That story

Stephen Garner's comment drove me to do some exploring - first via the net, then on my own bookshelves (ah, the inexpressible joy of having ALL my books out of boxes and on shelves!!!). The story referred to in my last post is by Harry Harrison and is titled, "The Streets of Ashkelon" (1961). The hero is an athiest Trader, John Garth, dismayed when a Catholic priest is delivered to the world on which he lives, a world populated by uniformly well-behaved beings who have never been 'lured' by any form of superstition and as a result are "happier and sane because of it." However the priest stays and following much discussion and reading of the Bible, the beings decide that they would like to believe, but need the help of a miracle - the kind of miracle which brings a whole world to belief. And so in eager anticipation they crucify the priest and bury him (having bound the Trader so he would not interfere), waiting for the miracle of resurrection to take place. Afterwards, Itin, a questioning alien asks the Trader whether they had done the right thing - whether the priest would be raised, to which the Trader answers negatively.

"Then we will not be saved? We will not become pure?" [asks Itin]

"You were pure," Garth said, in a voice somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "That's the horrible, ugly, dirty part of it. You were pure. Now you are..."

"Murderers," Itin said, and the water ran down from his lowered head and streamed away into the darkness.

David Hicks and saying sorry

So Premier Mike Rann wants an unconditional "sorry" from David Hicks, and Gerard Henderson believes "The Hicks fan club is in denial".

It seems to me that many people miss the point at issue in this whole thing. David Hicks may well have done some stupid, misguided or even malicious things. It may well be that his actions were morally blameworthy or even legally criminal. No-one I know has said that Hicks is a model citizen or a moral example. But Hicks is a private citizen, and it is as a private citizen that he should have faced whatever sanctions (from social opprobrium to legal incarceration) were appropriate to his offenses. He does not represent the Australian people any more than any other individual Australian, many, many of whom also offend against societal or legal norms. He does not therefore 'owe' the Australian people a public apology in any meaningful sense.

On the other hand, our elected politicians do, by their own choice and by our electoral confirmation of them, represent us, and thus have a public duty to uphold the democratic ideals and legal principles of the country they serve. If they choose to deny such legal principles of long-standing for what has seemed to many to be merely political reasons, then they have offended against the public whom they represent and public apology is appropriate.

So whether (for the sake of argument) Alexander Downer can be said to have lived a more morally upright life than David Hicks is not the issue. David Hicks' mistakes or crimes are those of a private citizen and should be judged as such. The politicians who failed to stand up for his rights as an Australian are on the other hand guilty of an offense against the trust they took on as our elected representatives and should answer for that offense to the public they have wronged.

Government Advertising

I haven't been watching evening TV much since our move (too busy). But tonight Suzie and I sat down to watch a bit of mindless entertainment, and there must have been almost a dozen government ads in the space of 4 or 5 hours. I am disgusted at the way the Howard government shamelessly uses public servants and our money to try to advance their political ends.

I am particularly chagrined at the way they try to dress up their deficiencies in IR legislation and global warming by trying to portray themselves as totally opposite to what they have previously said and done.

I was mad enough that I gave toward a GetUp! campaign to fund an advertisement about Global warming during the AFL Grand Final.

You might like to see the ad...

Osama Jesus and Mary in a Burqa

So there's this art prize for religious artworks and some of the entrants include Mary in a Burqa and a picture of Jesus that morphs into Osama.

Past President of the Uniting Church, the Reverend Professor James Hare, thinks that the artworks are offensive. Both our leading national politicians jumped on the bandwagon to criticise, without of course doing anything like looking at the artworks!

But I must say that I thought they were great! Artwork is meant to make us think, to provoke and to arrest interest, to juxtapose unlikely elements in order to cause people to contemplate. I think both pieces provoke genuine searching about the way in which different religions or groups of people view people like Mary, Jesus or Osama. We are provoked to consider both the similarities and the differences between Jesus and Osama, their lives and ways of achieving goals. We are made to wonder how images of Mary are used to support cultural norms or religious dogmas in Islamic or Christian contexts. We are led to think about the veil and what it represents positively or negatively.

Personally I think it's great that artists like this push us to explore the unexplored boundaries of thought, and I wish that we had politicians who would more often give a reasoned response and less often give a knee-jerk response.

Opportunity to hear the candidates

At our church we have used material from Micah Challenge to highlight issues of poverty in services from time to time. Today I received an email newsletter from Micah Challenge which (among other things) gave some information about a unique opportunity for Australia Christians to hear both the Prime Minister John Howard and the Leader of the Opposition and prospective Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, address Christians in the lead up to the federal election to be held later this year.

Both men will speak live, via webcast, to churches around the country. Details can be found here. I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to say and hope that they will speak to issues of justice, community building and reconciliation, and not just the usual swag of 'personal morality' issues.

Dr Mohamed Haneef flees Australia?

There are so many things about this sorry case that disturb me, but the kicker has to be our Immigration Minister's outrageous suggestion that Dr Haneef's prompt return to India somehow makes him more suspicious.

I don't know if Mr Andrews has ever lived in a foreign country. I have. I know how disorientating, stressful and sometimes downright scary it can be to be living in a place with different systems, different rules and customs, and different understandings than your home country. And for me, this was at least a country which spoke my native language.

So I put myself in the shoes of Dr Haneef, who on top of all the stresses of living and working in a new country, is picked up by police and held without charge for twelve days under new terrorism laws. Following this he is charged with a terrorist offense and held for almost another two weeks in conditions which include solitary confinement for 23 hours per day. During this ordeal, his case is used as a political football and on the very day a court grants him bail, a politician steps in to cancel his visa and threaten him with immigration detention and deportation. So when finally the Director of Public Prosecutions drops the case, recognising that there is little if any chance of a conviction based on the flimsy and mishandled evidence brought forward, Dr Haneef promptly returns to India.

I ask myself what my reaction would be if these things were (God forbid) to happen to me in a foreign country. What would I do upon my release? I tell you what I'd do... I'd scarper just as fast as humanly possible out of that god-forsaken place and back to the safety of home. Suspicious? Give me a break!

Oh for a moderate politician...

Iemma attacks Big Day Out flag 'ban'. 22/01/2007. ABC News Online:

Ban Big Day Out, not flag: Robb - National - smh.com.au:

Now it may well be that the Big Day Out's decision to 'ban' or 'discourage' Australian flags is a poor one but is it really such a big deal?

I would love it if a senior politician simply said to reporters, “Well, it's not the decision I would have made but it's their event and their choice - now has anyone got any questions about transport policy?”

Of vilification, incitement and Christian reportage in the “Catch the Fire” Case

What would you think if you read the following reports of a recent Victorian Court of Appeal ruling?

The Victorian Supreme Court has upheld the Appeal of the two Dannys (Pastor Daniel Scot and Pastor Danny Nalliah) against the previous unjust decision by Judge Higgins.

All previous orders by Judge Higgins, who showed bias against the two Dannys have been annulled.

Their case will be heard again in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal by another judge. (Voice of the Martyrs)

Or these comments?

In the Court of Appeal, the church argued that VCAT erred in its interpretation of the law.

The church said the Islamic council should have had to prove that people were actually incited to hatred, rather than show the comments were likely to incite hatred.

...

In my view, Justice Nettle's judgement is a damning indictment of Judge Higgins' original decision to convict the pastors in December 2004.

...

What drove the Government to pass such dangerous laws? What drove the Equal Opportunity Commission to hunt these pastors? How did VCAT rule as it did? There is a touch of Salem about this.

At least the Supreme Court insists there is a “distinction between hatred of the religious beliefs of Muslims and hatred of Muslims”. We should now be free again to criticise a faith without being found guilty of vilifying the believer.

But until these laws are scrapped, can you be sure? (Australian Christian Lobby)

Or one more?

All three justices - Nettle, Ashley and Neave - agreed that the appeal should be allowed. In particular, the argument that the Tribunal had wrongly interpreted Section 8 of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, the basic section that sets out the offence of religious vilification was successful.

The Court gave orders that the Tribunal orders re 'penalties' (advertisement, not saying similar things) be set aside, and that the matter be sent back to VCAT to be heard by a different judge with no new evidence. (ICJS Research)

I don't know about you but If I had only read this typical Christian reportage of the case it would seem that a monstrous injustice had been soundly overturned; a dangerous ruling by a irresponsible judge applying an unconstitutional law, had been shown up by a definitive higher court judgement. In fact the reality is somewhat different as you can see by actually reading the judgement, which is available in full online.

What the Court of Appeal actually said is this (in summary, and bearing in mind that the three justices differed slightly from one another):

  • The Tribunal erred on a particular point of interpretation of one section of the Act (and as Justice Ashley points out, the particular interpretation they have judged in error was not challenged by the appellants), and that this incorrect interpretation may have changed the outcome of the case so it ought to be redetermined without hearing further evidence.
  • The Court of appeal did not accuse the Tribunal member of bias or incompetence. Indeed two of the Justices went out of their way to praise the Tribunal, noting that “it is right to acknowledge the prodigious amount of work which was evidently undertaken by the learned County Court judge who, as Vice President, constituted the Tribunal. It is plain indeed from his reasons that the Tribunal’s task was made more difficult than it need have been by the manner in which the proceeding was conducted – for the most part, though not exclusively so, by the appellants” (Justice Ashley) and “the fashion in which the Tribunal dealt with the matter is in my view worthy of high praise.” (Justice Nettle - if this is a “damning indictment”, I want some!)
  • Two of the three Justices denied the appellants' claim that the Act was unconstitutional. (The third did not give a response on this issue.)
  • Two of the three Justices denied the appellants' claim that the Tribunal went beyond its powers by ordering a corrective advertisement. (The third did not give a response on this issue.)
  • Two of the three Justices specifically deny the appellants' claim that proof of actual incitement is required rather than the likelihood of incitement. (The third seems to imply a similar position but does not specifically address the issue.)
  • One of the justices found that the Tribunal “did not give a great deal of consideration to the distinction between hatred of the religious beliefs of Muslims and hatred of Muslims because of their religious beliefs”, however a second Justice disagreed and the third chose to leave the question open as irrelevant given the decision to allow the appeal on the basis of interpretation referred to above.

Why does all this matter? Well to me it matters because it is yet again an example of the intellectual dishonesty with which some parts of the Christian church handle facts (can you say Intelligent Design?), and as a result we are all tainted. Shame.

That movie again...

In Australia (as no doubt elsewhere) that film, The Da Vinci Code, is stirring up a hornet's nest. The Sydney Anglican Diocese has funded $50,000 worth of ads to show in cinemas and a website, Challenging Da Vinci. Clearly there is interest in the person of Jesus, but the real question for me is do we take the negative approach of debunking the movie (and book), or can we actually connect positively? In the article above, the Uniting Church President, Rev. Dr. Dean Drayton is quoted as saying that popular culture was an 'important avenue from which Australians may start to search for answers to the deeply spiritual questions they continue to ask today.' This is good.

But even better are the comments of Brian McLaren on SojoMail, where he says,

'For all the flaws of Brown's book, I think what he's doing is suggesting that the dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And I think people have a sense that that's true. ... I also think that the whole issue of male domination is huge and that Brown's suggestion that the real Jesus was not as misogynist or anti-woman as the Christian religion often has been is very attractive. Brown's book is about exposing hypocrisy and cover-up in organized religion, and it is exposing organized religion's grasping for power. Again, there's something in that that people resonate with in the age of pedophilia scandals, televangelists, and religious political alliances. As a follower of Jesus I resonate with their concerns as well.'

I think that my own response might be to see if I can organise a discussion event entitled 'The Scandalous Life and Words of Jesus' noting that just like Dan Brown, Jesus was someone who regularly aired concerns about the church and was at his most critical when addressing religious hypocrisy.

Reflections on some current news stories

For the past couple of weeks there have been two stories dominating the Australian news media. The first is the plight of some miners trapped in a mine collapse, the long and arduous task of rescuing the two survivors (one died), and their eventual release yesterday. The second story concerns a little girl who was very badly burned some years back when a car ran into her pre-school - after a miraculous and much publicised recovery over the past few years, she was last week, again hit by a car while being pushed across a pedestrian crossing in her stroller and is now in critical but stable condition in hospital.

In church last Sunday, at my prompting, we prayed for the trapped miners as well as the family of the dead miner, and for little Sophie and her family as well. Yet even while asking people to pray for these situations, there was a nagging thought within me that wondered why we focus on certain people or situations which seem somehow newsworthy or attractive, while often ignoring the many other equally needy people or situations.

In the end I guess I decided that it's ok to focus on someone in particular, provided that they act as a symbol for all the others in need who don't get publicity. It's ok to pray for the current media cause célèbre, provided this leads you also to praying for all those who have not been highlighted by the media but nevertheless need the special hand of God in their lives too.

I hate illogical arguments

I regularly listen to podcasts of my favourite ABC programs: Late Night Live, The Religion Report, The Spirit of Things, The Science Show, All in the Mind etc. Yesterday there was an interesting Religion Report show entitled Catholics and Condoms. The first interviewee was Dr Janet E. Smith, who holds the Fr. Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. Dr Smith perpetrated the most illogical (and to my mind, morally bankrupt) argument I have heard in a long time. But first to a runner–up argument, also from Dr Smith: in defending the Catholic church's stance on the use of condoms, she made the comment that serious theologians were currently discussing whether the use of condoms was immoral, not because of their contraceptive effect but because the “unitive” act of intercourse was invalid because it was skin touching latex, rather than skin touching skin! Now I don't know about any of you but even when wearing a condom, I find it hard to have sex without a whole lot of touching going on. The image sprang to mind of 'serious Vatican theologians' careful studying a couple mid-coitus in order to ascertain what percentage of skin to skin contact there was or perhaps to determine whether the right bits were making any 'unitive' contact. My God! No wonder the vast majority of the community see us (Christians) as irrelevant.

Now with this comment I could have relaxed, my monthly quota of pseudo-academic inanity well and truly satified, but no... there was better to come! Dr Smith in full flight is a force to behold and her next foray concerned the specific case of married couples where one partner has aids, and (as the interviewer pointed out) in some cultures it is almost impossible for the wife to say no to the demand for intercourse with her husband (let alone the New Testament teaching that regular witholding is a moral evil). Dr Smith's tactic was masterful! Why (she asked) do we worry so much about condoms? Let us consider an analogy. If we had a problem with a bunch of men who went around beating women with sticks, why would we spend our time recommending that the women wear helmets? Wouldn't it be better to spend our time and energy stopping the men from doing it?

<Deep Sigh> Now here is the most perfect example imaginable of what Basil Mitchell (Nolloth Professor Emiritus of Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Oxford) calls “playing Theological Ping Pong”. Set up two options (ping and pong - telling women to wear helmets, stopping men beating them with sticks); imply without supporting argument that the two are mutually exclusive (which clearly they aren't), and then triumphantly declare that since it clearly isn't ping it must be pong! Let us dwell in Dr Smith's analogy for just a minute. Clearly it isn't right to ignore the reprehensible behaviour of the men. But nor is it right to ignore the actual plight of the women by insisting that it is morally wrong of them to wear helmets till their menfolk change! (Perhaps because it would disrupt the unitive nature of the club hitting her head!?) And part of the educative process with those men might well be empowering the women to say, “I can't stop you hitting me but I can wear a helmet so I won't be knocked out by your behaviour.” The logical paucity of this argument left me grinding my teeth in rage that the interviewer let it go through to the keeper without a blink.

Ok. Rant finished. Return to your normal life. I'm taking deep breaths...

This makes me mad!

Some of you may be aware that recently 43 people from West Papua (a province of Indonesia just north of Australia) made their way to Australia and were granted temporary protection visas as refugees. This angered the Indonesian government which sees it as an affront to them - implying that Indonesia's governance of West Papua makes it an unsafe place for these people. Furthermore Indonesia is worried that Australia might support a Papuan independence movement.

The latest is that my church has been dragged into it. And this and this really make my blood boil! Our craven government's response to the Indonesian unrest is to promise that the way we process asylum seekers will change - in effect that we will kow-tow to Indonesian sentiment and not accept as refugees, anyone from Indonesia on such feeble grounds as the fact that their civil and religious rights are being infringed and they may face death if they are returned. Even in our current self-obssessed, right-wing mood, some commentators and others (here and here) have recognised that this a bridge too far.

In the midst of this, the Uniting Church (which has strong links with the Evangelical Christian Church) has striven to enable the voices of ordinary Papuans to be heard - read or listen to the informed account of Rev John Barr, Executive Secretary of Uniting International Mission. It's about time someone stood up for them. And Indonesian ambassadors can go to blazes. This situation is entirely of Indonesia's making and blaming the Uniting Church is mere subterfuge to draw attention away from their horrendous abrogation of human rights for the mainly melanesian, mainly Christian population of Papua.

'Working Carers' and IR changes

I was listening to the ABC this morning - a program about 'working carers' (people who have to work but also have an elderly or disabled person they care for.

The interviewee, who runs the working carers gateway above said that the recent IR changes had some good points for working carers. In particular, individual workplace agreements could enable workers to negotiate some added flexibility in hours or times for their situation as carers. She acknowledged that while there were some employers who would use the legislation to “screw down their workers”, that most reasonable employers would not want to lose the education, training and skills represented by working carers in their employ. She mentioned the current skills shortage which puts employees in a position of strength.

That's when it hit me once again - like most of the things this government does, the IR changes probably WON'T affect those who are the well-educated, well-trained members of our workforce - those in a position to use their skills as a bargaining tool. Instead, yet again, it will be the worst off in society, those who are unskilled or lacking experience who will feel the brunt of these IR changes.

Furthermore, I was struck by the term “the reasonable employer”. Of course the reasonable employer won't use the changes to “screw” her workers. But by its nature, legislation is not targetted at 'reasonable' people, but those who are unreasonable! And the Howard government's legislation just gives those unreasonable employers more power to make their worker's lives hell. Good one John!