Eternity - March 2017 - Issue 78

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Number 78, March 2017 ISSN 1837-8447

God’s Mob Rules More kids in school scripture

2017 the year to celebrate the Bible

Brought to you by the Bible Society

Donald Trump splits Christians

NEWS

Obadiah Slope TRIGGER WARNING: Obadiah is about to say something nice about the Mormon church. Melbourne is encrusted with ads for the musical The Book of Mormon, a not-exactlykind portrayal of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

What do you do when a city is full of what you regard as negative messages? The Mormons have bought all advertising at Southern Cross station – and plastered it with the church’s own messages including mini-testimonies. They have done a good job in incredibly adverse circumstances. If Obadiah were a Mormon, he would be proud.

GREAT SALVO: That slap down was printed in the new Salvo magazine, which is a great mag – with a great Luke 6:31 (Do unto others) title.

SPOTTED: Sometimes it is impossible to avoid offense. Case in point: the pair of men’s boxers on display in Oxford St, Sydney, patterned with upside down crosses, black on white. Obadiah knows he was meant to be offended.

Numbers of kids in school Scripture classes swell

News 2-3 Bible Society 4 In Depth 5-10

JOHN SANDEMAN In 2017 more students in state schools will hear Bible stories than in 2016.

Teaching “Scripture” in classrooms – which is known as Special Religious Education in NSW, Special Religious Instruction in Victoria and Religious Instruction in Queensland – is on the increase.

“Its definitely growing,” says Karen Grenning of the Queenslandbased Christian Religious Instruction Network (CRIN).

“There’s more Scripture in more schools every year and more students involved,” says James Flavin, CEO of NSW-based Generate Ministries. “We have had double-digit growth in the last three or four years.”

But Scripture is a bit like Rugby League: much more powerful in the northern states of New South Wales and Queensland.

In both Queensland and NSW, more than 70 per cent of students opt in to Christian RI in schools where it is available.

One astonishing statistic is that if you add Jewish and Islamic numbers, a majority of primary state-school students in NSW attend Scripture. Scripture teaching is becoming increasingly professional with part-time paid staff providing it.

Opinion 11-16

Quotable

In NSW, the majority of primary state school students attend “Scripture.”

In the past five years, the number of NSW high schools with a paid SRE teacher has increased from 140 (2011) to 237 (2016). Like Scripture teaching in general, this is a grassroots exercise. “Local schools and local churches working together to hire locally,” is how Flavin puts it.

This school term, teams linked to Generate Ministries are looking for an extra 20 teachers. A degree in teaching or theology is a prerequisite – the standards for Scripture teaching are on the rise.

Again like Rugby League, Scripture is making inroads

in Victoria. After a precipitous decline in student numbers after the programme was moved out of classroom hours, this week several hundred instructors are doing refresher courses, responding to demand for the course at local schools.

“Feedback is that schools are welcoming the new programme, which provides a safe place for students at lunchtime,” Dawn Penney, CEO of ACCESS ministries tells Eternity.

Some 2500 students took part last year, a number that will increase in 2017.

Flickr /Ilmicrofono Oggiono

SLEDGED: Mark Hadley and Eternity’s deputy editor Ben McEachen are good mates who work on The Big Picture, a podcast and video service that reviews movies and TV from a Christian perspective. When Mark describes the sort of movies Christians should not take note of as “indistinguishable from something that might be printed in Empire magazine,” it probably passes most readers by. Unless you know his pal Ben used to edit Empire. Ouch.

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Michael Jensen

on praying in the age of Trump “We ought to be thinking about politics from a Christian perspective, and about contemporary politics in particular.”

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Salvos’ funeral plans JOHN SANDEMAN Salvos beancounter Malcolm Pittedrigh was half joking when he suggested the Army set up an undertaking business at a brainstorming session back in 2012.

“We have clergy, we have facilities, all we need is a hearse or two and we are on our way,” he joked.

This week he is poised to launch Salvos Funerals with the aim of rolling it out around Australia after a first phase in Salvos Funerals will offer funeral Sydney and arrangements, at lower rates. the NSW central coast. He sees space for an operator with ”transparent and fair pricing” that avoids “upselling to vulnerable

people.” An average funeral in Sydney, the most expensive city, might cost at least $8000, says Pittedrigh (although Choice magazine suggests a figure closer to $10,000). Perhaps 10 per cent less in Brisbane, or 10 to 15 per cent less in Melbourne, according to Pittedrigh.

Salvos Funerals will provide an “average” funeral with a ceremony, hearse and mortuary care for $4700. But they also plan to offer a cut-price option called “direct cremation” which takes a deceased person direct from a home or hospital to a crematorium, with no ceremony, for $2180.

Salvos Funerals will become the second major funeral operator owned by a faith-based group, alongside the Bethel company.

“Built upon the principles of Christian love and compassion,” Bethel’s profits support Wycliffe Bible Translators Australia.

Long living sharks DON BATTEN Creation Ministries International Scientists have used a unique method to determine that Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) are the world’s longest-lived vertebrates. It involves identifying a “pulse” of carbon-14 in the animal’s eye lens known to be caused by atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs in the mid-1950s.

The technique helped researchers to establish that the shark has a very slow annual growth rate of about 1 cm (1/3 inch) which translates

to a lifespan of around 400 years.

Other known long-living creatures include the chowder clam (500 years), bowhead whale (200) and Galapagos tortoise (170).

Bible skeptics scoff at the idea that humans such as Methuselah (969 years, Genesis 5:27) once lived for centuries. Ignoring death by accident or disease, different living things seem to be genetically programmed to live for different average periods. Such “programmed longevity” in animals can be drastically affected by breeding experiments.

NEWS

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ABC resets its Compass ANNE LIM Compass, ABC Television’s weekly ethics and religion programme, will showcase the life and personality of its new presenter, Kumi Taguchi, when it returns at 6pm on March 4 in a new Saturday timeslot.

As the much-loved and respected broadcaster Geraldine Doogue passes on the baton after 20 years in the role, the ABC has decided to capitalise on the vibrant personality of her replacement as host, a halfAustralian, half-Japanese former violinist who loves nothing better than a physical challenge.

Taguchi, who will also continue as a news anchor on ABC News 24, says this emphasis on her complex life and personality is one of several new directions for the programme that aim to broaden its appeal, especially to a younger audience.

She told Eternity that audience feedback shows personality drives a lot of viewer loyalty not only in drama but also in the news and entertainment space.

“At the ABC we’re really keen to make sure that we capture personality and build personality, so quite a bit of Compass this year will be – which is slightly uncomfortable for me – but be sort of around my personality,” she says.

“So we’ll be doing quite a bit more behind-the-scenes stuff – who am I? I’m not just someone presenting a programme but I’m someone who has a complex life with various facets of which the camera is just one small part.”

Other initiatives aim to shift audience perceptions of Compass and reach people for whom the word religion is “tainted” by controversies such as the child sex abuse scandal in the church.

These will include smaller new segments, primarily built for a social media audience; programmes produced in partnership with vehicles such as the youth radio network, Triple J, providing a safe space for young people to ask life’s big questions; and a focus on the ideas generated by the programme’s title.

“I’m very keen on exploring this word ‘compass’, which to me means direction,” says Kumi. “You think of a compass and there’s north, south, east and west. If you extrapolate from that, what

does that actually mean? What direction are you going in? Those are the kinds of broader bases that we’re very keen on exploring.

“So it’s really exciting, actually.

We’re all open to where this journey might take us as a programme and shifting it slightly to what I think people need at the moment.”

Kumi, who was born in Melbourne to a Japanese father and Australian mother, had a very mixed cultural upbringing, growing up on a mini farm but

Kumi Taguchi, left, with Compass’ long serving compere Geraldine Doogue.

kneeling and eating miso soup for breakfast. She says coming to faith as a Christian was for her a “very slow process.”

“I was a big atheist at first and have been for most of my life,” she says. “That faith journey is one that I’m still constantly travelling on, so it was just a process for me of opening my mind up to bigger questions … and I still am exploring those questions quite deeply.

“So I would say very strongly that I’m a person of faith and discovery and that journey is something that is still very much unfolding for me.”

She is relishing the prospect of mixing the fast pace of the newsroom with the opportunity to have time to think about the big issues of meaning, faith, spirituality and purpose.

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Jesus has hands in Melbourne TESS HOLGATE One local church is responding to the needs of its local community by caring for people struggling through relationship breakdown, family violence, mental health issues and financial difficulties.

Crossway LifeCare, a ministry of Melbourne’s Crossway Baptist Church, supported nearly 800 people in its eastern Melbourne community during 2016.

Grace was a single mum and domestic violence survivor when she was introduced to LifeCare’s counselling and financial service programmes. “I had lost my inner will power and who I was as a person,” says Grace.

LifeCare provided Grace with practical aid, such as food and clothing, as well as surrounding her with community. This helped her life to flourish: “I have a beautiful home, my boy is reunited with me, and my sense of belonging, individuality is returning”.

LifeCare is expanding its programmes in 2017, and will officially launch bigger premises on March 19. LifeCare’s COO Gail Thannhauser says, “We face growing social challenges, but thanks to our supporters, we have a fantastic new building to facilitate an even stronger impact.”

For more information, visit www. crosswaylifecare.org.au

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MARCH 2017

BIBLE @ WORK

Let’s join together to celebrate God’s word Check out new website bible.com.au for details of a service featuring Hillsong’s Brian Houston and the Archbishop Glenn Davies, right.

ANNE LIM Bible Society Australia celebrates its Bicentenary this month in a historic link-up between two of the largest streams within the church, Pentecostals and conservative evangelicals.

In a bold move of unity, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Glenn Davies, is sharing the stage with Hillsong’s Global Senior Leader, Brian Houston, at the National Celebration of the Bible at Hillsong’s main campus in Sydney.

A strong supporter of the Bible Society’s work, Davies has reached across the divide that has kept the leaders being on the same platform – until now.

In an interview in his office ahead of the event, he urged Bible Society Australia to keep publishing and printing more Bibles in accessible language, in

order to “keep refreshing the non-changing words of the Bible in a changing society, so that people can actually say ‘yes, this is true.’”

Acknowledging the power of the Bible to transform, Davies says he continues to learn new things every time he reads it.

“There’s something personal about the Bible. It’s not just a book written for people at large; it’s actually written for me in particular and for you and for everyone who takes it up. It’s God’s personal message to us,” he said.

“He speaks to me in his word and I speak to him in prayer.”

Davies encouraged BSA to continue being innovative in how it brings the Bible to people.

Davies said the most powerful way to promote the Bible was simply get it into people’s hands,

Build our future on the Good Book.

because the Bible would speak for itself. This has been shown by the many testimonies from those who have become Christians just by reading a portion of the Bible.

As leader of a church that sees more than 400 Australians come to Christ each weekend, Brian Houston said the Bible had been his “source of life, hope, direction, wisdom and success” since his boyhood in Auckland in a Salvation Army family.

“The Bible is God’s love letter to humanity, and I believe with all my heart that it lifts people up, brings eternal hope, offers grace and shows us the way of salvation through Jesus Christ.

All that God longs to tell us, show us and teach us about our lives and the fulfilling lives we are meant to live is hidden within this sacred text,” he said.

Houston said the Bible

had been and continued to be “absolutely central” to his boyhood dreams of pastoring a healthy, growing church. He loved how the more he knows about God and his word, the more he realises there is so much more to know.

“His word is an endless well, a constantly renewed source of life and answers for every day, no matter what each day may hold.”

While loving the beauty of the printed word, Houston believes user-friendly apps such as Bible Society’s Bible Bedtime App for children are a great idea, making God’s word more relatable to today’s generations.

He congratulated Bible Society for “200 magnificent years of devotion to the cause of Jesus Christ and your commitment to get the Bible into as many hands as possible.”

Houston’s support of Bible Society is backed up by the involvement of all Hillsong churches across Australia in the March 5 celebration, which will live-stream the event. In addition, there are “lighthouse churches” in every state that will show the broadcast either live or at a more convenient time.

BSA has built a website – bible.com.au – that will help you hold your own celebration at a later date.

This year Bible Society is continuing to provide tools for Bible engagement for all ages.

It is distributing 100,000 free Scriptures to chaplains and frontline ministries, providing 13,000 Big Rescue Bibles and 2000 Youth Bibles to Scripture teachers across Australia. As well, it is providing resources for 20 projects in the Indigenous area.

This year, help Bible Society to give away over 100,000 Scriptures, engage Aussies with the Bible and advocate for it in the public square.

Donate at biblesociety.org.au/aussie or call 1300 BIBLES (1300 242 537).

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Steps of faith in living colour OUR M G O D ’S O B, S T O RY

AB O RI GI N AL & TO RR AR TI ST ES ST RA S SH AR IT IS LA E TH EI N DE R R FA IT H

Resear ched and edited Art Sel

by Lou ection ise She

by Max rm Conlon , Gail Nad an and Christo bel Ma en, Gle ttingle nny Nad y en and Inawantj i Scales

ANNE LIM Max Conlon loves painting the Bible. The well-known Aboriginal artist from the Kabi Kabi tribe in Cherbourg, Queensland, sees his biblical paintings as a tool to serve God and share Christ.

“It’s really good because it engages people, unsaved people, and Christians who are going through struggles in life and it builds them up,” says Conlon, one of 67 Indigenous artists who have contributed to a magnificent new book, Our Mob, God’s Story.

Conlon, who dedicated his life to Jesus after becoming a Christian at age 16, sees “benefits for everyone” from this “wonderful tool” God has blessed him with. It not only opens doors to spread the gospel but empowers and brings a sense of identity to “my own people.”

Our Mob, God’s Story, published

by Bible Society Australia, represents an “amazing journey” over five years for Bible Society’s Louise Sherman, who edited the book with South Australian author Christobel Mattingley.

“It’s been amazing to work with so many artists across Australia,” says Sherman. “The book is promoting the influence the Bible has had on our First Nations people. It will also promote the work we do in translation, publication and Bible engagement.”

Inawantji Scales, from the Pipalyatjara community in the APY Lands in the northwest of South Australia, has been painting since she was young. In addition, she works for Bible Society, translating books from the Old Testament into the Pitjantjatjara language.

She has been a Christian since hearing the voice of Jesus telling her to love, trust and forgive while she was driving on the Stuart Highway near Alice Springs.

She says she got the vision for her painting of Jesus Walking on the Water (see left) while listening to the Hillsong song Oceans. “[The song says] ‘Lead me to where my trust is without borders.’

It’s from the Scriptures – about Jesus on the water, but also us also on the water, taking a step of faith, letting the Spirit of God lead wherever he wants to lead us and test our faith and make it stronger.”

To order, visit bibleshop.org.au/ ourmob

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MARCH 2017

Max Conlon (below) painted The Crucifixion of Christ, above, because “Jesus dying on the cross blew the kingdom of darkness away. What Jesus has done for me was so real, so special and so transforming in my life.” Conlon says the brown circles around Jesus represent the three days he was in the tomb and the white figures on the rim of the circle are angels. “On the third day he rose again and conquered death and he brought life and light into the world even for those who walk in darkness.

Those white dots there are going out to bring life to the world; he exploded the kingdom of darkness. Wow! The devil thought Jesus was defeated when he died on the cross, but Jesus proved it wrong; he came and died and he rose again on the third day to bring people life.”

Detail of Kristy Naden’s Noah’s Flood, above, is painted from God’s viewpoint looking down on Noah and his family in the centre, surrounded by Australian animals.

Detail of Max Conlon’s Birth of Jesus, shows Jesus in the middle with his parents at either side, the wise men at the top and the shepherds below. The three circles at right represent the Trinity.

Begin a journey of study into the Word of God that will change your life and the lives of those you come in contact with.

Contact us TODAY!

istry n, Amazing Min Future Chaplai haplains

rce.gov.au/c web: www.airfo DPS:MAY049-16

ov.au

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Make a Dif erence for Jesus!

02 9603 2077 | contact@visioncolleges.net | www.visioncolleges.net

IN DEPTH

MARCH 2017

40 40 40%

25% 25% 25%

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Four in ten Four in ten say religious faith or spirituality is Four in ten say religious faith or spirituality is important in or shaping life’s is say religious faith spirituality important in shaping life’s decisions. importantdecisions. in shaping life’s decisions.

Aussies still have prayer lives 21%

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ANNE LIM

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“

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trend over decades that is linked to 14% change. But there is generational 14% 19% 14% still a religious life, a spiritual life 28% 28% that is active in many Australians.”

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9% Results are weighted to reflect 9% the demographic profile of the 14% 14% Australian population 14% 25% aged 18-plus 19%19% 14% on age, gender and 25%education.

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Three in ten Australians have active spiritual lives, praying or meditating at least once per week, while more than a quarter report having had a mystical or supernatural experience.

These are some of the encouraging results of the latest Australian Community Survey conducted last December by National Church Life Survey (NCLS) Research.

Despite the erosion of religious engagement in Australia, there is solid reporting of personal religious practice and religious experience, says Ruth Powell, Director of NCLS Research. More than a quarter of respondents say they have had a mystical or supernatural experience, while another third say they know someone who has, or they believe it could happen.

“The reality is that religious experience and people’s own personal [religious] practice are strong,” says Powell.

NCLS Research, part of the Australian Catholic University, has previously run this Australian Community Survey in 1998, 2002 and 2009. Every five years, it also runs a study of churches, called the National Church Life Survey. The 2016 survey results will be released in the coming months.

“I’m encouraged that a quarter of Australians say that they have had a mystical or religious experience of something other than themselves, and a further third say ‘I know someone who’s had this or I think this could happen,’ ” says Powell.

“Even if they don’t describe themselves as religious and don’t go to church, that speaks of the intervention of ‘the other’; there’s a breaking-through that has an impact on many Australians.”

Powell also found it encouraging that three in ten Australians say they pray or meditate at least once each week.

“That speaks of active lives of personal spiritual practice, whatever that means for them,” Powell says.

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MARCH 2017

Apocalypse now: The ris Katelyn Beaty How Trump divides Christians In Australia, November 9, 2016, started as it does many other days.

Newscasters covered cricket scores and the finale of reality homerenovation show The Block. But for much of America, November 9 started on an apocalyptic note: Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party frontrunner, had won his unlikely bid to become the 45th President of the United States. It was an outcome that virtually no media analyst or poll predicted.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate, had decades of political experience and outshone Trump in televised debates.

Certainly, she did come under fire for her misuse of email servers and her close ties to big corporations.

Still, her defeat by a brash businessman who bragged about sexual assault, mocked the disabled and fumbled over basic policy questions, pointed to an ominously unpredictable future.

The 2016 election also revealed complex divides among US evangelical Christians. About 25 per cent of Americans identify as evangelical. They represent Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Anglican, Pentecostal and nondenominational churches, among others. For the past 40 years, white evangelicals have strongly supported Republican candidates, typically for their stances on abortion, traditional marriage and religious liberty.

Clinton campaigned on an overt pro-choice platform and did little to connect with Christians. On one level, evangelical support for Trump seemed a shoe-in.

Yet their support for Trump – at 81 per cent of all voting white evangelicals – still surprised in its uniformity. It also revealed deep fissures in the American church.

At least three of those fissures

have and will continue to shape the future of evangelicalism in the United States and beyond.

The first divide revealed by Trump’s win is between evangelical leaders and everyday, “rank-andfile” believers. Several evangelical leaders and institutions denounced Trump for his multiple affairs, his obession with money and his derogatory comments against racial minorities, women and Muslims. Christianity Today magazine (where I served as an editor for nine years) called Trump “the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.” Russell Moore and Al Mohler, two Southern Baptist heavyweights, opposed Trump, breaking from their conservative southern base.

That 81 per cent of white, voting evangelicals still supported Trump suggests many are more swayed in their politics by talk radio and 24-hour news channels than by church leaders and discipleship.

The moral imagination of many evangelicals is shaped more by far-right conservative soundbites than by church leadership and the full witness of Scripture.

Erick Erickson, a conservative evangelical who denounced Trump, said: “The more a Christian goes to church, the more that Christian is likely to oppose Donald Trump.”

Trump’s strong win among evangelicals signals a deep problem of discipleship and moral formation at the local church level.

The second divide Trump’s win revealed is between white evangelicals and Christian leaders of color. In the months before the election, black Christian leaders who hold the same convictions as many white evangelicals sounded the alarm on what a Trump win would mean for their communities.

Thabiti Anyabwile wrote at The Gospel Coalition about the serious problems of a Trump win. After the election, many Christian leaders of color mourned that their white coreligionists seemed to ignore their concerns. Ekemini Uwan tweeted on November 8: “#ElectionNight taught me that white evangelicals will NOT be denied their privilege.

They will trample the cross to hold onto it.” White evangelicals’ support of Trump likely undid decades of hard-won reconciliation between white and black churches.

The third divide Trump’s win revealed is between single-issue evangelicals and those who vote

with a broad social ethic. Without a doubt, the social issue that has most animated white evangelicals for the past 40 years is legalised abortion.

This election, evangelicals faced a very difficult choice, between a morally bankrupt candidate who nonetheless promised to nominate a pro-life Supreme Court justice, and a generally competent candidate who ran on an unabashed pro-choice platform.

Thus, many white evangelicals held their noses to vote for Trump, not liking him but seeing no other way to vote pro-life.

Yet other evangelicals tried to practise a social ethic that includes the unborn but also extends to other vulnerable people, such as refugees, ethnic minorities, and the sick and dying. Trump had promised to be pro-life on the issue of abortion, but his policies and approach on other issues seem decidedly “anti-life.” Moving forward, evangelicals will need to find ways to articulate a social ethic that transcends party politics to protect life from womb to tomb.

November 9 started out apocalyptic, but it ended with a bit of hope. The day had already seen a rash of spraypainted swastikas and racist ephitets cropping up.

Christian leaders of color were in mourning. But my mum reminded me of an eternal truth: No political leader can deliver the kingdom of God. The American experiment is quite small in the scheme of history and, one day, people from every tribe, tongue and nation will proclaim Jesus as Lord.

Perhaps now more than ever, US evangelicals must look to our brothers and sisters the world over, including those in Australia, to reclaim their prophetic edge. How are other believers thriving amid political rancour and even persecution? How do we thoughtfully engage politics now while living with hopeful expectancy of the kingdom of God? Trump is already dividing the United States, turning family member against family member, citizen against citizen. But by grace, he won’t and can’t divide the united church of Christ.

Katelyn Beaty is an editor at large at Christianity Today, and is author of A Woman’s Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World (Simon & Schuster).

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IN DEPTH

MARCH 2017

9

se of the Donald Michael Jensen on praying in the age of Trump

Pixabay /Alexas_Fotos Flickr / Gage Skidmore

It wasn’t the first time it had happened. The person leading the prayers at our morning service had, as usual, prepared thoughtfully and thoroughly about how they were going to lead us. And along with praying about the concerns of our church community, there were prayers that addressed the political issues of the day.

This particular week, the person had prayed about our government’s refugee policy. He’d prayed that God would lead the government to change its policy of detaining illegal immigrants, since the policy was unjust, which, you might think, was uncontroversial. But if you think that, it is probably because you don’t talk to people with a different opinion. At the door, someone said to me (not in so many words): “I couldn’t agree with that prayer. I have a different view on refugee policy. I think the government is doing a reasonable job.”

This conversation made me think. It’s been a Christian practice since the very beginning to offer prayers for those who govern – even when that governor was a psychopathic Roman emperor given to persecuting Christians, like the Emperor Nero. The martyrs, as they died, frequently protested that they prayed for the emperor, though they would not sacrifice to him.

What’s more, the Christian faith is deeply political. It is about who rules, after all. And it speaks to us of justice, truth, mercy and peace, among other things – all deeply political concepts. We ought to be thinking about politics from a Christian perspective, and about contemporary politics in particular.

But in an increasingly divided political landscape, what shall we pray? It is not only the wider community that seems divided

as never before in my lifetime.

It seems that that division runs straight through the Christian community too.

In an unprecedented way, the 2016 US election has reshaped political conversation in Australia.

Trump and Clinton are two extremely polarising figures. There are thoughtful and intelligent Christians who are convinced Trump’s presidency is, at very least, not a bad thing at all, and he is preventing the advance of a militantly anti-Christian liberal agenda. There are also those who are adamant that no true Christian could countenance voting for him, and that the Christians who did bear an awful responsibility.

I can see the pronouncements on my social media feed getting more and more dogmatic and shouty. And yet, we Christians gather together week by week in the same building and try to pray meaningfully together about the situation of our world.

One way forward would be to say “church and politics don’t mix,” and to try to keep the political out of the public prayers of the church. I don’t think that’s really possible given the nature of the Christian message, “Jesus is Lord.” A Christian faith that doesn’t speak to the politics of the day refrains from naming evil as evil, and neglects the plight of widows and orphans.

So, we are political. But while Christianity is political, it isn’t theocratic. That is to say: the gospel is not preached by Christianising the state. Getting a Christian into power is not our mission.

A Christian approach to politics names Christ as Lord. Every time we gather together in church and name him as Lord – praying to him as the powerful ruler, singing to him our praises, seeking to obey his word – we are taking a radical political stand. We are saying that human political power is not ultimate and cannot save us.

Salvation belongs to Jesus Christ, and him alone. The kingdom of God does not come by the sword or by the ballot box. I think I need to say this again, because Christians on the left and on the right don’t seem to get this: the kingdom of God does not come by the sword or by the ballot box.

If you want a more Christian nation, give your money to evangelists, church planters and missionaries not political parties.

The role of human rulers, according to the New Testament, is not to be like the kings of the Old Testament who were God’s agents to bring about the kingdom of God. That role is now given to Jesus Christ. As Paul explains in Romans chapter 13, human rulers and authorities are appointed by God: “They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Those who rule us have a specific role which relates to rewarding the good and punishing the evildoer, as far as human strength allows, while we wait for the judgment of God. They are not evangelists. They can do nothing to change people’s hearts. Neither do they have a permanent hold on power. They hold it at God’s pleasure, and will answer to him.

Now, of course, what it means to enact justice in any given society at any given period of time will be a matter of great debate. It will be complicated. And since it will be enacted by limited and sinful human beings, it will be never final or perfect.

Professor Oliver O’Donovan calls this “the imperfectability of human judgment.” It’s a really important principle for Christians to understand at this point in time.

Human justice carried out by human rulers is always imperfect and incomplete. While the Bible’s concepts of right and wrong give us a fixed point of reference, putting these into practice in the world will always be, for human beings, a process of trial and error. All we can do is read the Scriptures, try to understand our world, pray for faithfulness, and make our judgments as best we can, given our limitations.

This principle should make us more humble about the way we debate political issues, especially with other Christians, and should guide our prayers. Now, I am not saying that we should be relativistic or agnostic about politics because it is too hard. Far from it! We are called upon – we must – name evil and injustice when we see it, and fight against it.

But we should also be cautious about being too politically dogmatic. There’s nothing wrong with a passionately held view, but it seems to me that a Christian, knowing that human judgment is always imperfect, will hesitate at this point and allow for the

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possibility that Christian principles may also support another reading of the political landscape. For example, both the major political parties in Australia, Liberal and Labor, can speak of the way in which Christianity and Christians have shaped their political outlooks. Yet neither party could be said to be the party Christians ought to vote for.

This is a vital plea, because we Christians are going to be tempted to fragment more and more over the political in the next few years.

How then should we pray together in the era of American President Trump? We must pray for the president. We should not pray that he would make America great again, or that he will build a wall. But neither should we pray for his overthrow. But all Christians should agree that we should pray that through President Trump God would restrain wickedness and promote the flourishing of human communities. We should also pray that under him the gospel of Jesus Christ would be preached unhindered by any disgrace or law.

This kind of prayer is what we find in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, where we pray for the Queen: “We beseech thee also to save and defend all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors; and specially thy servant Elizabeth our Queen; that under her we may be godly and quietly governed: And grant unto her whole Council, and to all that are put in authority under her, that they may truly and indifferently minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue.”

It’s a prayer that even a republican could pray! I think we should of course include prayer for all kings of whatever religion or none (not just “Christian” ones), since the point is to pray for good and orderly government, and the administration of true justice, and the space to preach the gospel. But, nevertheless, this prayer recognises the proper role that human rulers are called to in the world. It doesn’t say that one form of government is inherently more Christian than another, and it allows those who may have profound disagreements over politics to pray together.

Michael Jensen is the rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church in Darling Point, Sydney, and the author of several books.

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MARCH 2017

CityLife Church celebrates major milestone TEAGAN RUSSELL

Terence Oh and Richard Wong

The praises of CityLife Church have been sung by some of the most influential international Christian leaders. In February, the church celebrated its 50-year anniversary with five services at its 2000-seat auditorium in the Melbourne suburb of Wantirna South.

Churchgoers heard video messages from popular pastors Bill Hybels, Brian Houston, Phil Pringle and Wayne Alcorn, who congratulated the church on hitting the rare milestone. The atmosphere buzzed, and there was a palpable sense of thanksgiving and gratefulness to God. C3 Church global leader Phil Pringle shared: “50 years, what an achievement! Not a lot of churches are still alive [after 50 years], and zesty and reaching out like you have proven yourselves to be.”

Over a 90-minute church service, the milestones of CityLife Church were celebrated in three chapters, corresponding to the three successive senior ministers.

Richard John Holland founded the then “Waverley Mission” in 1967. From humble beginnings in a small shopfront with one dozen people, the “Mission” has grown to almost 10,000 members made up of 105 nationalities.

The multiculturalism of CityLife Church is striking, and it has had a welcoming heart towards all cultures since it began. Families were encouraged to “adopt” Asian students as one of their own.

Mark Conner takes to the stage during CityLife Church’s 50th anniversary services.

“To the credit of Richard and the team back then, a lot of those Asian students have now gone back home to wherever they came from, to become pastors and church planters,” says a church member.

Richard encouraged everyone to exercise the gifts they’d been given by the Holy Spirit, but perhaps one of his most distinctive traits was his vision. When the church had 350 members, Holland had a vision for a church of 1500 people.

At the time, that was “way out there,” according to one long-time

member. But money was raised to buy a 9.6 acre block in Wantirna South, and the church became “Waverley Christian Fellowship.”

When Richard’s health began deteriorating, he handed the leadership to Kevin John Conner in 1986. The church had 600 members, and Conner had assisted Richard for several years.

“They are two different personalities: Richard very much the pastor, and the prophetic aspect to his ministry, and Kevin the teacher,” said one member.

Kevin’s wife Joyce played a key role, assisting Kevin in pastoral care and women’s ministry, and the church really felt the loss when she passed away suddenly in 1990.

Kevin remarried in 1992 to longtime friend, Rene Arrowsmith.

Under the leadership of Kevin, the church grew to more than 1500.

The Leadership Bible College and Key of Knowledge seminars were also started during Kevin’s leadership. “He taught me to love the word, and his teaching brought the Bible alive,” said one member.

In 1995, Kevin’s son Mark was was appointed Senior Minister.

Married to Nicole, father of three young kids, he had been on the church staff since 1985 in a variety of roles. Nicole also served on the Senior Leadership team for 15 years, and her significant contribution was acknowledged at the celebration services.

Well-known pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, Bill Hybels, said in his video message: “I have long held Mark and Nicole in high regard, for their selfless dedication to the advancement of God’s kingdom.”

If Kevin was known for his biblical teaching, order and systematic approach, Mark has been known for his strategic leadership and communication. He took everything to a new level.

Under Mark’s leadership, the CityLife Community Care programme was launched in 1995 and, in 2004, a $7 million building project expanded seating to 2000 people. Such major change also included the introduction of a new name: CityLife Church.

Last month, CityLife Church also farewelled Mark and Nicole.

The Senior Minister baton has passed to Andrew Hill. “Everyone’s got this feeling that we’re about to take a step somewhere; we sort of don’t know where, but we’re excited because we know God’s building the church,” says Judd Field, a worship leader.

Read the full report at eternity.news/citylife

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MARCH 2017

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OPINION

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+

Tim Costello on a tragic war in South Sudan

Shining the light on abuse Newcastle Herald

Joanne McCarthy was awarded the Gold Walkley for her reporting that uncovered clergy child abuse.

JOHN SANDEMAN Joanne McCarthy is the brave journalist who spearheaded the Newcastle Herald’s “Shine the light” campaign which, arguably, brought about the Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Abuse, and an earlier NSW special enquiry. She interviewed about 200 victims of sexual abuse, many of them scarred by alcohol, drugs and depression. She uncovered no less than 12 suicides or drug overdoses among former students of a priest called John Denham. McCarthy is the current holder of Australia’s highest journalism award, the Gold Walkley.

“My first involvement was in June, 2006, A man rang me, out of the blue,” McCarthy tells Eternity.

“I had been raised in a Catholic family and my parents still went to church.

“He was a victim of a Catholic priest called John Denham. He contacted me. For a lot of male victims, I was a mother figure, that woman who writes about her sons and the cars breaking down and that sort of stuff.”

The man on the phone asked McCarthy why no media had reported on the fact that John Denham had been convicted five years earlier.

He told her that Denham was working in Sydney for a Catholic organisation, located close to a school.

Denham had taught at Newcastle’s St Pius X School. He

was convicted in 2010 and 2015 for crimes against 57 boys, aged from five years old.

“I checked it out; he had been convicted.” Other victims of John Denham then read he had been convicted and that became “a ticking timebomb,” McCarthy recalls. The next year, an editor asked her to write an article on why Catholic primary school

enrolments were going down.

“I said to him that sounds seriously boring,” McCarthy remembers. But it led to a major escalation in the abuse story. “On the second phone call, the person I rang said ‘something, something, something … oh, it might have something to do with the child sexual abuse.’”

That led her to the paedophile

priest Vince Ryan, and the coverup by a senior Catholic official, Monsignor Patrick Cotter.

“It was there in black and white.

I had the transcript of Patrick Cotter’s interview with police.

I had proof that the police were considering charging him with the offense of concealing a serious crime. I was in the deep end from day one and that was

Saving the church’s soul It not only will be the Church that’s under the microscope, since sexual abuse is widespread in society. But when abuse of children occurs within the Church, it is an especially egregious crime.

SIMON SMART It’s hard to think of a more appalling obscenity than children The great German theologian entrusted to an institution that, at Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred its heart, is supposed to be about in 1945 for his resistance to the love, care and protection of the Nazis, said that the Church is the vulnerable and weak, but instead Church only when it exists for is a place of the worst kind of others. In response to the Nazi betrayal and cruelty. That there is threat he called on the Church to a suggestion that such an outrage resist the temptation to hide in has been allowed to go on, and self-preserving defensive action. has been covered up to protect In the example of the German the institution, ought to cause the church, Bonhoeffer’s urging to believers among us to weep. speak up for those who can’t speak The Christian faith is not for themselves fell on deaf ears. primarily about judgment or The damage to the reputation of condemnation; there’s much the Church was long lasting. more emphasis on redemption, As the gruelling process of the forgiveness and healing. Jesus Royal Commission draws to a warned us against judging others, close, will the Church be able to “lest we also be judged”. But he “suffer for what is right”? wasn’t into cheap forgiveness

either. Yale theologian Miroslav Volf, who famously forgave his brutal interrogators in communist former Yugoslavia, says Christian forgiveness is not some teary-eyed sentiment.

It’s hard edged and is reliant on bringing wrongs into the light.

“Full reconciliation, cannot take place until the truth has been said and justice done,” he writes.

Many Christians will be hoping the focus of the Church will go to justice for victims and their families; that leaders will know the only way to defend the institution’s reputation is being prepared to let it fall.

The Church must be willing to embrace bankruptcy and lose all power, to do whatever it takes to seek recompense for those damaged under its care.

It might lose some buildings in the process but save its soul.

Simon Smart is a Director of Centre for Public Christianity.

September, 2007.”

McCarthy’s story revealed that Ryan had abused boys for two decades, and that Cotter, who escaped charges partly on account of his age, had orchestrated a cover-up for 17 years. During this time, McCarthy reported in her 2007 story that there had been repeated complaints to the Monsignor.

“I wrote a lot of stories. They went on the front page because those stories not only showed the extent of Church knowledge about Vince Ryan, they also exposed the fact that Michael Malone, who was the bishop, at the time, had not been telling the truth.”

“It was almost like a dam broke,” says McCarthy, remembering 2007. “I wrote a bunch of stories that ran over about a week. I got a phone call from a man who had worked for the diocese. He said ‘I am going to give you a name.’ I said, ‘Okay, off you go.’ He said the name ‘McAlinden.’ I asked him to spell it and what the first name was. He said, ‘You won’t need a first name.’”

It was Denis. McAlinden had abused children as young as four and five for 40 years. The Catholic Church had “extensive knowledge dating back to the 1950s” about that, the 2013 NSW Commission of Inquiry was told.

“His victims were young girls, aged between about 4 and 12. That was my first real contact with survivors of abuse. And it was overwhelming. It had a real impact continued page 12

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OPINION

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MARCH 2017

Hope in South Sudan

South Sudanese refugees at Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya, 2014.

Nearly six years after celebrating its new nationhood, South Sudan’s once euphoric hopes for the future have seemingly crashed and burned amid civil war, escalating tribalism, human rights abuses and a catastrophic food crisis.

Independence in July 2011, after Africa’s longest war, between the Muslim and Arabicspeaking north of Sudan, and the indigenously African and Christian-influenced south, brought hopes of peace, freedom, democracy and nation building.

But it was short-lived. In December 2013, South Sudan sank into civil war driven by a power struggle between President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and his former deputy Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer.

Since 2013, more than three million people have been forced to flee their homes in a country of 13 million. Almost six million people are in need of humanitarian

assistance. More than one million people have sought refuge in neighbouring countries.

After recently visiting South Sudan, I believe the church has a great role to play in helping this dialogue to steer the young country back towards peace and stability.

In the capital, Juba, I met with church leaders who have been engaged in urgent talks to find solutions to “the forgotten war in the heart of Africa.”

They spoke of a vision to see the church bring reconciliation across the fractured country, where an estimated 200,000 children are suffering from severe malnutrition, while the government spends 44 per cent of its budget on military and security, but just 11 per cent on health, education and humanitarian affairs.

There is a saying in South Sudan that “easy things are not easily done.” The church in this predominantly Christian nation

is aware of the challenges. It has stood faithfully alongside the suffering through the most brutal periods of struggle.

It has witnessed the failure of the church in Rwanda, where too many pastors and priests were accomplices to the 1994 genocide.

The church in South Sudan has vowed to remain a credible beacon of hope.

Reconciliation of opposing forces is the only way to peace.

And those deeply-divided forces will have to work with the church if there is to be hope. In this time of uncertainty, the church is using its influence to bring about forgiveness and reconciliation – an alternative word for salvation.

This is a defining moment in the life of the nation and South Sudan’s Christian leaders.

Pray for them to remain united and committed as they model peace and reconciliation to a watching world.

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Tim Costello on a tragic war

Abuse

from page 11 on me, to the point where I actually needed professional support.”

“I remember one woman. She rang me on a Saturday, and the minute she started talking she started sobbing and I was so used to it by that stage, and she said ‘you have validated my life’ – I will never forget that.

“It provided her with the truth of her life, that she had been sexually abused as a child, and here was the diocese conceding decades later that he was a serial child sex offender.”

In 2012, one of John Denham’s victims, a man named John Pirona went missing. “He was a NSW firefighter, a lovely man, married with two daughters. Because he had identified himself publically as an abuse survivor we were able to identify the missing person as victim of John Denham. He left a letter and the final words were ‘too much pain.’”

“After his funeral I woke up in the middle of the night. This article just started writing itself. It was quite annoying because I became seriously awake.

“In that piece I wrote, ‘there will be a royal commission because there must be.’ It was just too much for just a journalist working at a regional newspaper.”

By that time in 2012, McCarthy and the Herald had also reported on serious child abuse in the Anglican Church. Newcastle along with regional centres in Victoria clearly was an epicentre of clergy child abuse.

“Child sexual abuse has hotspots, areas where there seem to have been a concentration of abusers.”

“You have to look at leadership and whether it failed. If you had a leadership that did not prioritise child protection, then you were going to have problems. We know that from an Anglican theological college – Patrick Parkinson (Law Professor of Sydney Uni) did a report in 2009 for the Anglican Church and, as part of it, they did a statistical analysis.

“Even though the data was not complete, he wrote to the Anglican Primate at the time and expressed concern about what appeared to be a disproportionate number of abuser priest from that theological college.”

McCarthy is the oldest of eleven, raised Catholic, all of whom have left the church. Her journalism about clergy abuse came after she left the church.

“There was an Australian Story done on me and the only reason I agreed to do that was because I wanted to put on the record why I was doing it. I had had many people saying I was just antichurches.”

“I am not anti-church at all. I think churches are a necessary part of community.

“I apply the ‘what would Jesus do?’ test. Just because you say you do not believe in God, it does not mean to say you do not admire the principles of Christ – and try to live by them.

“The nuns were successful somewhere along the way. In a lot of cases, I think Jesus would be the one standing with me going ‘seriously guys, this is not on.’”

OPINION

MARCH 2017

13

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Same-sex marriage inquiry’s shocking finding

The much anticipated Report of the Senate Inquiry into the Commonwealth Government’s Exposure Draft of the Marriage Amendment (Same-Sex Marriage) Bill was released in February.

To the surprise of many, the committee, comprising Coalition, Labor, Greens and NXT senators, agreed on unprecedented commitments to religious freedom.

Many apply outside of the context of same-sex marriage and reach beyond current protections.

A close reading of the report is difficult to reconcile with widelyreported claims it represents a consensus for change to the definition of marriage. But the inquiry was not addressing the question of whether same-sex marriage should be introduced into law. It was established only to consider the implications for

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Mark Fowler on the senators and religious freedom The senate inquiry considered the implications for religious freedom, if same-sex marriage were introduced. religious freedom if same-sex marriage were to be so introduced.

The committee had to consider whether the right to equality extends to marriage. Significantly, all members agreed that “under current human rights instruments and jurisprudence, there have been no decisions that oblige Australia to legislate for same-sex marriage.

That said, there has been no suggestion that there are any legal impediments to doing so.”

The committee observed that in Joslin v New Zealand, the sole case in which the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) had considered the issue of same-sex marriage, it had “determined under Article 23(2) that the right to marry under the

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is confined to a right of oppositesex couples to marry due to the interpretation that the terms ‘men and women’ restricted marriage, by definition, to opposite sex couples. Given this definitional construct, the refusal to provide for same-sex marriage does not breach the right to equality and non-discrimination.”

In regard to equality principles, the committee noted that I had submitted: “The classical and modern conception that justice requires that ‘like cases be treated alike’ can be observed in the conclusions of both the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human

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Rights that the right to equality does not extend to a human right to same-sex marriage … To admit of such is not to divert at all from the political principle which Professor Ronald Dworkin calls sovereign – ‘No government is legitimate unless [it shows] equal concern for the fate of every person over whom it claims dominion.’”

The committee cited University of Sydney Professor Patrick Parkinson on the UNHRC’s conclusion and its implications for religious freedom: “Since the right to marry a person of the same gender is not required by the ICCPR, and the principle of nondiscrimination in Article 26 can be satisfied by providing equal rights other than the right to marry,

the right to maintain religious beliefs and practices in relation to religious understandings of marriage is not limited by any right of a person to marry.”

The committee did not reach agreement on whether the religious freedoms of business owners and employees should be recognised in same-sex marriage legislation.

But in a significant recognition of religious freedom rights, the committee agreed that broader reform of commonwealth antidiscrimination law “should be reconsidered to advance protections for religious freedom” and to “enhance the current protections.” The committee considered that this could most appropriately be done by including religious belief as a protected attribute in commonwealth law.

Importantly, in the committee’s view, reform was needed irrespective of whether same-sex marriage was legislated.

The report is a comprehensive statement of Australia’s international obligations. It will serve as a valuable reference for parliamentary consideration.

Read Mark Fowler’s full article at eternity.news/samesexreport Mark Fowler is a lawyer and doctoral candidate in law at the University of Queensland. He was a member of the Queensland Law Society Human Rights Working Group, convened to advise the QLS Council on a proposed Queensland human rights charter. His views do not represent those of the QLS.

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CHARITY FEATURE

MARCH 2017

Aboriginal people want to take mission lead BEN MCEACHEN Working to solve social issues within Aboriginal Australian communities is a “band-aid” fix, not a long-term solution, according to the first Indigenous Ministry Officer appointed by the rural support service Bush Church Aid. “I believe the church can spend a lot of time on social justice issues and trying to address the physical aspect and make up of humans – and they tend to do that to the peril of preaching the gospel,” says Neville Naden, who starts his fulltime position with BCA this month.

“A lot of those things, in terms of social justice and other things, are a band-aid treatment. A temporary treatment for what is a difficult, endemic sin problem.”

With BCA, Neville and his wife Kathryn started the Living Desert Indigenous Church in Broken Hill ten years ago. Neville also has been involved with other programmes run by BCA, a long-standing organisation which supports Christian ministry in rural and remote areas.

Despite having been focused upon our inland and outback for about 100 years, BCA has never employed a full-time Indigenous Ministry Officer before Neville.

“I’m certainly encouraged that they’ve [created the position],” says Neville, who doesn’t consider himself an expert in Indigenous

E

Ministry work in Indigenous communities across Australia will be supported by Bush Church Aid’s new Indigenous Ministry Officer, Neville Naden. ministry. But he is forthright and passionate about helping Aboriginal people to develop their Christian faith. “Our people have always said that we are the most missionalised people on the face of the earth,” says Neville.

“Our people want to move from a mission field to a mission force.

“I suppose that’s the challenge for the church; not just through BCA but through the wider church in its various denominations.”

Neville has several key aims for his role. He will support ministry workers across Australia, as well as team with BCA National Director Mark Short to identify and bridge gaps in theological training for Indigenous people. “They need more trained men and women in ministry,” summarises Neville about Aboriginal Christian leadership in churches and community.

Neville is keen on a “new approach, not new courses” when

it comes to better moulding biblical training for Aboriginal Australians.

But no amount of courses or support will count for anything if a fundamental issue is still not being addressed. Neville says one big issue faces Indigenous Australians – as it does non-Indigenous Australians, and all people.

“Mate, the big issue is sin,” says Neville bluntly but with sensitivity.

“Sin results in a whole range of lifestyles and people sometimes

make lifestyle choices which can be detrimental to their living.

“The only way that that can be fixed is through the preaching of the gospel; people coming to faith in Christ; and having God do the work by his Spirit to bring about the transformation that’s needed, which will be long-term.”

“In regards to ‘closing the gap’ ...

True change can only happen when people have a relationship with Christ. So our focus is that.”

Each month, Eternity will highlight a charity from the group bringing you this special page.

Supporting Ministry to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People

Neville Naden (with wife Kathie) is BCA’s new Indigenous Ministry Officer

Reaching Australia for Christ since 1919 To support the Nadens ministry visit bushchurchaid.com.au/naden

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OPINION

MARCH 2017

15

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Halal in the Supreme Court Islamic food laws are back in the headlines

Bernie Power will be an expert witness in a crucial court case

“

Ching-i Wan

On March 13, in the New South Wales Supreme Court, Mohamed El-Mouelhy, director of the Halal Certification Authority of Australia, is bringing defamation charges against six parties.

Being sued for damages are Kirralie Smith, a Christian housewife and founder of the Halal Choices website, four members of the Islam-critical Q Society, and the owner of YouTube. The trigger for this court case was a series of YouTube clips in 2014, presented

by Smith for Q Society, which named El-Mouelhy. The hearing is scheduled to last one month.

The Koran’s teaching on halal food is specific. Muslims are told they can eat food which is “lawful” (halal) and good (Q.16:114; 5:91; 2:168, 172), and most foods fit into this category (Q.5:2). Pronouncing Allah’s name over food before eating it is required (Q.5:5; 6:118, 121), Forbidden (haram) is the flesh of swine, or an animal that has died, or blood, or meat offered to a deity other than Allah (Q.2:173; 16:115). Also, Muslims are commanded not to make lawful food forbidden (Q.5:90). However, when it is a necessity, even forbidden food becomes lawful (Q.2:173; 5;4; 6:119, 145; 16:115).

Over the centuries, Muslim legislators have added to these injunctions, creating an elaborate system of food laws. In the 1970’s, some Islamic groups in Australia began issuing certificates to declare certain products as “halal.”

Today, halal certification in Australia involves one of 21 Islamic bodies accepting a payment to certify that a certain product fulfils Islamic ritual requirements.

This certification process began with meat, to ensure that it would be accepted in Muslim markets of Asia and the Middle East. It rapidly spread to other products, including soft drinks, water and even cat food. Today Aussie icons such as Vegemite, Bega cheese, Kelloggs cornflakes and Anzac biscuits bear the halal label.

Some Christians see no problem with halal certification. They compare it with Jewish kosher food or the (now-discontinued) Heart Foundation tick. They note that “the earth is the Lord’s

and everything in it” (Ps 24:1), so all food falls under the rubric that God “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Tim 6:17).

But for other Christians, the fact that halal food has had the name of Allah pronounced over it is grounds enough for rejection.

They recall the teaching of the first Jerusalem council, where the believers were told to abstain from food offered to idols (Acts 15:29; 21:25), and Jesus’s rebuke to the churches at Pergamum and Thyatira (Rev 2:14,20).

‘The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it’ (Ps 24:1), so all food falls under the rubric that God ‘richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment’ (1 Tim 6:17).”

In this view, the Allah of the Koran is deemed an idol, and inherently distinct from the God of the Bible. Christians differ about this – Yale University’s Miroslav Volf emphasises the similarities, whereas Melbourne academic Dr Mark Durie notes the differences.

Even food offered to idols can be eaten, according to the Apostle Paul, as long as no questions are asked about it (1 Cor 10:23-33) and it does not make another Christian stumble (1 Cor 8:1-13; Rom 14:1-23). Rev. Gordon Moyes concludes that “you need not worry about kosher labels, halal labels, vegetarian labels or anything else.

Christians are free in Christ to make their choices regardless of who the butcher was, or whether a rabbi, or an imam, or a Seventh Day Adventist member certified it clean. Only remember, respect other people’s customs and beliefs.”

Moreover, it is asserted, the prohibition against food offered to idols refers to participation in idol worship and the attendant feasts (1 Cor 10:6-22), not to eating meat which may have been offered in a pagan sacrifice and afterwards sold in the public market. So, by some, this “food offered to idols” objection is dismissed as invalid.

Other Christians claim the fees paid to certifying organisations amount to a “Muslim tax” on all consumers of halal goods.

Although only two per cent of Australians identify themselves

A halal certification on the back of the Vegemite jar. as Muslim, every person who eats Vegemite contributes to the Islamic coffers. And these coffers are substantial. Commentators suggest the international halal market could be worth more than one trillion dollars. Large organisations such as Cadburys, Nestle and Kraft have their foods certified for commercial reasons, although they maintain the cost is never passed on to the customer.

Australian philanthropist Dick Smith refuses to pay for halal certification for his food products.

He states that “while we have a choice … we would prefer to avoid unnecessarily increasing the cost of our products in order to pay for halal accreditation, when this money would be better spent continuing to support important charitable causes where assistance is greatly needed … We have never been asked to put a Christian symbol … on our food requiring that we send money to a Christian organisation for the right to do so.”

Added to this is the secrecy surrounding halal certification.

Large companies are loathe to admit how much they pay for this service, and the certifying organisations can use the nondisclosure laws for non-profit organisations to avoid revealing their real incomes. Moreover,

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not all halal-certified goods are labelled, so consumers cannot make informed choices about what they are buying. A 2015 Australian senate inquiry into halal certification requested all halal food should be clearly labelled.

This perceived veil of secrecy has added to the suspicion, held by some, that the halal fees may be funnelled into terrorist organisations. Although the senate inquiry was told by the anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing agency AUSTRAC (Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre) that they did not find any basis for claims that halal funds terrorism overseas, its representatives also admitted that they had not actually investigated whether a direct link existed.

Detractors claim that halal certification is an attempt to foist Islamic food laws, and more, on all Australians, as a form of “creeping sharia.” In 2011, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) lobbied the federal government to permit elements of sharia, a move they called “legal pluralism.” They noted that halal food certification and shariacompliant financing were already legal in Australia, and it should be taken to the next level.

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As halal regulations are applied to more areas, including the grain fed to stock and the vehicles used to transport food, every part of the food chain potentially becomes involved. Mustafa Ceric, the grand mufti of Bosnia and a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, urged a conference in Islamabad in 2010 “to conquer the world through the halal movement.”

This is dismissed as rhetorical overstatement by certification advocates, and any opposition to or questioning of their view is branded as anti-Muslim paranoia.

Others oppose the halal industry on cruelty grounds. Halal killing forbids electrical pre-stunning before slaughter, a process required for RSPCA approval as “best practice” in meatworks to minimise animal suffering.

According to a governmentcommissioned report, un-stunned cows may remain alive for up to two minutes after their throats are cut. Opponents of halal certification claim that it contributes to higher levels of animal pain and distress.

In 2009, Jordanian Princess Alia bint alHussein, a descendant of the prophet Muhammad, wrote to then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd asking Australia to stop the halal trade because of its cruelty to animals. She stated that killing without stunning is not necessary under Islamic principles.

To make the matter even more confusing, some Muslim scholars reject the idea of halal certification.

Dr Taj Hargey, Director of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford (UK) calls it “covert religious extremism and creeping Islamic fundamentalism making its way into Britain by the back door.” Conservative Saudi Salafist scholar Sheikh Ibn Uthaymeen opposes it, based on legal rulings, and Sheikh Habib Bewley of South Africa states that it “clearly runs counter to a number of essential governing principles of the Deen [Islamic religion].”

Halal certification raises a complex series of issues – religious, legal, social, economic and political – and it will continue to exercise the minds of concerned Christians. The upcoming court case in Sydney will be only one chapter in an ongoing saga.

Bernie Power is a lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Islam and other Faiths, at Melbourne School of Theology.

He is the Auther of “ Understanding Jesus and Muhammad”, Acorn Press, 2016

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OPINION

16

MARCH 2017

And if she hadn’t, what then?

Greg Clarke on Lady Macquarie’s pillow talk

State Library of New South Wales

If, some day early in 1817, the devout wife of the more swashbuckling Governor Macquarie, Elizabeth Henrietta, formerly of Airds in Scotland, hadn’t rolled over on her pillow and suggested to the Governor that the new colony, hard but hopeful, needed Bibles right now, quickly, to find a place down at its still exposed bedrock, then …

We might not have seen the rapid rise of schools, places where children would be given a chance to flourish, where the first task was to form them around the knowledge of God, so that they would also know themselves, along with this wild world in which they were now found? And we might not have seen Australian girls and boys, all believed to be in the image of God, learning to think God’s thoughts after him.

And we wouldn’t have heard the words spoken, week after week, in churches across the sprawling New Holland, just about to become ‘Australia’, that it was right to respect those in authority over you, but that it was also right and very important that a man and a woman know that in Christ they can be free indeed. And that dynamic wouldn’t have shaped who we are as a nation.

And if, along with their dreadful diseases and cultural impositions, Christian missionaries hadn’t headed inland, armed more with a message than a weapon, bringing to life an idea of God that many mobs felt was lying quietly somewhere in their dreaming, slowly, slowly finding indigenous words for ‘shepherd’

Portraits of Governor Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth, who was intimately involved in bringing the Bible to Australia. and ‘temple’ and ‘atonement’, then the statisticians today wouldn’t be able to say that 73 per cent of indigenous Australians describe themselves as followers of the living Word, Jesus Christ.

And Alfred Deakin couldn’t have desired “a Christlike citizenship”, nor could Sir Henry Parkes, drafting our constitution, have remarked that our whole system of jurisprudence is “interwoven with our Christian belief.” Nor could Governor-General Sir Isaac Isaacs have written of the Bible that “individuals and nations alike proclaim their own character and mould their own destiny by their attitude to its sublime teachings.”

It may be hard to believe, but without the Bible, we wouldn’t have an Australian insurance industry. Or, better put, an assurance industry, because that is the Christian word that drove the

founding of the AMP. This great institution’s acronym stands for Australian Mutual Provident, a biblical term for what Galatians 6 describes as bearing one another’s burdens, the assurance of comfort and support when everything is falling apart.

One of the founders, Thomas Holt, described the philosophy of such an organisation in his book, Christianity, the poor man’s friend. If only that were still the guiding vision of insurance work!

Nor would we have seen Arthur Boyd paint Adam and Eve, or Albert Tucker Judas, or John Coburn his Tree of Life. Nor Arthur Stace chalk Eternity on the pavements of Sydney and Melbourne (nor the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the turn of the millennium, nor this newspaper…).

Nor the Walls of Jerusalem Park in Tasmania, nor steeples, nor crosses

or crucifixes, nor monuments to Mary nor statues of the saints.

They all find their genesis in the written Word, winging its way at Mrs Macquarie’s request, from Jerusalem to Judea, from there to Britain, and to here, the ends of the earth. Without all of these Bible-influenced cultural phenomena, we don’t have our Australia. And we wouldn’t have wines from South Australia delighting our palates, with names like ‘Hill of Grace’, that too lovely descriptor of the blood of Calvary, or ‘Shadrach’, ‘Meshach’, ‘Abednego’ and even ‘The Holy Trinity’, or ‘St Anything’, and wouldn’t that be a loss.

And I, along with my adult children, wouldn’t be intrigued by Nick Cave who, having devoured the Bible during his youth, at his concerts this year continues to sing about an elusive Kingdom, and an

electric chair known as the ‘Mercy Seat’, and Forgiveness’s stand-off with Revenge, and his own wrestle with the Christ he says he has never met, and the God who never intervenes, and the tragic death of his own son, who he believes is no longer, and I wouldn’t be saying to my sons that you need to have real reasons to hope in the idea of life beyond the grave. And the Bible gives them to you.

And my young daughter wouldn’t be asking me as she falls asleep at night, “Dad, how do we know what God looks like?”, and I wouldn’t be capable of answering, “Sweetheart, we find out by reading from this Bible here and it tells us that he looks just like Jesus.”

Mrs Macquarie, and all of Australia’s servants of the Word, we thank you.

Greg Clarke is CEO of Bible Society Australia.

Bible Stat For the First Australians: Five new or updated Indigenous Scriptures will be printed in 2017

for Bible Society. Plus, six audio Scriptures for Indigenous peoples will be produced this year.

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