Eating with people of another faith

We have a Wednesday night worship gathering at our church – prayer and song, in-depth Bible study or engagement around a justice issue, and sometimes a meal. Last night we did something a little different. We invited a small group of Muslim people to share a potluck dinner with us, and to tell us of their experience of being a Muslim in Newcastle.

It was a great night – good food, animated conversation, some probing questions from both communities, and the first step in building friendships between people seeking to speak of God in a largely secular community.

Such conversations are a wonderful way to break down stereotypes – on both sides – and to appreciate the enormous social and religious diversity which exists within both religious communities.

The Muslim community has had trouble getting permission to build a new Mosque, and it is clear that some of the opposition grows out of fear, prejudice, and media stereotypes. Some churches have opposed the Mosque and people’s religious freedom, and others have been supportive. We shared our sense of how much the culture has changed in recent years, and how much less supportive the local Council was when we built our new building than it would have been in the past. Councils are trapped inside an economic world-view that has little space for the common good and social capital.

One of the things we recognized is that both communities are seeking to worship, share their faith, and live faithful lives in not just a secular society but one that increasingly says that being religious is distinctly ‘uncool.’ There is a growing atheist opposition to all religious communities.

We also recognized that we are both uncomfortable with the past ethos of our society that said that religion is a private and personal thing with no place in the public sphere, and that all people owe their absolute loyalty to the state. We believe that faith is a public thing that touches all of our life. We have a need to explain that we are loyal citizens, but there is a limit to that loyalty – when it contradicts our loyalty to God. The desires of the state and the plans of God are not necessarily the same.

Gaddafi and loving our enemies

One of the things which has amazed me over the last few weeks as civil war has broken out in Libya is the extraordinary hypocrisy of world leaders. Now that Muammar Gaddafi has been ousted everyone is quick to explain how evil he was, and what a great win for democracy has happened in Libya.

Yet these same leaders and countries have managed to put aside their repugnance over the last few years and sell millions of dollars worth of armaments. The EU has had no trouble in issuing export licences, which Italy, Great Britain, Malta had no trouble in taking advantage of, as did most other EU countries in smaller ways. And as the photos of the uprising showed, it was these weapons that were often used against the democratic movement.

Gaddafi still managed to be photographed just a year or so ago shaking the hand of the President of the United States. Various European countries still managed to deal with Libya in order to get a share of their oil. Even now there is a huge tussle to see who gets a share of Libyan oil as it slowly comes back on line.

The other thing that disturbed me was the celebrations over Gaddafi’s quite brutal death, even among world leaders. It seems that summary execution has become an accepted way of dealing with people, rather than keeping people alive to face international courts. Mind you, there have been other precedents for this.

Jesus said that rather than just loving our neighbours and hating our enemies, we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:43). I think one of the confusions in this passage is that Christians sometimes think Jesus said that there are to be no enemies. But Jesus didn’t suggest that enemies will disappear, or that people will stop hating and persecuting, but that Christians are to do a very difficult thing – pray for and love enemies.

I’m not a Libyan, and did not suffer under Gaddafi. I don’t bear their rage and suffering. Had I been in that place I have no idea what I would do. But I do know that as I look on from the outside I cannot rejoice when people are killed, for they are children of God. All death and killing is a failure of human beings to find peace and justice, and even love for our enemies.

Walter Wink and community organising

A friend sent me this link to an article from Walter Wink on Jesus and the way he helped people to protest against injustice. It is not only a great piece of biblical interpretation, but helpful for those who wish to gain some leverage in the face of power.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1216-30.htm.

Aboriginal Incarceration

The European occupation of this land was founded in invasion and the racist assumptions of colonial powers that were expressed in terra nullius. One of the weapons of colonial powers and modern nation states is always imprisonment and over-policing.

Twenty years ago the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody sought to offer suggestions about ways to reduce the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in prison and dying in prison. The figures were a scandal, and many promises were made. Yet almost nothing has been done; if anything the situation is worse.

A few months ago the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs released the report ‘Doing Time – Time for Doing..’ The report found that Aboriginal juveniles and young adults were 28 times more likely than their non-Indigenous counterparts to be locked up in detention. In NSW 59% of the juvenile detention population is Aboriginal. In 1992 Indigenous peoples made up fourteen percent of the total prison population, and that had increased to twenty-one percent by 2004.

The causes of Aboriginal youth crime are well-documented: poor housing, poor health, mental illness, low participation in education and employment, substance abuse, cultural alienation and family dysfunction. Additionally there is some suggestion that police still target some parts of the community more than others. When Aboriginal people get to court they are often not provided with fair legal representation, cannot afford good support, and often receive harsher penalties than other members of the community.

There is a great need for government support for more support for Aboriginal Legal Aid, for substance abuse programs, for culture support programs, and for policing policies that shift from a focus on imprisonment to early intervention, diversion and community support.

As one small step we should encourage the NSW Government to change the Bail Act so that it is easier for children and young people to get bail, and less likely that they will be held in detention. Far too many young people are held in detention even though when they appear in court they will not get a custodial sentence.

As Christians we need to oppose the racist narrative that still accepts and justified this terrible destruction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples.

Learning to speak about creation

I think that issues of justice and ethics are not simply about deciding what to do, or making choices between options. Making moral choices and engaging in action is first of all about learning the narrative that forms moral people and shapes the moral landscape. We need to know the central stories of the Christian tradition because it is they which both help us know when and why an issue really is an issue, and how to explore the meaning of the words and practices that are part of moral discourse. That is, we need to learn a way of seeing the world.

For example, when Christians enter into the conversations which happen right across our community about global warming or a carbon tax or the pros and cons of coal seam exploration, we need to be clear about our shaping story.

A lot of conversations are about the impact of humans on nature, or the need to protect the natural world. I don’t think there is a natural world for Christians. For Christians the world is always ‘creation.’ That is, there is no place that is simply natural or just earth, but the world is always a theological place because it is related to the action and purpose of God.

It is interesting that in the second account of creation in Genesis 2 the point is made that before God made the earth and heavens there were no plants of the fields or herbs. The reason for this is partly that God has not sent the rain, but also because there was no one to till the ground (Gen. 2:5). As it says in verse 15, human beings are to till and keep the earth. The earth cannot bring forth life without those who care for it and protect it.

This doesn’t make land simply real estate or a place where we can dig up minerals. The task is not simply to till the ground, but to till and keep it. It is to build those practices that sustain the land as creation, as God’s place.

Dawn Bessarab talks of the way that waterfalls dried up in the Dampier peninsula, and how the Aboriginal Elders understand this to be not simply an issue of rain,  but of people pushed from the land. “’Dat country is lonely, is people dey all gone, no one dere to look after it anymore, so dat country im lonely, im sad, dat why dat water bin dry up, ee missing ees people’.” (Dawn Bessarab, ‘Country is Lonely,’ in Sally Morgan, Tjalaminu Mia and Blake Kwaymullina (eds), Heartsick for Country: Stories of Love, Spirit and Creation. Freemantle Press, 2008, p. 46)

There are some actions which better express this guiding narrative than others, some that better enable human beings to both till and keep. That’s why I support alternative energy sources, reckon that a carbon tax is a good things, and am deeply skeptical about coal seam exploration.

Welcome to Chris Budden's new blog

I have a particular interest in Indigenous rights, peace and disarmament, sexuality, racism, human rights, feminism, and the way we are shaped by a consumerist culture. I have started this blog so I can reflect on current issues of justice and how I think about and respond to these issues as a Christian. I am a Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia, serving in the North Lake Macquarie congregation in NSW (near Newcastle). I have a long term interest in justice issues, and the relationship between faith, theology and the Christian life.
I am a researcher in the Public and Contextual Theology Research centre at Charles Sturt University, and adjunct faculty at United Theological College.
I have previously been General Secretary of the NSW.ACT Synod, parish Minister at Adamstown and lake Cargelligo, justice staff person for both the Northern Synod and the Assembly, and mission person for the Hunter presbytery.