Bishop John

On our morning walk along the idyllic Devonport foreshore some weeks ago, the Director of Ministry Services directed my attention to a fine bust of Joseph and Enid Lyons. The erudite Director inspired my interest and when I saw the November Quadrant magazine featuring,  ‘The Annus Mirabilis of a Subdued Radical: Joseph Lyons in 1931′, I sprang into action and have now read a fascinating account of this outstanding Tasmanian’s year of conscientious struggle and change. Quadrant magazine can be purchased online or like me at your newsagent for $8.50. Some wonderful quotes,

“Lyons now also commended to a wider audience his old Tasmanian practices of consultation and consensus (my emphasis-how desperately we need these practices):

We have to get together because the problems ahead of us are difficult, and we can only solve them by getting together … I hope that policy [of consultation] will be applied to Australia. We are allaAustralians and the problem is ours. When we get together those sharp divisions which ahve taken place in the past will exist no longer.

Joseph Lyons (1879-1939) had an amazing political career as Labour Party member and Premier of Tasmania, then a founder of the United Australia Party and Prime Minister of Australia.  A fuller biographical sketch here.

The Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TCCI) last week announced the appointment of a most meritorious Tasmanian as CEO.  Earlier in the year the TCCI in seeking to further its role  initiated an annual “Joseph Lyons Memorial Lecture”. The Quadrant magazine article comments,

 The lecture was delivered by an “internet visionary” and dealt with Tasmania’s prospective broadband roll-out, a curious but appropriate choice given that Treasurer Lyons had allowed for the initial connection of his native island to the mainland by submarine telephone cable in the 1933-34 budget. The TCCI has thus revived the Tasmanian consensus of the 1920s, but this should only be the beginning of a broader commemoration.

Great news this morning for the well-being of young Australians. The Prime Minister has announced the extension to Federal Government funding for School Chaplaincy to the end of 2011. I trust that the school chaplaincy program will be further extended and that funding will be increased to minister more fully to our young people. In Tasmania some 90 chaplains are walking with students, families and staff.

See PM announces chaplain funding  22 November 2009.

See School Chaplaincy Program-letter.

I am preparing to participate in the Parliament of World Religions in Melbourne early next month. I am looking forward to joining with Archbishop Philip Freier of Melbourne in a worship time in which I have been invited to preach the sermon. Unfortunately the workshop I was to give seems to have dropped off the program!? – that bloke Murphy strikes again! Nevertheless, it means I can have even more opportunities to engage with people in learning and sharing.

I found  Jesus Christ among the Religions by Archbishop Denis Hart of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne stimulating as it sets out their approach to participation in the Parliament of World Religions. Kairos Catholic Journal, 15 November 2009 Volume 20, Issue 21. [I last enjoyed talking with Archbishop Denis during an early morning walk in Melbourne.] The whole article is worth your time. A taste,

We naturally want to engage with and seek to understand people of other faiths in order to ensure that our relationships with them are harmonious and peaceful and that their human right to freedom of belief is respected, just as we wish our rights to be respected.

At the same time, we also always keep in mind that we have been commissioned to give constant witness to our faith in Jesus Christ as the true and unique revelation of God, as our Saviour and as the one who can lead us to true holiness and communion with God.

Where there is truth and holiness in other religions, we acknowledge this, and use it as an opportunity in dialogue to bear witness that wherever truth and holiness exists, it has its ultimate source in Jesus Christ. Our dialogue with people of other faiths will also give us the opportunity for giving account of our hope of salvation in Jesus.

The Difference between Evangelicals and Fundamentalists sets out John Stott’s thinking and is by Roger Steer. It comes as a David Virtue VOL Exclusive www.virtueonline.org of November 13, 2009.  To whet your appetite:

Over a period of a few months during 1998, John [Stott] wrote his Evangelical Truth: a personal plea for unity. ‘As I approach the end of my life on earth,’ he wrote, ‘and as this year I complete sixty years of privileged Christian discipleship, I would like to leave behind me, as a kind of spiritual legacy, this little statement of evangelical faith, this personal appeal to the rising generation.’

Twenty years on from answering the questions ‘What is an evangelical?’ at Nottingham in 1977, he chose a Trinitarian approach to evangelical truth. But first, he set out ten respects in which the authentic evangelical differed from the fundamentalist. In doing so he tried to be as fair as he could to fundamentalists trying desperately to avoid caricature.

A very stimulating and much needed article, The Difference between Evangelicals and Fundamentalists.

As ever, I gained from John Stott’s erudition and clarity. I am sure Joe Hockey would likewise gain: see, Joe Hockey on faith and society.

Mark Durie gives an analysis of accused Fort Hood killer Major Nidal M. Hasan’s own powerpoint presentation on Islam. The presentation is itself worth a look, as is Mark Durie’s comment on its islamic teaching. The slides are true to mainline (Sunni) Islam and Durie comments on the slides as demonstrating the emphasis given by Major Hasan to the enormous dilemma for a Muslim to kill another Muslim:

What the US military has to accept is that some Muslims in the armed forces could be poor soldiers in wars against Muslims.  In a sense what Major Hasan was arguing was that Muslim soldiers can only be relied upon to kill non-Muslims.

Underlying this world view, fed by the streams of centuries of Islamic theology, is the distinction that a Muslim’s blood is sacrosanct, but an infidel’s blood is not. 

The US military is between a rock and a hard place.  It could  a) choose to discriminate and refuse to recruit  Muslims, b) not use Muslims against Muslim enemies, or  c) obtain a rock-solid fatwa declaring that the Muslim enemies of the US are not true Muslims at all, so they can lawfully be killed.

Mark Durie’s full article on Major Nidal M. Hasan.  Link to Major Hasan’s powerpoint presentation on ‘The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military’.

Mark Durie’s  analysis is supported by Sheikh Awlaki the former imam at a Virginia mosque that Hasan attended who praised Hasan as a ‘hero’ and said:

”He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people,” Sheikh Awlaki wrote. ”The only way a Muslim could be Islamically justified serving as a soldier in the US Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

See, Killer’s emails to cleric ignored.