This is a response that I sent to a mailing list that I am on. The response was to an email forwarded to the list from Pastor Danny Nillah, from Catch the Fire Ministries. Some people found it helpful so I thought I would cross post it here.

I think the first thing that I would like to put into the public arena regarding this email is the history of Catch the Fire Ministries and their leader, Danny Nilliah.

For those of you unfamiliar with the case, he and his organization were at the centre of a protracted legal battle regarding defamation under the vilification laws that this circular email makes reference to.

At the heart of the case were some significantly misinformed opinions that were widely circulated amongst the broader Christian (and secular) community by Danny and his organisation, regarding Islam.

In the current political climate (post 9/11) any public dialog regarding Islam is difficult, to say the least. I found that the misinformed comments made by Danny were (in my opinion) unhelpful at best, and at their worst, hateful, fearful and contributing nothing to a spirit of dialog, reconciliation and healing of the rifts that have occurred certainly over the last 6 odd years since 9/11, rather they exacerbated what certainly in Melbourne is already an awkward and tense relationship between Muslim communities and the broader mainstream culture.

The Australian legal system (which John Howard's government have presided over for the last 11 odd years) found that this was in fact the case and Danny and his colleague were found guilty of inciting hatred and were forced to publicly retract their statements.

This made some small contribution towards easing the incredible feelings of victimization and isolation felt by many within the Muslim community in our nation, some of whom we have a little to do with.

Secondly, continuing to express my personal opinion here, I have felt deeply grieved that the government of our nation, since 9/11, rather than espousing a spirit of courage and peacemaking, seemed to have pursued deliberate actions that heighten the average Australian's feelings of fear and insecurity created by the broader socio political climate.

Beginning with the Tampa incident (where the sovereign government of this nation, rather than stepping in and taking up the plight of the orphan, the widow and the stranger/refugee in keeping with the strong and systematic teachings of the old and new testaments) chose to use the special armed forces to "protect" Australians. The incident was framed in terms of "the other" being a "threat to national security"...

Almost every objective observation of this event acknowledges that the handling of this event, just prior to an election was a deliberate political device to exploit the prejudices of an almost evenly split electorate.

Tampa was followed by 9/11 and then the Children Overboard affair.

Once again, the Howard government exploited fear and prejudice, at a time when the people of Australia were most vulnerable (the Children Overboard incident followed 9/11 by about a month). The Howard Government intentionally lied to the people of Australia, exploiting once again the orphan, widow and stranger/refugee:

"A Senate select committee inquiry later found that the "Children Overboard" claim was untrue and that the government knew this prior to the election. The government attracted criticism that it had misled the public and cynically "exploited voters' fears of a wave of illegal immigrants by demonising asylum-seekers"."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_overboard_affair)

These incidents have been followed by a series of other deliberate intents to mislead the Australian electorate, including but not limited to:

• Reducing Medicare when promising not to. Most vulnerable are the poor, single mums and the like.
• Promising to reduce education costs, with a particular promise that there will never be a $100,000 university degree. Today there is over16 university degree's costing over $100,000. The most vulnerable are middle to lower income Australian families.
• Introducing a GST after promising not to do so in 1995. Again, the most vulnerable are the middle to lower income families.
• A promise to do away with Aged Care and Pension clawbacks. This promise was broken. The most vulnerable? The aged and the chronically ill.
• Labour reform. The promise was that Work Choices would continue to protect the rights of workers. There is a personal story attached to this one with a member of our community being severely exploited and unable to protect himself because he was threatened with termination of employment. Only our commitment to support him financially until he was able to find alternative employment if he was sacked, gave him the courage to challenge his employer who indeed sacked him. In the process, the young man in question discovered that the employer was using illegal immigrants and paying them well below award conditions.
• The young man struggled to know whether to report the incident as a couple of illegal immigrants would have lost jobs and have been deported with the added insult of probably having to spend time in detention centres whilst the issues were being managed by our judicial system.This is one of many cases with over 100,000 cases still before the new Workplace Authority.
• Weapons of Mass Destruction. Hmmm, I'll leave that one...
• Promising that we did not commit to military action in Iraq before the decision was debated in Parliament. This was found out not to be true.
• Tax payer funded political advertising. Google it, it would be much shorter than if I tried to outline it.
• A few others but I think you are getting the point... Danny defends the Christian credentials of John Howard, who has been shown on numerous occasions to have lied to the public for political advantage, and in some of his lies, demonising and discrediting vulnerable groups.

The cynical part of me believes that John Howard and his government have taken advantage of the broader socio political context, and since the Tampa incident, have made Australia a far less friendly, meaner, much more paranoid, greedier and less hospitable place to live.

In over a decade of unprecedented economic growth, communities have come under much more strain due to the economic liberalization process that benefits the rich, exploits the poor, forces families to devote more of their time to longer working hours (I believe at this point, we are something like second only to Japan in terms of unpaid overtime) whilst working class and poorer/vulnerable communities suffer greater hardship. The present government seems to continue to appeal to the baser instincts that lurk beneath the surface of our civilised veneer.

If our political engagement proceeds from a platform of fear, a fear driven politic will focus on creating artificial barriers that give us an illusion of control and will ultimately lead to attempts to legislate righteousness. This is the way of the Pharisee. Those who do not fit our moral code are excluded and when our politics are examined, we find that they are devoid of compassion, mercy, grace and justice for all (as opposed to justice for just us).

The homosexual is particularly singled out and demonised, as are the perpetrators of abortion. Our politics become private. Our morals are limited what one can and cannot do with your penis and/or vagina. It is ultimately a narrow, and dehumanising.

The politics of Jesus, in the grand tradition of the Old Testament Prophet, are concerned with not how laws effect me, but how they effect the least and the last. God constantly reminds the people of God in the OT that the reason that they have to care for the orphan, widow and stranger(refugee) is because they were an orphan (in Egypt with no "father" to protect them), a widow (as an idolatrous nation, stripped of their Husband to defend and without protect them from the violence committed against them as judgment for their paganism) and a refugee (wandering in the wilderness as a stateless people prior to inheriting the land).

And on the issue of their judgment as pagans, the paganism that God accuses them of is prostituting their vocation which is to show the world what Yahweh is like. When they use slave labour to build the temple, when they use the wealth that God has blessed them with to create a system of justice that exploits the most vulnerable among them, they are no different to the pagan nations around them. They do not honour God, because they forget that when you treat the least of these as slaves and economic units in a system designed to make the rich richer and happier and the poor continue to lose their dignity as image bearers, not only do they *not* honour God, they dishonour him in the most brutal of ways (inanimate things are of more value than animate things).

On the question of Islam, I find that Danny conducts his affairs in the same vein as conservative politics in Australia. He creates an Islamic "straw man". The church of all institutions on earth should know that radical Islamic terrorism is to Islam, what the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity. We have far more in common with our human brethren who follow the way of Islam than we actually do with the secular materialistic Aussie. Yet Danny chooses to paint them as tools of Satan who will rape, pillage and destroy in the name of Allah.

I cannot reconcile a person who espouses hatred and fear for another grouping based on religious conviction as being consistent with the missionary God who commands us to go to all the peoples of the earth making disciples where we find them. Time (and energy) does not permit me to outline the incredible opportunity for dialog and learning we can engage in with the Muslim community in Australia.

I cannot subscribe to Danny's political point of view. His politics are private, seeking to create divisions that funnily enough, put him on the right side of God and those who do not agree on the wrong side of God. He points out some ritual behavior of the Australian government and claims that this makes them candidates for God's favour and dismisses the alternatives because they do not engage in the same ritualistic behavior (prayer in parliament etc). Yet he completely fails to outline the significant lies told by the present government for political advantage, and their failure to take responsibility and to apologise to the Australian people for.

I find that his perspective will only lead to a Pharisaical hatred that does not honor our God or his kingdom, one characterised by grace (God's undeserved favor towards all), mercy, justice, righteousness, truth ad infinitum.

I would not want you to construe this response as endorsement of the ALP either. Someone asked me the other day, "who will you vote for"?

My response was that I would vote for the party that would give me an undertaking that as a society would do our best to protect and include the least and the last in our communities, economically, socially, politically.

Politics should not be about fearfully looking for the system that will protect us and our aspirations. It is about setting the political agenda, and letting governments know (no matter who they are) that our God, the King of Kings has set them in place and then need to rule with justice, mercy and compassion, caring for those who cannot look after themselves. They must represent the needs of the many, not the desires and selfish ambitions of the few.

I would urge you my brothers and sister, humbly in the Lord, that you would carefully consider, not just Danny's email, but any email coming to you asking them to considering it before voting. We have a grave responsibility as spiritual leaders. I want to urge you to get your communities thinking about Jesus and his Kingdom, and the ways in which our politics might better achieve this end.

More than happy to continue the dialog regarding this *short* reply.

(Those who know me will know that this *is* short!) ;)

Labels: Culture, Politics, Rants, Spirituality, Theology

Posted by Stephen @ 10:36 PM