Christianity for the 21st Century?
December 22, 2007Geez, it’s amazing how much things can change in a month! I was reading this article about the Prime Minister’s Christian faith. I winced, as I recalled what that faith had become under both Howard and Bush’s reign. Preaching fire and brimstone, calling for the deaths of homosexuals, the protection of monolithic State Institutions. So this articulation of Rudd’s Christianity really surprised me -
here are two ways to read Rudd’s blending of faith and politics.
The first - and, in fairness, the way most people who know him read it - is that Rudd’s values really are driven by the Old Testament prophets crying out for justice, and the example of the radical Christ, who consorted with the despised of his day - tax collectors, prostitutes, criminals and lepers - and who overturned the tables of the money lenders in the temple.
The second, less charitable, view is that after the 2004 election Rudd saw the strategically important, if not particularly large, evangelical vote and decided he wanted a slice of it for Labor. Rudd talked to this author in 2005 about the Faith, Politics and Values working group he had established within the Labor caucus. To supporters of the Christian-inspired Family First party, which had sent preferences to the Coalition in several decisive seats, he asked: “What do you get from the Liberals that you don’t get elsewhere?”
This is a brand of Christianity that I haven’t heard expressed in 11 years. Using religion to help the poor, the weak and the defenceless? I thought that’d gone out of fashion in the selfish me-tooism of the 21st Century. And then I remember that those forces lost resoundingly at the end of 2007 and won’t recover for a long, long time.
Now this is the kind of Christianity I can get behind.
