IMPRESSIONS OF EASTER 2014

It’s Easter Monday, a public holiday in Australia. And my thoughts today are probably getting a bit away from the Audacity theme. Easter 2014 has been a mixed bag.

The media always gives some time to reporting the Christian emphasis of Easter, especially Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But, if you’re a church that wants more than a token exposure, it’s a good idea to preach a sermon about something that’s currently high on the agenda of mainstream Australia. One Queensland Church focused on the problem of domestic violence. Others focus on ongoing problems of poverty or bullying.

The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne ran their most successful Good Friday appeal ever this year, raising almost seventeen million dollars. Would such an appeal work as well on any other day? Who knows? It may be that sacrificially giving to those who are suffering is a subtle outworking of the Christian heritage that we have as a nation.

There have also been suggestions that next year the AFL will abandon it’s long-standing policy of refusing to stage football matches on Good Friday. I think there’s a general willingness to respect the day but it seems inevitable that commercial interests will encroach still further into Australian spirituality. We have become an extremely secular nation that gives the occasional nod to Christianity but then gets on with the “real” purpose of life – the pursuit of happiness through financial gain.

Perhaps, in the end, the ultimate audacity of a godless society is not to rail against Christian culture and ritual but to marginalise it, to divert attention away from it, and to condescend to it like the party hostess who finds an unwanted acquaintance and quips: “Oh, are you still here?”

Yes, Christians are still here. And we are an important part of this nation. We will continue to testify to the death and resurrection of Christ because that is the only real hope for life that anyone can possess.

THE DEBATE ABOUT CRE IN VICTORIAN SCHOOLS

When you visit the religionsinschools.com website, you are immediately confronted with a picture of Fr Bob McGuire and a quote: “At school, there ought to be a general religious curriculum to introduce children to the ideas and motivations and rituals – in a word the ethos – of all the religions.”

Really? All the religions? Must schoolchildren be taught about Sikhism, Shinto, Scientology, Mormonism, Bahai, Unification Church, etc, etc? And what about all the multiple sects of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism? Sorry, Fr Bob, there literally wouldn’t be time for anything else in the school curriculum.

Christianity is different because a basic understanding of Christianity is necessary for understanding Australia and the values that have made us what we are.

Back to the FIRIS (Fairness In Religion In Schools) website. Another headline quote comes from Cathy Byrne who, among other things, a sociology and ethics teacher. She says: “It is time to expel dogma, discimination and special privileges and to teach children to think critically about religious ideas and ethical worldviews.”

Well, Cathy, the CRE program in Victoria is certainly not pushing dogma. Volunteer teachers cop a lot of very unfair flak on this website and others like it. They are actually trained to say “Christians believe…” rather than to dogmatically assert their own beliefs.

Jacqui Tomlins, another freelance writer, says: “Why would you expose your kids to unqualified volunteers teaching a curriculum you know very little about? And do you really believe they’re teaching acceptance, tolerance and open-mindedness – or something else entirely?”

Well Jacqui, you can always opt your own children out of the CRE program. But the truth is that CRE helps to open the minds of children to things that are otherwise kept from them in school. Do you really think that your lack of “acceptance, tolerance and open-mindedness” when it comes to CRE is helping to broaden the minds of children. I would suggest you are doing the exact opposite.

The battle over religion in schools is dangerous because it’s being fought on the wrong issues. A truly comprehensive, multicultural approach to religion in schools is impossible but, I repeat, Christianity deserves special privilege in Australian schools because Christianity has been by far the dominant religion ever since the First Fleet.

If you are a Christian reading this, I urge you to pray for Access Ministries, the provider of CRE in Victoria. They really are facing extraordinary pressure at the moment, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of schools appreciate the half-hour CRE class each week and the volunteers who work so hard to do it well.

EMERGING AUDACITY IN CHRISTIANITY

OK, so it’s not only non-Christian heathens who come out with outlandish stuff. Some Christians are very good at it. Hey, I might even be accused of audacious writing myself at times.

Today, I’m sharing a book review that I did back before Christmas last year. I have no doubt that the author is a very sincere Christian but… well, the review can speak for itself.

BOOK REVIEW – THY KINGDOM CONNECTED - Dwight J. Friesen

I understand that some people will love this book, especially those who are following in the footsteps of Emergent Village. The back cover contains the following gems of praise: "a treasure chest of insights" "for a unified and healthy body of Christ in a connected world", "the first contextual ecclesiology for a networked world."

But, to be honest, this book just annoyed me.

It didn't help that the author goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid using masculine pronouns for God. 'Godself' instead of 'himself' just seems too ridiculous to be cute. But this is only the beginning. A whole new vocabulary is invented to make subtle nuances seem like radical new thinking. Language becomes almost fluid. For the purpose of "reimagining the body of the institutional church" a local church becomes a "Christ-Common". For the purpose of "reimagining the soul of the local church", gatherings of Christians become "Christ-Clusters"."Chaordic life" is a strangely positive term for the interaction of chaos and order in the Kingdom of God. Pastors become "network ecologists", whose main task is "stewarding" a network of nodes and links. Even worse, relationships between different things are often described in terms of a "dance".

The occasional stories in this book that are intended to demonstrate the practicalities of these supposedly new paradigms are unconvincing. There are plenty of churches doing innovative things in their communities but they don't talk a foreign language amongst themselves.

Ultimately, I think the message of this book is that networks are everywhere in nature so the Kingdom of God is learning to function more connectively, with "flattened leadership".

Without its excessive verbosity, this book could have been much shorter, and possibly more helpful.