Glocal Christianity

Inquiry into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2012 and the Marriage Amendment Bill 2012

From the Parliament of Australia website:

On Thursday 16 February 2012, the Selection Committee asked the Committee to inquire into and report on the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2012 and the Marriage Amendment Bill 2012.Please click here to link to a relevant Background Note produced by the Parliamentary Library on Same-sex marriage.

The Committee encourages all interested parties to participate in the following survey on the two Marriage Bills. This information will be periodically calibrated and provided to the Committee as part of the evidence for this inquiry. These results will be published intermittently on the website. Please note the closing date for responses is 20 April 2012.

 

Careful what you wish for

Shane Claiborne - No such a Thing as Just War

Short but succinct video explaining the Jesus take on violence.

99% is a lumpy number

The inconvenient truth is, in global terms, my lifestyle is more in tune with the top 1% than with the bottom 1% Should we cast stones without considering our own economic sins?

A Baptist Minister comments on Occupy Melbourne

Rev Simon Moyle, an ordained Baptist minister with the GraceTree Community in Coburg and nonviolence trainer with Pace e Bene Australia, makes some interesting first hand observations of the Occupy Melbourne demonstration last Friday.

Why public schools need public Christian support

If the media were your sole source of information you could be forgiven for thinking Christians universally favour private schools over public schools. Yet, it's a fact that many Christians send their children to public schools and are quite happy with the education they receive there. So, what's the other side of the story? Is it just the cheaper fees? Maybe so. But beyond such pragmatism I would also like to advance some RELIGIOUS arguments for supporting public school systems in Australia and beyond. What's more, I am going to deliberately go for a right-of-centre angle as I go about it, given that's where I see the shift in awareness most needs to happen.

1/ Islamic integration

Everywhere I go I hear conservative Christians expressing fears about Muslims. Fears that they're taking over, that they seek to impose Sharia Law locally, that they live in enclaves and resist integration, that Muslim schools could be potential to breading grounds future terrorists. Now, let us suppose for the moment that these fears are well founded and not exaggerated in the slightest (ignoring for a bit the ample evidence that a Muslim takeover is outrageously unlikely in the Australian context), is the Christian retreat into private schools and home schooling likely to solve the integration problem or exacerbate it? Think about it. What could be a greater argument for the legitimacy of Muslim private schools than a plethora of Christian private schools (given, after all, that we live in a pluralistic democracy where discriminatory policy is illegal)? What could encourage Muslim enclaving more than Christian attacks on the public school system (given, after all, that this undermines the prime alternative to private Muslim education)? It's time more Christians woke up to this, put their money where their mouth is regarding integration and support public schools more vocally.

2/ SRE support

Many have noted how the success of Christian discount bookstores like Koorong have had an extremely negative impact on the availability of quality Christian books in secular bookstores. Quite simply, secular bookstores can no longer afford to stock anything other than the most outrageously liberal books that evangelical bookstores would never compete with them over. Should we not stop to consider then, if recent challenges to Special Religious Education (SRE) in private schools and the exodus of evangelical Christians to private schooling might not be, you know, just a wee bit related as well? Why, after all, should schools in highly multicultural and multireligious suburbs give preference to Christian religious education when the most committed Christian families are exiting? Wouldn't the best way to ensure the continuence of SRE be for Christian families to continue using the service?

3/ Life preparation

Finally, when do you think would be the best time to expose your kids to secular thought? When you have maximum influence over them or when you have minimum influence over them? This protecting kids from state schools so that they won't be taught evolution, this bubbling till university, this is a high risk strategy for conservatives in my view. You can't bubble your kids forever. What, save the culture shock for when you're least able to disciple them??? How's that smart? The sooner they engage with the world they live in the better. Training for faithfulness in a faithless world is something we need to start early, while they are still in school.

Driscoll calls Westboro "Crazy Calvinists"

What a fascinating face off! I've said in the past I'd like to see the Christian right taking a stand against far right extremism and the Christian left taking a stand against far left extremism. More centrism in other words. Nice to see Driscoll taking stand against the hate mongering of Westboro.  

Legislating God in the Land of the Free

Critical Christianity comments on American Christianity: "To assume that this is God’s country is a fallacy. But to then assume that it is our Christian duty to attempt to legislate Christianity is to make God even smaller."

Two Streams of Civil Religion

I've been rethinking my understanding of civil religion. Until now, I know I've tended to speak of civil religion, particularly American civil religion, like it's some monolythic entity. But in thinking through some unrelated issues I had one of those "Doh!" moments when I realized how one dimensional that was. It's clear to me now that there are at least two streams I should be speaking of.

Stream 1: The Theocratic Nationalism of the Right

For me, this was the more obvious stream of civil religion. Wherever we hear people speaking of America as a "Christian Nation", as if the land itself has been baptised, wherever we see Jesus wrapped in a national flag, as if he's some kind of national mascot, that's theocratic nationalism. In many ways it represents the deification of fighting for "freedom" and a denial of Christ's universality. Tending towards legalism, Theocratic Nationalism is the civil religion of the patriarchal state.

Stream 2: The Deistic Universalism of the Left

For me, this was the less obvious stream of civil religion. But it's there. Wherever we hear people promoting the therapeutic deity of the lowest common denominator, the "undemanding" god that's for everyone and anyone, the domesticated god that no one could find offensive, that's deistic universalism. In many ways it represents the deification of fighting for "equality" and a denial of Christ's uniqueness. Tending towards licence, Deistic Universalism is the civil religion of the nanny state.

What we need is more Uncivil Religion

By this I mean a Christianity that views citizenship as secondary to discipleship. Uncivil religion refuses to water down it's worship and witness of Jesus as the one and only Messiah. It accepts the untamed Messiah won't be for all citizens. It's prepared to betray the nanny state agenda. Uncivil religion refuses to water down it's worship and witness of Jesus as self-sacrificing and stranger-loving. It accepts untamed Messiah won't be for all citizens. It's prepared to betray the patriarchal state agenda. In short, it espouses a Christ-centric agenda over a citizen-centric agenda.

For more on Civil Religion see:

Christian Art | Political

3 ways to avert collapse

Ian Shannahan has been sounding alarm about the population explosion here and elsewhere over the last few weeks, so I thought it was time to give it and the environmental issues surrounding it some focus.

Dispite our differences over immigration and refugee policy, I agree with Ian that overpopulation is something we should be concerned about. Indeed I take the dire warnings of environmental and civilizational collapse with upmost seriousness.

I was watching a David Attenborough documentary the other night and the statistics and the scientific evidence behind them is truly frightening. The world population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. We are living unsustainably and it's starting to catch up with us. What I found particularly interesting though, was David Attenborough's proscription for survival. Basically, he sees the mega-problem of environmental stress as composed of three interrelated problems:

• The growing number of us
• The amount we waste
• The amount we consume

The solution is equally simple, even if its easier said than done:

• Reduce population growth (so that there are less of us)
• Increase efficiency (so that we waste less)
• Rethink lifestyle (so that we use less)

David Attenborough suggested that each of these is important for improving sustainability. The carrying capacity of the land may be improved by working on any of them. For example, if we could reduce pollution per capita in proportion to population increases, we could keep the total pollution levels steady. If we could reduce population growth in proportion to consumption growth, we could keep total consumption levels steady.

But we probably need to work on all three, since we're not after steady state but restoration. Of particular interest, he noted that the evidence suggests the best way to reduce population growth (short of violent imposition by totalitarian dictatorship) was the education of women. The evidence from around the globe shows, the more educated the women, the more likely they'll choose with their partners to have less children.

This all has very interesting synchronicities with the lifestyle Jesus advocated. He said we should live simply, invest what we are given wisely, and by his own example he showed he considered women's education important. So it would seem that the way of Jesus, taken seriously, offers us a way out of this mess.

Unlike Ian I'm not so focussed on border control. Environmental crisis respects no borders. We need a global solution, not a national one. But I agree its an important issue, and indeed, an important issue of faith. Do we have faith we can live with less "stuff" as Jesus clearly called wealthy people (like us) to do? Are we prepared to be faithful with the resources God has entrusted to us to invest on his (not our) behalf? Do we have compassion for the women of the developing world who are trapped in grinding poverty and see large families as their only lot in life? Are we prepared to do what it takes to open an alternative world up for them?

For more on the environment and Christianity see:

Christian Environmental Theology
Noah the Greenie