religion: "Of course every religion teaches 'turn the other check.'"
What a complement to Jesus Christ, that his distinctive and famous instructions on how to respond to violence (see Matthew 5:39) would be assumed to apply for ALL religions. Could this be some kind of reverse religious imperialism: if you want to know what Buddha or Muhammad taught, just read the gospels? Has Jesus' influence been so profound upon our worldview that people can just quote his words and say: well of course Islam (or Hinduism, or paganism, or whatever) teaches that.

Of course what they were saying was nonsense. Not all faiths are the same, any more than all political ideologies are the same. They don't all offer the same response to violence. It would be incredible if they did.

Where does such woolly thinking come from? Does it come from the view that religion has become irrelevant? Is it based on the belief that faith is somehow a projection of a universal common moral consciousness of the human soul? Is this just plain old head-in-the-sand stubbornness, refusing to acknowledge that not all faiths are the same? Perhaps it just a matter of our comfort levels: if all religions are the same, then we don't need to bother about them anyway.

Is this a case of us having become so lazy that we can no longer understand the times in which we live?

Drought-Proofing the Soul

2007-05-18T07:28:00.000+10:00

When I was a kid I lived for a time in Western Queensland. The country was then in teh grip of a terrible drought, when all the sheep had to eat was the leaves of the mulga trees. After a long period of dry, dry weather, a great downpour might come and 'break the drought', and long-empty river beds would swell into flood plains. But what puzzled me about all this was how one big rainfall could stops years of dry weather. Drought is by definition a long dry period. Why would 'drought-breaking rain' be anything more than just a tantalising momentary interlude in an every longer drought. This seemed to me like the gambling mentality of the 'lucky streak': just because you have one lucky win, it doesn't make you any more likely to win on the next toss of the dice.

When I was younger I didn't understand two things about rain and Australia. One is that our rainfall is determined by long-term variations in water temperatures in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. These oscillate in such a way that they can produce long periods of drought or plenty across our land. So 'drought-breaking rains' could indeed be just that: the herald of a whole new weather regime - for some years. The other thing about the land of Australia is that over millennia the environment has become used to this. Plants are accustomed to sudden temporary changes in climate. When rains come, within a short time seeds long dormant in the ground spring to life, the desert becomes a garden of flowers. Even the rivers are suddenly replenished with fish.

In Australia, having it too easy can be life-threatening. One of the trees in our garden was living for years off the soak of a broken sprinkler outlet. It was a deceptive season of plenty. When the sprinklers were finally fixed, it was when we were entering the height of a severe drought. That poor tree, which for years had exceeded all the ones around it in height and foliage, became very stressed. It was not drought proof. The fatness it had enjoyed for so long was a delusion.

The Bible speaks of seasons of God's grace for nations, communities and individuals. The prophets use the language of weather, speaking of early rains and latter rains, and times of God's spirit being poured out like rain upon the earth. There are references to famines and feasts of the soul, to droughts and floods.

How will we respond when our soul seems about to dry up? Is our soul drought-proof? Surely times of famine and plenty WILL come. The challenge is, in times of plenty, to be ready and prepared to put down deep roots, and not just be content with the abundance of surface water. Thsi requires determination and alertness. When things seem too easy, that is the time for the believer to dig deeper. We will need those roots when the hard, dry times come. And come they will.

Faith is a resource which is meant to be shaped to meet adversity. It is not merely an explanation for blessing, but a deep well to take us through times when so much around us seems to be cursed.

Jesus often spoke about such things: of building our spiritual house upon a rock, not upon sand, to prepare for the flood which destroys weak foundations; of getting ready for a day of testing, unseen, but looming ahead nonetheless; of being prepared for spiritual challenges even in the midst of material abundance.

God covenants to sustain his people through times of drought, but the flip-side of this is that during times of plenty, they need to be using all the resources God has provided to drought-proof their souls. How deep are your wells?

God's Smile

2007-04-27T10:23:00.000+10:00

Written for the 100th Anniversay of St Mary's Ladies Guild.
St Mary’s has a significant, although as yet unwritten history of women’s ministry, which has impacted the world. It is fitting that today when we are marking one hundred productive years of the St Mary’s Ladies Guild, to acknowledge some of the women of St Mary’s from the past. Not least among these were the vicar’s wives, whose tireless activities are marked in the pages of St Mary’s chronicles. A window dedicated to one of them – Mrs Emily Macartney – provides the image for the front of our program. It is inscribed ‘This woman was full of good works’. Some of these ‘good works’ included being President of the YWCA for ten years, Secretary of the Mother’s Union at St Mary’s, President of the Boarding-Out Committee of Caulfield, Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Member of the St Kilda and Caulfield Benevolent Society.
Notable women missionaries have gone out from St Mary’s, including the three China martyrs Nellie and Lizzie Saunders and Mary Gordon, who had been parishioners here and missionaries in training before leaving Australia. Years before, Sarah Davies had been sent out from St Mary’s as the first Australian missionary to India in 1875, and Anne Slaney followed her in 1876. Later missionaries linked with the parish were K. Nicholson who served for many years in China, and Miss E. Macfie in India. Two Furpheys, missionaries to India, were linked to St Mary’s: first Lottie Furphey and then after her Charlotte Furphey. Women have also served in ministry positions in the parish, such as the deaconess Alice Crabb and the organists F. Dixon and Helen Slaney.
The noted Victorian vicar of St Mary’s, HB Macartney, was undoubtedly a remarkable catalyst for the ministry of women. He was a vigorous and effective sponsor of women’s missionary agencies such as the Zenana missions. These had been formed and run by women because male-dominated agencies would not release single women to go as missionaries.
Macartney handed over his teaching slot at the first Australian non-denominational Christian conference, which he hosted here at St Mary’s in 1874, to read a sermon which he had commissioned from ‘a lady’ entitled “The Right of Holiness Purchased by the Cross, co-equally with the Right of Salvation.” Also included by Macartney in the conference proceedings, though not delivered, was another address by a woman entitled ‘Consecration’. As is often the case with women in ministry, the identities of the authors of these addresses remain unknown.
St Mary’s congregation had a passion for reaching women. A successful week-long Mission to Women was held in 1894 at the church. This featured Mrs Walker, who was the ‘Lady Missioner’ of the International Christian Police Association.
Among the very many women of note linked to the ministry of St Mary’s, the story of Emilia Baeyertz is perhaps the most fascinating. A convert to Christianity from orthodox Judaism, Emily was called into evangelistic work by the Revd HB Macartney in Caulfield.
At first Baeyertz tried reaching Melbourne’s Jewish community, but was regarded as an apostate by them and even received death threats, so she turned her attentions to gentiles. At one point, frustrated with her lack of effectiveness, she set aside a week to seek for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to empower her. During this time she became deeply convicted of the ugliness of sin, and soon after began immediately to see many conversions.
Ministers started to offer her invitations to speak, but she declined them all because she was not sure if it was right for her to address mixed meetings. As she reflected on this a great darkness came over her. However, a book by Elizabeth R. Cotton, the temperance preacher, convinced Emily to go ahead.
A key incident in the book occurs when Cotton, who had been preaching to young achoholic girls, and providing coffee houses as safe alternative places for them to gather in, was asked if the girls’ parents could attend too. Cotton refused. One of the fathers came to complain, and Elizabeth replied: “The reason is just this: people say it is not right for women to teach men.” The father responded: “I thought that was it, and I have been looking my Bible right through to see whether that be true; but it ain’t. There was the ’ooman of Samaria, she told the men; and Mary Magdalene, she ran to tell the men… And this is what I think, Miss, if a man don’t know, and a ’ooman do know, she ought to tell he, and it’s very wrong of you not to tell we.” Elizabeth Cotton came to regard this request as a “Macedonian call” to “come over here and help us.” So she relented. She told God that “she was willing to be misunderstood by all the world if only she had His smile, that she would go anywhere, and do anything for Him”.
After reading Cotton’s book, Emilia Baeyertz accepted her first invitation to preach to a mixed crowd, and was daunted to find the large church packed with hundreds of people, including three ministers. When she got up to speak the results were astounding as the church’s two vestries overflowed with new believers. Emilia went on to become a highly successful evangelist in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland, and Western Australia, as well as across the United States, Canada, Ireland, Scotland and England.
St Mary’s has a unique spiritual legacy. This church has blessed and enabled the ministry of remarkable women who have gone out and impacted the world. But in naming some of these women today, we also remember that through a century marked by many difficulties – including two world wars, a great depression, disasters such as the great influenza epidemic, and a period of the most far-reaching social changes imaginable – the ministry of women within our parish has continued uninterrupted. Steadily, fruitfully, the women of St Mary’s have built community, cared for each other and for their families, taught and nurtured each other in faith, and been a committed and faithful witness to their Christian faith. For this light shining we are proud and pleased to be giving thanks to God today. May the ministry of women in this place be sustained with joy and conviction until Christ returns!

Sir George Stephen

2007-04-18T11:33:00.000+10:00

It is 200 years since the British Parliament passed an Act in 1807 for the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire. A key force in the campaign to end slavery was a group of families known as the Clapham Sect, comprising influential evangelical members of the Church of England. Among this group were William Wilberforce and his brother-in-law, James Stephen, the legal mastermind of the first phase of the abolitionist campaign.
The battle for the ending of slavery continued for many years after 1807. A new generation of leaders were required to abolish slavery itself, and two were sons of James Stephen: James Jr. and George. A policy of gradual change had been pursued by the Anti-slavery society. However, in 1831 George Stephen and Joseph Sturge formed the Agency Committee to stir up a public campaign for the full abolition of slavery. They hired agitators to tour the country demanding nothing less than immediate and unconditional emancipation.
“The early 1830s was a time of liberal fervour arising out
of the campaign for parliamentary reform. Exploiting the mood of the moment, the Agency Society used every means at its disposal to drum up popular support, putting up posters, organizing public meetings, demanding pledges from parliamentary candidates, and circulating petitions. When the reformed Parliament met in January 1833 it was plain from the temper of the Commons that these efforts had succeeded and that the government would have to give way.” (Encarta Encyclopedia: Abolition Movement).
Thus it was that the work begun in 1807 was completed in 1833 when slavery itself was declared illegal. George Stephen, knighted for his contribution to this campaign, published a history of the movement in 1854,on the personal request of Harriett Beecher Stowe, to assist in the American campaign for abolition: Anti-Slavery Recollections: In a Series of Letters Addressed to Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
Sir George then emigrated to Australia, with his son James Wilberforce Stephen (commemorated in one of St Mary's stained glass windows). They settled right here Caulfield. Sir George built Helenslea, (now part of the Shelford site) and gave the first parcel of land to St Mary’s, paying for the first church to be built on it (where our hall now stands). An active barrister in the colony, he was a committed Sunday school teacher at St Mary’s for many years.
The evangelicalism of Sir George was marked by a personal experience of God, a conviction that the world needs to be evangelised, submission to the Bible as God’s Word, and a deep commitment to public action to transform society. What shoulders we stand upon!

Melbourne's Water

2007-03-26T07:49:00.001+10:00

For the first time this morning I had a good look at the past ten years of Melbourne's water supply here.
What I saw was disturbing. Over the past 10 years there have been two years where the water levels have dropped 20%, two years where they have dropped 10%, only a few years where the levels held steady, and just one year (2003) when they rose by more than a few percent. There has never been a year in the past ten when we have had a water level rise of 10%. On average we have been losing around 6% to 7% of our water every year for a decade. Another 2-3 years could see the end of Melbourne's usuable water, unless there is a long-term change to our rainfall trends.

I think I might go dig a well ...

The Biggest Loser

2007-03-25T13:56:00.000+10:00

As the contestants on the Australan 'Biggest Loser' TV show compete for the prize of being the last 'loser' (of weight) still standing, I've been watching. I found myself intrigued by the role of the coach. At first the participants have no idea what they are capable of. It is the coash who sees their potential from the start. The coach's job is to get more out of them than they ever dreamed they could have achieved.

Throughout the series, the transformation in the participants has been remarkable. From people with low self-esteem and a track record of failure, self-confident, 'can do' individuals are emerging boldly into the light of day. All of them are notching up landmark physical and psychological achievements along the way. Every contestant has done great things to be proud of.

In all this the contribution of the coach is crucial.

In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit, who is 'God alongside', is our coach. Seeing more potential in us than we can imagine, and knowing how to draw it out of us, the Holy Spirit challenges, chastizes, comforts, and consoles us to stretch out for our very best. This 'very best' is nothing other than Christ in us: the fulness of God's purposes being worked out in our lives.

Easter Buns?

2007-03-20T23:03:00.000+11:00

Many Christians find the 'Easter Buns' in supermarkets an affront. They are traditionally known as Hot Cross Buns, to be baked and eaten on Good Friday as a breaking of the fast of Lent.

But these days they appear in local supermarkets by the first of January. And no more of this offensive 'Hot Cross' talk - these are 'Easter Buns', as in 'Easter Bun-ny'.

It was not so long ago that the Daily Telegraph reported that councils and schools throughout England were banning Hot Cross Buns, in an attempt not to offend Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, or whoever else's wrath was to be feared. The Muslim Council of Britain wisely remarked that the decision was 'very, very bizarre', but a spokesman for the London borough of Tower Hamlets said 'We are moving away from the religious theme for Easter... We will probably be serving naan breads instead.'

Other creative souls invented a pagan origin for Hot Cross Buns - no doubt because then they could be happily eaten by all and sundry, and not banned as embarassing Christian food.

It is not pedantry which motivates me to write on these "Easter Buns". My point is that our community has become disconnected with its spiritual heritage. Good Friday and the crucifixion it celebrates have disappeared from the consciousness of the marketeers and chocolate bunny sellers.

But as for me, I will wait until Good Friday, and on that day remember what the cross stands for, as I munch on a Hot Cross Bun after our morning service.

Isaac Ball's conversion

2007-03-15T08:40:00.000+11:00

I thought I would begin my vicar's blog with a drawing of St Mary's. A member of the choir brought this to church last Sunday. This drawing was done in the early 1870's, within the first few years of the church being built. The artist, whose name was Ball, created this image as a memento of his son Isaac Ball's conversion through the ministry of the Revd HB Macartney, vicar of St Mary's. Isaac went on to become an ordained Anglican ministry, graduating from Moore College in Sydney in 1875.