Voting for Jesus, and an acid-test for Christianity
Just finished reading an essay by Amanda Lohrey entitled Voting for Jesus : Christianity and Politics in Australia. This piece looks at the supposed increasing influence of Christian groups such as Hillsong on the political process in Australia, and especially the connections between Christian groups and Right wing parties. She started off with a lot of promise, giving a fair handed interview of some Hillsong youth and then a relatively balanced evaluation of that church, but ultimately Ms Lohrey couldn’t adequately suppress her leftist, secular bias and the essay descended into conspiracy theorizing about the secret political influence of conservative Christian groups and how the Liberals are happy to use them as “fundamentalist attack dogs.”
Not content with discussing politics alone, Lohrey also points out perceived flaws in mainstream Christian belief itself. She dismisses the concepts of Jesus as saviour, original sin, justification by faith, and the “strict-father” model of religion as being “fundamentalist” doctrines with a range of negative consequences for individuals and society, whilst viewing a watered down “nurturant” teacher Jesus in a more positive light. The problem is that Lohrey fails to see that Christianity is a “broad church” so to speak, with a continuous spectrum of views from extreme fundamentalists to extreme liberals, and of which a sizeable majority would hold to some form of the “negative” doctrines she critiques in such an unnuanced way. She is quite happy in this book to attack not only Hillsong and extreme groups like the Exclusive Brethren, but the views of Catholic and Anglican leaders also. Perhaps if Ms Lohrey could have kept her focus on politics and stayed away from theology then this essay might have been of greater value, but sadly that was not the case.
One thing I did find of value, albeit in a depressing way, was the comments in the book from Tasmanian academic Phil Dowe. This is a former evangelical Christian who used to run student Christian groups at the university but is now an “informed agnostic.” His stated reasons for leaving the faith should give us all pause for thought, both as individual Christians and churches :
“But even more to the point was a strikingly practical – one might even say scientific – test that this philosopher applied to himself and those around him. The acid test of fundamentalist Christian faith was this : did it make you a better person? Dowe asked this of himself and others, including church leaders, and came up with a negative. “There is a hard-core belief in justification by faith alone as essential to being a Christian. There’s a whole theory of the individual being inhabited by the Spirit and how it’s supposed to make you a better person. But,” he says, in his quiet and emphatic way, “it doesn’t. Teachings were being applied but they weren’t working, they weren’t making a difference.”
This sort of comment is something we need to take seriously. If we as Christians honestly look at ourselves and Christians in general and apply this sort of “test” we must acknowledge that there is truth in Dowe’s observations. However the response to that should not be to doubt the essential validity of the gospel as Dowe does, but rather to look out ourselves to try and work out why we are going wrong in our theology, personal discipleship and ultimately our praxis. A more in depth look at this subject (from the point of view of someone who identified the same problems but who remained committed to biblical Christianity) is The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience by Ronald Sider. These are serious issues that need consideration.
Categories : Australia, Christianity, Politics | 5 Comments
