Bigotry

 

A prominent Australian political commentator and advocate for social justice retweeted this picture. It hurt. It hurt for several reasons. One is that in it there is a kernel of truth. The Church can be bigoted. It can also be less than honest in the way it delivers its message. Its culpability on the abuse of children and its response to the possibility of restorative justice deserve the condemnation we are witnessing.

This picture also hurt because for a very large number of people in the Church the accusation it contains is not true. The image does not take account of those who provide companionship and support to the elderly, who sit with those who have a terminal diagnosis, who journey with the dying, praying for them and with them, comforting and caring for them, who anoint them as they die, comfort and pray with their families, who attend to the final ceremonials of their lives; who receive the marginalised in their doorways, who listen to them, feed them, assist in the most pitiful parts of their disordered lives, who receive their abuse when they are off their medications or stoned or drunk and angry, when there is no more that can be done for them or nothing left to provide; who comfort and encourage the refugee and asylum seeker, who navigate the labyrinthine paths of immigration bureaucracy for them because it is un-navigable , who advocate and plead for them, who find pro bono medical and legal services for them because they have no money or Medicare coverage and they may not work, who help them prepare for the refugee review tribunal hearing, comforting their anxieties, who celebrate, occasionally, when justice is served; who pray for the world, often alone, even when the world does not understand them or want to know them, or reviles them; who are accused of being paedophiles when they are not; of whom an often intolerably high standard of forebearance and patience is demanded, even though they are only normal human beings.

That hurts.

BHP is ignoring its community responsibility on climate change.

BHP claims through Chairman Jac Nasser (http://bit.ly/1aNLsbI) now to accept the mainstream climate science. Presumably they also acknowledge the substantial climate risk we face, the role BHP has played in this as a large emitter, and the social justice issues which follow, for instance to South Pacific island populations. Comments by Andrew McKenzie (CEO, BHP) at the recent BHP shareholder meeting (21 November 2013)) therefore give some concern. Mr McKenzie proposed that through BHP’s participation in the Abbott government’s direct action plan that BHP’s international competitiveness is protected. Is he suggesting, then, that the economy, in particular the international competitiveness of BHP, is subordinate to the task of finding the best mechanism available to protect the climate and environment from the global warming’s effects and the social injustices that are about to be delivered to a host of vulnerable communities?

Mr McKenzie also says, “There's no point in giving up [carbon dioxide] in Australia only to find that it's going to be emitted less efficiently elsewhere.” Really, does he mean this? Where then is the leadership? Where is the principle of doing the right thing, of an altruism which when it sees a gross disadvantage sets aside self-interest for the sake of justice? Where is the recognition that BHP as an emitter has responsibility to make restoration? Mr McKenzie’s approach seeks the lowest common denominator in leadership; it is as culpably irresponsible as it is unimaginative.

Here we have another example of economics replacing political and social discourse. Our society’s fixation on economic success, especially of the individualist kind, blinkers us to those other considerations which make us a human community.

What is the role of the corporation here? It has captured, presumably, some of the best talent the community has to offer. It has garnered tremendous investment in this country and internationally. It has been given the right to access vast economic resources on our behalf. What responsibility accompanies these gifts? Sure, it has a responsibility to its shareholders, but that is not, morally, prior its responsibility to the community which provides the social licence and the resources for its operation.

It is good to see that some shareholders at this meeting raising climate change as an issue for the company.

Remembering on Remembrance Day

Remembering on Remembrance Day is becoming contentious. In Britain, the role of the Church of England in officiating at London’s Cenotaph is being challenged by the National Secular Society. They point out that the cenotaph is an entirely secular monument and the CofE no longer has a role or a right.

In Australia Remembrance Day is overshadowed somewhat by ANZAC Day. For some, any of this commemoration has an ambivalence. Remembrance Day is essentially an English event and Australia’s participation, although steeped in a tradition of observance, is really only as a reflection of how we once thought of ourselves as English. Well, some of us. ANZAC Day is much more directly pertinent but its memory is conflicted by the nature of the event it remembers and the way the day is be coming a secular religious festival and visiting Gallipoli a ‘rite of passage’.

Remembrance Day in the Church has difficulties. Not least of these is the way in which the Eucharist can be co-opted for a military parade but also for the way in which the Gospel is co-opted to reaffirm patriotic sensibility or worse, to glorify war. The readings suggested are usually from the Gospel of John and select those parts which refer to the sacrificial laying down of life for others. The Australian Prayer Book does not offer lections but defenceanglicans.org.au suggests John 10.1-21 - Jesus’ allegory of the good shepherd with all its beautifully colourful pastoral imagery - the good shepherd, the sheep protected in the sheepfold from the wolves.

What this selection misses is that Jn 10.1-21 is a commentary on the preceding Ch 9 which contains the parable of the man born blind and the subsequent persecution of Jesus by the Pharisees. Jn 10.1-21 is an allegorical attack on the Pharisees and a commentary on the responsibility for leadership and stewardship.

On Remembrance Day, it speaks to me not of the need for a strong defence force (the sheepfold) or for strong military leaders (good shepherds) to protect us against the enemies of the nation (wolves, thieves, bandits and hired hands). Rather, is says to me we need in our national leaders - one species of contemporary good shepherds - integrity that we may trust them to lead the people - the sheep - into good pasture. That means not into danger, not into war.

Jesus demands of us all, transformation of our lives and the societies in which we live. Reading the good shepherd on Remembrance Day highlights to me that we, through our leaders, have not responded to our experience of war and transformed our national society or our international society in response to the horror, the waste ad the destruction. Rather, we tend to glorify the horror and the death of the people. We are at risk of becoming dependent on war (or conflict, such as the refugee ‘emergency’) as a means of defining our national identity.

There goes the Community

If the comments made by Tim Costello last week over the impotence of government to face big business (see my post last Saturday) didn’t convince you, then the commentary this past week by Mr Martin Parkinson, Secretary of the Treasury, will. Mr Parkinson has commented that tax receipts are seriously reduced, in part because of the tax breaks given to mining. He also mentioned that miners receive 20% of corporate profits but pay only 10% of the tax. This is due, he says, to the tax deductions they are allowed for depreciation. It is quite clear that the efforts of big mining has been extravagantly successful in nobbling the politicians. Guy Pearce wrote extensively on the mechanism of this in Quarterly Essay No.33 in 2009.

There is, of course, a historical precedent for this. In the 17th century in England powerful land holders were still only tenants, the Crown owned the land. During a period of evolution of the relationship between the Crown and parliament where the Crown ceded absolute authority and much day to day power, including that of land title, these powerful land interests influenced a newly resurgent parliament, to pass land into private possession - theirs. Title enabled them to force less powerful tenants off the land they had previously shared with the result that for many connection to the land and the certainty of future provision for family was lost. The best they could hope for was to return to their land as paid laborers of their former co-tenants. This was called The Enclosures. The effect was the destruction of community and peasantry as it had been known.

I fear the same will be the effect of maintaining exceptional treatment of the mining industry. First of all, why does this industry deserve special treatment over any other? The answer is not that they are essential to Australia’s continuing prosperity. While they extract commodity minerals and metals for sale overseas, employing high technology and fewer people, and while there is no elaboration of the primary product and value add to produce secondary or tertiary goods of higher value (using our skilled workforce) , then it is the overseas customer’s prosperity which depends on it, not ours. Principally China. Further, what is the effect on the indigenous communities whose land (yes they ‘own’ it) is damaged in the process? Or the family relationships of the fly-in/fly-out workforce? And what of those on lower incomes and pensions struggling to make a go of their lives? Won’t they see that there is a rule and prosperity for one part of the community and hardship and poor opportunity for them. Finally, shouldn’t all Australians feel ashamed that they have elected a series of governments that are not true to their claims of democracy and equality and a fair go?

It seems to me history is repeating itself.

Problem Gamblers in Parliament

Tim Costello was interviewed on Radio National Breakfast on 1 March 12 by Fran Kelly, in his role with the National Churches Gambling Taskforce. He made a couple of interesting points. Some we probably know, or have some sense of: $5Bn/year is lost by addicted gamblers; Australia has the most dangerous kind of poker machine - High Intensity.

He made a couple of less obvious but equally, if not more troubling points. Costello believes most politicians, from all sides of the political divide are anti-pokie. Many or most are intimidated by the campaigns run by the cashed-up pro-gambling industry - the Clubs. The politicians say the industry is too strong, they need protection from them and the industry is too powerful to take on.

We should be outraged by this. It is simply not acceptable that any industry has the capability, the means and the will to intimidate parliamentary representatives. We do know that other industries exert extraordinary power, especially the Oil lobby and mining, but for politicians to admit they are powerless and intimidated beggars belief. Moreover, what do they think they are elected for? It is certainly not to roll over for a cashed-up arrogant industrial lobby that pushes all out of its path to profit. We deserve and we should expect politicians to have more nerve and more moral fibre than this.

This state of affairs deserves an independent inquiry.

Christmas Island Refugee Deaths

The WA coroner’s findings of failure of the Federal Government to generally foresee and act upon the probability of the disaster and loss of life which occurred on 15 December 2010 - the tragedy of the sinking of SIEV 221 at Christmas Island with the loss of 50 lives - comes as no surprise. Our government and the community at large has pretty much turned a blind eye to the refugee situation, perhaps hoping it will go away. In doing so we have abrogated our responsibility to humanity.

The anti-refugee push will say ‘the boats are unsafe therefore they should be prevented from coming in the fist place’. BRRRR wrong answer, because in this glib response is the expectation that if they don’t come here they will be someone else’s problem, we won’t have to worry. That means they will remain somewhere in the Sub-Continent or South East Asia. A version of the Malaysia solution without controls. Have a look at my photographs from the Pulau Bidong Vietnamese refugee camp off the east coast of peninsula Malaysia in the mid 80s at: https://picasaweb.google.com/RichardJGWilson/PulauBidong

You can see from these that Malaysia, left to its own devices, will not run a humanitarian refugee holding facility worth the name. This camp was run by the prison department. The rumours of ill-treatment of the refugees by the guards were common and sometimes visible. Beating a uncooperative prisoner (refugee) with a hammer, for instance.

This community needs to take into our hearts the idea that people in less fortunate circumstances than ours - meaning most of the rest of the world’s population - are not a threat to our economy or sovereignty or security, rather, in not looking after them we threaten our own claim to be decent people.

While our hearts seem to be intractable, the problem is not. I know from my own work in refugee camps that our government and the bureaucracy knows what is going on in the source countries and in the pathways refugees take to get to here. Or if they don’t know, they should. We are failing to deal with the problem at its source, even before a military situation arises. We have the capacity to intervene positively and diplomatically in emerging trouble areas. We must acknowledge that Iraq and Afghanistan are now beyond diplomacy but, had we acted earlier, they may not have got to their present parlour state. And now that refugees are on the move we could intervene earlier in the pathways, selecting a generous refugee intake with open and willing hearts to prevent them needing boats at all. This we attempted to do in the camps in Malaysia. This we should do for refugees from the Middle East. This we may need to do in Irian Jaya, for instance.

At home we need to reject the rhetoric, especially from the right, of the threat that refugees present. It is simply not true.

Coming Out - Same Sex Marriage

The lectionary readings for Sunday 12 February 2012 included the well-known account of Jesus’ healing of the leper from Mark 1:40-45. Encounters with lepers are rare these days because the disease has been largely eradicated and is quite easily treated; it is, simply, a bacterial infection and can be managed with antibiotics. Yet the image of a leper, disfigured, dressed in rags and living in a colony, highly contagious and therefore to be avoided, remains within the mythology of our culture.

And mythology is what this image is. The fact is that leprosy is not particularly contagious, and anyway, something in the order of 90% of the world’s population is naturally immune to it. Its sufferers do not need to live in isolation in colonies and while one of the effects is nerve damage and so a loss of sensation, limbs and extremities do not drop off! What is more, the identification of the disease referred to in today’s readings is not certain in fact to be leprosy. Leprosy did not occur in Old Testament times and had only just begun to appear in the first century. The term leprosy here gathers together a number of skin ailments such as psoriasis or eczema and fungal infections.

Nevertheless, in Jesus’ time, possibly as a result of the disfigurement of untreated disease, so-called lepers were banished to colonies, branded as ritually unclean and therefore excluded from normal society, not allowed to worship in the synagogue or the Temple. So, the very action of the leper in this story, in approaching Jesus, was unlawful. Lepers were often looked after by a few brave, compassionate souls who saw the injustice of their exclusion. It is quite dismaying to contemplate the hurt and lack of compassion toward so many people, out of ignorance.

If lepers were so feared, if they were outside the bounds of community, why does Jesus risk what was, according to the wisdom of the time, a deadly infection and make himself ritually unclean and therefore unable to enter the synagogue or temple, by responding to the leper’s appeal by touching him? Why would he do this?
Look again at what the leper does - he begs Jesus and kneels.

Recalling Philippians 2 -
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth
- the leper recognises Jesus as God and Messiah, an outcast of negligible social value or rank is given insight denied to most ordinary people and, above all, the religious authorities. Do we have to re-think the leper’s position in society?
And Jesus’ response? He reaches out to touch the leper and the leper is immediately made clean - ritually purified. Not just cured of whatever disease he has, but also brought into social acceptability. Now able to mix freely, now able to go to the temple or the synagogue. The immediacy of this transformation suggests that the distinction that had been made, is now invalidated.

The old way of thinking is cast out, like the demons. A new way of thinking is instituted. A shocking resetting of the social standards has taken place. We might expect this have outraged the Pharisees and scribes. We know the people were galvanised into action - coming to him from every quarter. Through Jesus’ challenge to the conventional thinking, the community social contract is re-written.

Several years ago my wife and I walked the overland track in Tasmania, sixty-something kilometres through the wilderness, it is a wonderful experience. The normal practice is for the tour company guides to meet the 10 or so people on the trip at their headquarters a few miles out of Launceston early on the first day and to share breakfast. As you would expect, at table we made introductions, in turn among the group.

We were a mixed group, two impossibly young guides, three doctors who had trained together (that was reassuring), two friends from the northern NSW coast on leave from husbands and kids, two European men, one from Amsterdam, the other from Germany and several others.
Peter, the man from Amsterdam introduced himself as being on an extended trip through Australia, an art gallery curator, travelling with his husband Andre, the man from Germany.

For a fraction of a second, time stood still. Not because there were two gay men on the trip, that was hardly unusual or even unexpected. It was that Peter had made his introduction without the slightest sense that two men married to each other was anything other than completely normal. It seemed in that timeless moment, God reached in to the room and touched our hearts to challenge our expectations, to re-set our ideas of what is ‘normal’ and what is not.

And normal was what it became for us over the six days of the trip, these two men showed us their normal affection and love for each other and as they became our friends. This change was effected without words. There was no commentary by anyone, no whispered conversations, the actions of the two men was all the comment, all the testimony that was needed to overturn our previous expectations, our previous notions of normality, whatever they were. And whatever they were, for each of us, our old ideas became foolishness and ignorance.

Same Sex Marriage is becoming an issue in the Anglican Church. The Social Justice Committee of this Diocese has already received an extensive submission from conservative evangelicals seeking a statement of support for a position rejecting proposed amendment of the Marriage Act of 1961. The Act provides that marriage is between a man and a woman, exclusively. The amendment would remove that provision. That statement of support has not been made but the debate will continue.

The issue is becoming more prominent in our media too.
Ted Olson, former Solicitor General of the United States was interviewed by Richard Aedy on Radio National last week (Sunday 5 February 2012) in Sunday Profile. Olson, is now a practising lawyer, and is part of a team that is challenging an amendment to the Californian State constitution. The Californian constitution does not presently specify marriage as between a man and a woman - as does our Marriage Act of 1961. The amendment seeks to make it do so. Through the work of Olsen and his colleagues, the US courts have overturned the amendment but further appeal is expected and it is likely the case will end up in the US Supreme Court.

There are two interesting aspects to this case. The first is the arguments that have been used by Olsen and his colleagues. These are that in the US marriage has the status of a fundamental right in law. This means in law that access to the right cannot be restricted by discrimination. Over time this right has been confirmed in a number of cases where discrimination has denied it - on the basis of race, on the basis of incarceration (prisoners in the US are permitted to become married), or for being a slave - in past time. Olsen argues that denial of same sex marriage is similarly discriminatory.

The second thing that is interesting are the primary arguments against same sex marriage used by its opponents. The first primary argument is that marriage exclusively between a man and a woman is necessary to preserve the right to procreation. Olsen’s response is that marriage has never been limited only to people for the purpose of procreation, that there has always been access to it by people who cannot procreate - for whatever reason - age or infertility, for instance. Neither are people who are married and able to procreate, required to do so. On court examination, its opponents could not specify how disallowing same sex marriage would support or further procreation between men and women.

The second primary argument is that disallowing same sex marriage is necessary to preserve the institution of marriage. Again when pressed in legal argument, including by the judge, the opponents of same sex marriage could not provide any mechanism or argument that demonstrated that same sex marriage diminishes heterosexual marriage.
It is clear to me then, that our preferences and assumptions on matters of social acceptability should always subject to revelation, inquiry and sometimes, revision. Grant and denial of ritual purity is still our practice, not only in relation to the gay community but also on race, on refugees, on attitude to work and many others.

If we are honest we recognise that often the basis of the discrimination, the arguments we mount to claim difference, rest on ignorance and are not logically secure. At worst they are empty, they are used to prop up our prejudices, they are just plain wrong. The problem, the disease, lies not in the other person but in ourselves.

A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose.