PETER GRANT
‘The
Whole World Groaned’:
A Lament from the Christian Left
I happened to find myself in Canberra on the night of
the 2004 Federal election. It was a short night, but a long morning after. As the day
stretched out ahead, some words from 4th century theologian Saint Jerome came
to my mind. Strange as it may now seem, what leaders and thinkers believed about Christ
once literally determined the shape and colour of kingdoms.
It was in the year 360AD that Jerome, beleaguered
champion of orthodox christology, uttered his famous lament: "the whole world groaned
to find itself Arian." The details of that theological debate and the nature of what
Arius argued needn’t concern us here. But Jerome’s saying was consonant with my
own thoughts after the election. It seemed that the whole world – or at least a
significant majority of the Australian electorate – had acceded to the Howard view of
life and the universe. And that left me deeply unsettled and not a little pessimistic.
Yes the people had spoken; yes I was able to take
comfort in having the right to choose our government, and the right to dissent the choice
of others. But the source of my discomfit went deeper than an initial desire to emigrate
to New Zealand and/or cast suspicious looks at my fellow voters. (Is it the circles I mix
in? I didn’t come across a single person who would openly admit to voting for John
Howard!) What disturbed me more than anything was the alignment of the Howard view with
the Christian faith.
A couple of weeks later a remarkably similar scene was
played out in the USA. This time there was an even more explicit alignment of the Bush
campaign with certain Christian views. Not only was Bush able to retain the Evangelical
vote, but even John Kerry’s own Catholicism benefitted him little, blunted by some
Catholic leaders as good as declaring that a vote for Bush was a vote for God. They
inundated churches with guides identifying abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research
as "non-negotiable issues." Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the highest-ranking
Catholic leader in Colorado, saw an express link between these ‘evils’ and a
vote for Kerry. "If you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" he asked.
"And if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer
is yes." He may have observed the letter of the law regarding the strict separation
of church and state powers in the USA, but he had hardly observed its spirit.
In Australia religion is much more a private matter. It
might even be argued that our tradition sees religion as quite marginal to how we run our
political system. John Howard himself has been keen to silence the occasional dissent from
"meddlesome priests" in the past. But this time around there was a peculiar
alignment of conservative thinking, including many in the church and the media, that
enabled the Howard government to remain unchallenged on a significant number of moral and
ethical issues.
Instead the Liberals, aided by groups such as Family
First, openly if unofficially aligned with the Christian denomination the Assemblies of
God, were able to tap into the socially conservative religious sentiment of a significant
number of Australians. For these Christians the Greens are "extreme"; Labor is
risky on economic and sometimes social grounds; and Howard is a fellow believer. For them
material prosperity is a sign of God’s goodness, and the Howard government can help
deliver this. So Family First gave and received preferences from the Liberals, and as a
consequence looks likely to have an influential place in the senate.
In both Australia and the USA this identification of
conservative social/moral views with religious faith has gone largely unchallenged. From
where I stand this is a major distortion of the Christian faith. How can lies about
weapons of mass destruction and children overboard, or the extent of innocent victims of
the war on Iraq, not carry the equivalent moral weight of abortion or gay marriage? How is
it that the lives of Middle eastern citizens, refugees and asylum-seekers have less value
than unborn Australians? And how can a US soldier about to attack the city of Falluja say
on prime-time television "the enemy’s got a face … he’s called
Satan" and fear no rebuke? Where are the voices from the pulpits and microphones
pointing out the slick hypocrisy of these comfortable positions? Is there no truth filter
through which such issues can be put?
Surely for those who profess to follow Christ there is
at least his teaching. The following examples seem instructive.
"I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty
and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed
clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you
came to visit me. … Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine,
you did for me." (Matthew 25:35-40, abridged)
"Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you." (Matthew
5:44)
"Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you
will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven." (Luke 6:37)
"Blessed are you who are poor … you who hunger now …
you who weep now …, (but) woe to you who are rich … you who are well fed …
you who laugh now." (Luke 6:20-25, abridged)
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to
preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and
recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed." (Luke 4:18-19)
"What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose
… his very self?" (Luke 9:25)
It is well to remind ourselves that it was precisely the
religious who most strongly opposed Jesus during his life. He wrapped some
of his most powerful messages to them in story form. For instance one hypocritical
religious leader is depicted as loudly praying "God, I thank you that I am not
like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax
collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get." The same tax
collector "stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his
breast and said ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner." (Luke 18:11-13) Jesus not
only tells us that God heard the prayer of the latter, but demonstrates it in his own life
by being known as "a friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Luke 7:34).
In one particularly shocking passage Jesus said to the
religious of his day: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that
by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you
refuse to come to me to have life." (John 5:39-40) This is a pointed challenge to
today’s Evangelicals, those with whom Bush is most identified. As "people of the
Book", the test of his teaching is to ask yourself: "Which has my prime
allegiance: Christ or the bible?" There may not often be a conflict between the two,
but if there is, it is clear that the Christian should choose Christ.
Another major challenge to the comfortable
"private" Christianity to which Bush and Howard so readily cosy up, is the issue
of prosperity. That God can bless his people economically is
only one side of the truth at best. There is far more
weight given in Christ’s teaching to the dangers of wealth. For instance "it
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of God." (Luke 18:25) There are also powerful warning stories such as the
parable of the rich fool (Luke 12) and the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16), in
which the rich loose everything including their souls.
Why do I emphasise prosperity here? There seems little
doubt that the hip pocket nerve was tickled during the election. Contrary to the opinion
of most major banks and economists, the Australian electorate perceived that interest
rates were more likely to stay low under a Howard government. That a good proportion of
the "Christian" vote – as concerned as anyone to preserve their personal
prosperity – was swayed by this thinking, is an indictment of the depth of their
theology. Certainly the teachings of Jesus are no political manifesto, and they don’t
prescribe economic policy. But to reduce Jesus’ teaching to a code of personal
morality, and ignore its social and political implications, is to castrate it. To claim to
follow Christ and yet have no critique of "mammon" is to risk ethical
amputation.
* * *
And so in Canberra, the day after the election, my
thoughts remained gloomy. But they were eventually nudged forward nearly 1200 years from
the time of Jerome to the time of Martin Luther. There were Christians in Luther’s
day – also one of great turmoil – who were tempted to seek comfort only in the
second coming of Christ. The trials and travails of this world would then be over, and
God’s kingdom would be forever established. Someone asked Luther what he would do if
he knew that Christ were returning the next day. A man well versed in paradox, he is
reported to have replied: "If I believed the world were to end tomorrow, I would
still plant a tree today."
My Canberra friends probably had more 21st century thoughts
in mind, ones that related to Canberra’s ongoing recovery from the devastating 2003
bushfires. But whatever our thoughts and feelings it was more than therapeutic for us to
join over 300 Greening Australia volunteers in planting thousands of trees in the warzone
that had once been Deek’s Forest. It was a powerful reminder that there are many good
things that will outlast the rulers of this age. And there are still actions we can take
that will make a difference whoever our rulers might be.