Dissident Dispatches

by Andrew Fraser

  Following Jesus in a World of Deception, Violence and Fear

  Introducing the statement

  The mission of the Christian church is to witness to Jesus Christ as God’s good news for a needy world. This includes preaching the gospel, comforting the broken-hearted and teaching the content of faith.

  It also entails the prophetic task of discerning the signs of the times and asking what is true, honourable, just and pure, in order that the God of peace may be with us (see Philippians 4:8–9).

  Our true worship is to avoid conformity to this present age and to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may discern the will of God — what is good, acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1–2).

  With these biblical exhortations in mind, we offer the following confession of what it means both to believe in and to follow Jesus Christ in Australia today.

  The world is overwhelmed by violence. Families and communities across the globe have been traumatised by terrorist attacks and other conflicts that violate basic human rights. This has resulted not only in horrific loss of individual life, but also in vicious cycles of vengeance that breed cultures of retribution. Violation of basic humanitarian norms is widespread and is not confined to insurgent movements that employ methods of terror. Removal of hard-won constraints on state power is increasingly taken for granted, justified by the presumption that force will resolve the issues at stake.

  In recent years, Australians have become increasingly distrustful of politicians and government. This is hardly surprising in view of the Australian government’s refusal to apologise to indigenous Australians, the ‘children overboard’ affair, treatment of asylum-seekers and others claiming refugee status, collusion in the illegal war in Iraq and half-hearted efforts to build bridges of understanding with members of Muslim communities. Australians have good reason to be concerned about the lack of public accountability on the part of those exercising political and bureaucratic power. Putting a spin on things, rather than speaking the truth, has become the norm.

  What is the Christian response to all this? Jesus summoned those who follow him to work towards building communities of human wholeness, characterised by truth-telling, peacemaking and respect for the dignity of all, even perceived enemies. We affirm the abiding validity and value of Jesus’ call, moral vision, teaching and practice. We also acknowledge that in each new time and place we need to discern what it means to follow Jesus. We offer what follows to the church in Australia, as well as to others with similar concerns, as a contribution to the process of discernment in a time marked by deception, violence and the politics of fear.

  Our first loyalty

  A Christian’s first loyalty is to God, revealed in Jesus Christ. This loyalty is expressed by belonging to the church, the multi-ethnic ‘body of Christ’ spread throughout the world. Loyalty to God has priority over loyalty to one’s nation, government or racial group. ‘We must obey God rather than human authority’ (Acts 5:29).

  For this reason, we do not accept that claims of national or ethnic identity, let alone concerns for ‘national security’, supersede our loyalty to God. Nor do they override our responsibility to make the moral vision of Jesus real in our world.

  Waging peace

  Jesus’ call to peacemaking commits Christians to the presumption that warfare is wrong. This commitment is strengthened by the devastating reality of war and its impact, not only on those who are paid to fight, but also on innocent families and communities as well as our fragile environment. Christians have a responsibility to be honest about the costs of war, to explore peaceful alternatives, to act on behalf of victims and to work for justice and reconciliation. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be known as the children of God’ (Matthew 5:9).

  For this reason, we join with those who oppose government policies based on the assumption that ‘war on terror’ overrides human rights and the rule of law. Certain measures can never be condoned — torture, bombing of civilians and the use of weapons of mass destruction.

  Telling the truth

  Jesus warned against judging others and failing to recognise our own faults (see Matthew 7:1–5). No person or institution, whether church or nation, is immune from moral failure. Individually and collectively, we should be strong enough to be truthful about our failures, compromises and deceptions. ‘If we claim to be faultless, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8).

  For this reason, we join with those who refuse to label critics of government policies as enemies of the ‘Australian way of life’. No government or nation is above criticism and the duty of accountability. Telling the truth and working for justice and peace — not deception and fear — is the true calling of government.

  Welcoming the ‘other’

  Jesus taught an ethic of love, but with a radical edge. He taught that to love as God loves is to love even those identified as enemies, to acknowledge their humanity and to respect their dignity. ‘Love your enemies, I tell you, and pray for those who harass you, so that you may be children of your heavenly father’ (Matthew 5:44–45). This does not mean capitulating to evil, but it does require taking the hard road of opposing aggressive, inhumane acts while affirming the humanity of perpetrators.

  For this reason, we join with those who insist that no person can be excluded from the law’s protection. We reject any rhetoric that demonises perceived enemies because this helps to create a climate of tacit approval for the abuse and victimisation of those considered different, ‘other’ or a threat. We oppose mistreatment of prisoners and detainees, regardless of supposed benefits in dealing with terrorist activities, and we call for generosity in dealing with refugees, asylum-seekers and holders of temporary protection visas.

  Called to freedom

  ‘For freedom, Christ set us free’ (Galatians 5:1, 13). Jesus Christ calls us to freedom — freedom to serve one another and freedom from fear, whether generated by terrorist activity, media frenzy or government rhetoric. Jesus’ own freedom was expressed both by caring for those at the margins and by challenging authorities and institutions motivated by self-interest and the maintenance of power. Authentic Christian freedom is demonstrated by treating those at the edges of society as neighbours and by challenging authorities and institutions that prevent them from living life in all its fullness.

  For this reason, we deny that Christian freedom is merely a ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ experience detached from the reality of bodily and communal life. Conforming to a culture of fear that ignores or tramples upon the needs of those who are different sabotages Christian freedom.

  Looking ahead

  By embracing Jesus’ call to freedom, justice and peacemaking, we join the joyful adventure of living out an alternative to a stifling and destructive culture of deception, violence and fear.

  April 2006917

  Clearly, any ethno-theological critique of evangelicalism is likely to receive a frosty reception from the Canberra academics and ministers who joined with Dr Foulcher in proclaiming their (liberal) Christian humanist confession of faith. Evangelical hostility to social or political — much less racial — realism has been an influential feature of WASP culture since at least the late eighteenth century. Indeed, historian Correlli Barnett assigns a large share of responsibility for the collapse of British power to the evangelical tradition. In public as in private life, evangelical Christians regarded morality not as a “mere matter of pragmatic observance of the laws and mores of society…On the contrary, their attitude to morality was highly self-conscious; they saw it as an intensely personal question, to be answered according to strict doctrinaire principle”.918 No distinction is made between political and personal morality.919

  Evangelicals possess a “pew-hard certainty” that they can distil “human existence in all its rich complexity” into “simple terms of good and evil, right and wrong”. Confidence in their own moral rectitude leads them to view “religion as a rule book to go
vern every aspect of personal, social and international life”.920 Evidently, the signatories to the Canberra Confession share the humanitarian zeal and sentimental pacifism pioneered by their evangelical ancestors in nineteenth century England. All are driven by an overweening moral vanity. Nowadays evangelicals project their heavenly vision of the multi-ethnic body of Christ as the template for the earthly creation of a multi-cultural state and multi-racial society. From the bottom of their sentimental hearts, evangelical humanists welcome the Other as the incarnate image of God. In search of the “new heavens and a new earth” promised by the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 65:17), they serve gladly as the spiritual acolytes of Babel Inc.921

  In short, evangelicals provide the secular theocracy of the transnational corporate welfare state with an ideological veneer of Christian humanism. Both church and state now enjoin us to embrace all of our fellow human beings in the spirit of brotherly love. Multicultural moralism has been established formally by force of law and informally by the high social pricing of deviant folkways. Church leaders teach us that loyalty to God is eternally at war with the base, primal desire to smite the enemies of our Volk with the sword of righteousness. Such high-minded evangelical humanism seems to be a modern rebirth of the Gnostic heresy which served as a refuge for the synagogue of Satan in the days of the early church. Today, well-meaning evangelicals are the white Protestant backbone of organized Christianity. Their unshakeable faith in the disembodied spiritual power of sentimental moralizing is perhaps the greatest single, home-grown obstacle to the emergence of an Anglo-Saxon Christian ethno-theology.

  6: Pathological Altruism and the Cult of the Other

  Practical Theology as a “Transformational Activity”

  Introduction

  Woodward and Pattison describe practical theology as a “transformational activity”. In other words, those doing practical theology aim “to make a difference to people, understandings and situations in the contemporary world”.922 The goal is to change both the process and the outcomes of theological praxis not just in the actual practice of Christian faith but in at least three other areas as well. Some seek to transform the practical training of ministers and lay people engaged in Christian ministry and service. Others reflect on the theological significance of activism around specific issues such as refugee advocacy or domestic violence. Practical theology also calls upon a wealth of academic research and critical inter-disciplinary analysis from a Christian perspective on a broad range of social, political, and ethical issues. Veling concedes that the sheer breadth and diversity of such activities means that, like life itself, practical theology “is not very systematic”. Refusing to “confuse thought with existence…[p]ractical theology wants to keep our relationship with the world open, so that we are never quite ‘done’ with things; rather, always undoing and redoing them”.923 The most obvious venue for practical theology is found in the life of the church.

  Practical Theology and Church Life

  Contemporary pastors, priests, and ministers are encouraged to conceive their leadership of faith communities in terms of what Emmanuel Lartey calls the “pastoral cycle”. This involves a clear consciousness of the relationship between theological reflection and situational awareness.924 Pastors, according to Peter Marty, are charged with the task of forming “a people, an ekklesia, a community”. In working to shape their local congregation into a Christian community, they must recognize that their situation is defined by the contemporary culture of consumerism and a market ideology that impedes the “difficult work of forming and sustaining Christian community”. Communities are undermined by “a pattern of promoting private and personal spirituality”. Marty draws on a wide range of theological resources to reflect on how pastoral leadership can help local congregations to deal with that situation and rediscover the ancient spirit of Christian fellowship.925

  Another practical theologian has reflected on how bishops, priests and lay persons could work together to transform the church (more specifically, the Roman Catholic church) as a whole. Boff believes that the traditional hierarchical structure of the church has stifled the growth and vitality of Christian community. As things stand, “the actual community is divided between rulers and governed, between celebrants and onlooker, between producers and consumers of sacraments”. He contends that the church needs to be re-invented as a global faith community “coresponsible for all the affairs of the church”. The natural order of things is inverted when “the hierarchy constitutes the sole representative of the universal church and the particular church”. The rise of base communities allows Catholics to conceive a new way of being the church: “first comes the flock, and then, for the sake of the flock, the shepherd”. Practical theology, for Boff, aims “to render gradually more explicit and conscious the presence of God’s Spirit, which transforms and penetrates human beings’ lives”. In practical, organizational terms this “means accepting the coresponsibility of all in the upbuilding of the church, not just of a limited number belonging to the clerical institution”.926

  The Cult of the Other

  Boff’s call for the “declericalization” of the church reflects a widespread movement to identify practical theology with the liberation of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.927 If liberation theology is transformational activity through which the Holy Spirit drives change from the bottom up, the cult of the Other is a way of doing theology that works from the top down to achieve “social justice”. In Australia and Oceania, practical theology at the academic level “is primarily associated with postcolonial, liberationist, and inculturated theologies of the so-called ‘South’”. Such an intellectual orientation places white theologians racially and culturally identified with the white global “North” in an uncomfortable position. One response is to apologize publicly for the failure of Australian theology to “pay adequate attention to history, especially the historical reality of violence inherent in that culture”. More generally, practical theology in Australia recognizes “[r]econciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians…as a key issue facing Australia, its peoples, its churches, and its theologians”.928

  While some practical theologians understand marginalization and dispossession as an experience suffered by particular peoples in the here and now, others point to the existential dimension of our relationship to the Other. Glenn Morrison, for example, draws attention to the ways in which we lock ourselves “into margins or narrow and selfish ways of life, blinding us to our great possibilities of encountering the people who truly live at the margins of life”. Like Boff, Morrison believes that “the Spirit of God is among us, ever searching for ways out of the depths of God to draw us into the life of God”. Only by opening our hearts to the widow and the orphan and in loving the strangers by providing them food and clothing” can we enter into the Reign of God.929

  The poor and the marginalized “are the very donation in which the Lord God is signified”. It is “[b]y being exposed to the Other” that we receive “the space and time for the depths of God to call upon us, command us and ordain us to responsible lives”. Indeed, we must be “made responsible to the Other to such a degree that it overwhelms the intentionality of consciousness. As a result, the self is obliged to sacrifice to the Other to the point of expiation”. A “certain transformation” takes place when we “love the poor one and hear the word of God in their face”. For Morrison, “the face of the Other” signifies nothing less than “an encounter with God”.930

  The call to look into the face of the Other to see our neighbour is “a responsibility beyond our personal freedom to choose”.931 It comes from the very depths of God. Morrison notes that the Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, taught him to understand that “the neighbour…precedes cognition and commitment”. Our relationship to our neighbour, the Other, has “a rectitude…more intense than intentionality: the neighbour summons me”.932 Here and elsewhere, Levinas holds up the parable of the Good Samaritan as the archetypical model of
practical theology.933

  Significantly, Martin Luther King, Jr also invoked the Good Samaritan parable in making his own contribution to the cult of the Other in practical theology. In harmony with Levinas, King identifies the “neighbour” in that parable as “anyone who lies in need at life’s roadside”. Both the black activist preacher and the Jewish philosopher portray the Samaritan as “good because he made concern for others the first law of his life”. In other words, he “had the capacity for a universal altruism”. On King’s interpretation, the Samaritan displayed an unconditional “regard for, and devotion to, the interests of others”. He was ready to open his arms to all human beings without regard to the external accidents of race, religion, and nationality.934

  The Good Samaritan as a Practical Theologian

  Susanna Snyder is an English practical theologian and Anglican priestess who believes that the Good Samaritan parable imposes a moral obligation upon Christians to practice out-group altruism as a divinely-ordained way of life. She cites the pericope as one of many bible stories calling for “the inclusion of the stranger” as an “open, welcoming and compassionate” way of doing theology. The goal of her research into people seeking asylum “is transformative and liberatory action”. She sees herself as part of a movement to create an “ecology of faith” capable of breaking down the “ecology of fear” which dominates our perceptions of the Other.935