The ABC Radio National program, ‘The Religion Report’ recently ran a story on the very subjects that this site is dealing with. The transcript is below. This is very interesting reading in the context of the parallel debate that has been occurring within America. Indeed, with statements like the following, it is hard to imagine that the social commentator, Clive Hamilton, is not aware of the work of Rabbi Lerner and the Tikkun Community:
“Well I came to a realisation a few years ago that the old model that many progressives had operated on was out of date and irrelevant, and damaging in fact. And that is a view that the principal problem of modern society is material deprivation, and in rich countries like Australia in fact, the opposite is the case. The principal social and personal problems we have arise out of the sicknesses of affluence over consumption, loss of meaning, and the damage to our relationships that materialism and selfishness causes.”
Chances are, also, that Kevin Rudd was influenced by US evangelical progressive, Jim Wallis (see www.Sojourners.org), who visited Australia in April 2006. When introduced by Tim Costello to select federal parliamentarians, Wallis would have emphasised what Rudd calls the “…Old Testament theological point of view… the prophetic challenge of the church, which is to give voice to those who are the marginalised, the dispossessed and the oppressed.”
The radio program addresses the political right’s exploitation of the moral values line to curry favour with conservative Christian groups. The program does not touch on the need to recognise, as legitimate at heart, the anxieties of conservative Christians. There is indeed a values crisis - it is a spiritual crisis. The role of the spiritual progressives is to meet the religious right at this common understanding and engage in listening and more listening.
Nick BY
***
This week Labor frontbencher Kevin Rudd has published a piece on Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Monthly magazine. Or rather, Bonhoeffer is the starting point for an essay on the rightful role of churches in politics.
Clive Hamilton discusses the shift in moral attitudes of the progressive 'left' and the conservative 'right' and whether he really sees churches as the only future for progressive politics in this country.
This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.
Stephen Crittenden: This week Labor frontbencher Kevin Rudd has a long piece on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Church-State relations, in The Monthly magazine.
He says that in George Bush's America and John Howard's Australia we are increasingly seeing what he calls 'the political orchestration of organised Christianity'. It has been exposed for what it is in the United States recently, prompting an important debate in church circles there, and that same debate now has to happen here.
In that debate, Bonhoeffer is a very useful guide because he understood the correct relationship of Church and State in a terrible crisis.
Kevin Rudd goes on to argue that the term 'family values' is one of the most debased terms in Australian political life, that the argument, 'Vote for me, I'm a Christian' is repugnant, and that Christian faith means nothing if it's not about social action.
Well Kevin Rudd joins us now. Mr Rudd, thanks for being on the program. You say Dietrich Bonhoeffer is 'without doubt the man I most admire in the history of the 20th century'. Why?
Kevin Rudd: Dietrich Bonhoeffer had guts, he was principled, and those principles were put to the test during probably one of the most awful periods of the century, namely Germany in the 1930s. Bonhoeffer was a pastor, theologian, peace activist, and he was a bloke who had begun a promising academic career, teaching in systematic theology at the University of Berlin, and then suddenly the stormtroopers erupted in the streets outside, and he was faced with the ethical dilemma of the age, which is what do I do when the State is taken over by a bunch of thugs? And Bonhoeffer's response was, Well, I'll do the right thing; I'll stand up for the persecuted minority, in this case the Jewish people of Germany, and he also participated over time in a plot to remove Hitler himself and he paid for all that with his life. Hitler had him hanged, together with the other conspirators, just two weeks before the end of the war.
Stephen Crittenden: He was of course an opponent of overweening State power, and as you say, he was part of a plot to assassinate one particular head of state. What does he have to say to a politician who aspires to have political power?
Kevin Rudd: I think what Bonhoeffer does for people who are Christians in politics in every age and in every culture, is to say this: that Christian ethics are a dead letter unless they are translated into real concrete social action in pursuit of social justice. In other words, Bonhoeffer's enduring principle is that Christianity is not a privatised, spiritualised affair meant for the interior places of the chapel, it's very much an exterior thing. It is to be applied in concrete social circumstances to deal with the injustice of the age in which you happen to live.
Stephen Crittenden: It's very interesting you should say that, because I think it's fair to say that you've been pretty cautious in the past about talking about your own religious views, even when you've been interviewed on 'Compass' on the ABC, you've tended to be pretty insistent on your faith being a private matter, yet here you are saying that Christian faith can't just be a private thing, in fact Christianity doesn't mean anything if it doesn't involve social action.
Kevin Rudd: Well my remarks have become sharp in the last couple of years. Prior to the last election I tended not to speak about these things at all, because it's always been my preferred position that you simply remained private about these things. It's very much the Australian way, and if I had my way, that would be my way as well. But at the last Federal election things changed radically; you had the emergence of Family First, with strong links to the Pentecostal and Evangelical churches across Australia, providing first preference votes in practically every seat that they contested right across Australia, resulting in many of our good Members of Parliament being defeated. So I thought the time had come, given the Family First phenomenon, and on top of that the increasing evidence of the systematic organisation of right-wing Christianity in Australia by the forces of Liberals and Nationals, the people on our side of the show to start speaking out.
Stephen Crittenden: What are you actually doing here? Because I think it's fair to say that Sydney Morning Herald seems to have missed the point entirely, at least they don't seem to have read the article that I read, in saying that you're calling for the churches to have a bigger role in politics, and even that the churches should become allies and cheerleaders of the Labor cause.
Kevin Rudd: What I've said in the article in the October edition of The Monthly, is that Christians should always view all politicians sceptically; they should always hold a state somewhat at arm's length, but in their engagement with the state, they should take a consistent ethical position, which is always based on a cause of social justice or the interests of the marginalised. I think what I haven't been calling for necessarily is a greater Christian voice in politics, as some have written. I've simply called for a different Christian voice in politics. The social justice tradition of Christianity has been alive and well and so much of the shaping of the Labor movement over the last 100 years, but in the last decade or so, it seems to have been drowned out increasingly by the conservative forms of Christianity in Australia, a view of Christianity which says it's purely a matter of private personal faith, and as for my interests in the social wellbeing of my neighbour, well that's his business, not mine, and he can go and jump in the lake. So it's time, I thought, to contest that view.
Stephen Crittenden: So at one level you're attempting to head off the Christian Right?
Kevin Rudd: Well I'm concerned about the emergence of the Christian Right. I know America very well, I go there often, I'm a great friend of the United States and have been for most of my adult life. But I've certainly observed in recent times the way in which the Republicans have sought systematically to organise Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity and some forms of Catholicism in the United States, harnessing it to the Republican cause.
Stephen Crittenden: And you're saying that's happening here?
Kevin Rudd: I'm concerned about the emergence of that, and I became quite concerned about the emergence of that when Family First arrived at the last Federal election. So I thought Well, it's time we broke our vow of silence, and we started to speak out. I think increasingly you'll find people across the show, that is, on the social democratic side of politics who are also of faith, will have the same view.
Stephen Crittenden: Is there a danger that you could perhaps be pointing your own party in a direction that it might not want to go? I'm sure there are some people who would say that the parables of Jesus are the foundation stones on which the Labor party stands, but just as many who don't necessarily see that.
Kevin Rudd: I understand that critique very well, and the tension that you referred to is as old as Christianity itself. But I think it's important to lay down some very basic principles here. The first is, I am a lifelong defender of the separation of Church and State. Our founding fathers had this debate in the 1890s, and they resolved, quite rightly, in this country not to establish any form of religion or any particular Christian denomination, in a radical departure from the relationship between the British State and the Church of England. That's a good principle, and it's served us well for the last 100 years, and the founding fathers were very mindful of the experience I suppose of the wars of religion in Europe. On top of that, I strongly defend our parliament and our polity as being both secular and pluralist, but within that secular pluralist polity, you can't deny Christians having their voice, just as you can't deny anyone else having their voice, and the single purpose of my intervention in this debate, apart from honouring the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is to say that when Christians inject their voice into the public political debate in Australia, to be mindful of this continuing social justice tradition of the church, rather than simply have a single voice of privatised conservative Christianity, which has as its subtext, that the natural party of God is somehow the Liberal party and/or the National party.
Stephen Crittenden: You say that the political message 'Vote for me, I'm a Christian' is all to common in the United States, and increasingly appealing here. Is it? Family First clearly felt the need to downplay their connections with the Assemblies of God at the last election.
Kevin Rudd: I think when I say that in the piece, in The Monthly, I'm referring to the activity of various Liberal and National party candidates in various seats around the country, and their particular connections with local Pentecostal, Evangelical and other churches. As I say in The Monthly article, proclaiming that a) you're a Christian, and b) vote for me, is one of the most nonsensical things you can do. It's got no theological basis, and I would have thought even less political merit, but nonetheless, some try to do it and perhaps some get away with it. All I'm saying is it's important for those who come from a social justice tradition, both within politics and for those people who are hard Christians within Christianity to argue strongly the alternative tradition, and that's again why I've entered this debate.
Stephen Crittenden: At one point you say 'The function of the church is to give power to the powerless, a voice to the voiceless, and to point to the great silences in our national discourse, where otherwise there are no natural advocates.' And I wonder whether you're saying there that the churches need to be there to provide real opposition when the political party of opposition is hopeless and third-rate.
Kevin Rudd: No, that's not what I'm saying, I'm saying that given the complex nature of the world in which we live, there are always going to be challenges and concerns affecting people in disparate parts of our country, or the world, which are simply not heard. For example, we now hear of Darfur, and I was in Darfur only a couple of months ago myself, and were it not for organisations like World Vision, as well as many secular organisations like Medecins sans Frontiers, then you would not have the level of international attention which is currently being directed however unsuccessfully, to bringing about United Nations intervention in Darfur. But my point is there are probably half a dozen smaller Darfurs around the world at present, which none of us hear about. And it's who gives voice to these concerns, that's the challenge I think, and if you were looking at it from an Old Testament theological point of view, I suppose it's the prophetic challenge of the church, which is to give voice to those who are the marginalised, the dispossessed and the oppressed.
Stephen Crittenden: Do people like George Pell and Peter Jensen have a right to be consulted on certain issues, even consulted regularly?
Kevin Rudd: Of course. As do other representatives of the churches in Australia. When Cardinal Pell speaks, as he spoke I seem to recall, at the time of the Iraq war, there's an audible pause in the national body politic, and people say, Hmm, that's an interesting contribution. The same with Archbishop Jensen and other church leaders. It's not to say that these church leaders should have a monopoly on public opinion, they don't. As I said at the outset, we are proud of the fact in Australia we have a secular, pluralist, polity. That's as it should be, I'm a strong defender of that, and will always be such a defender. But when Christians within that polity argue a view, you can't attempt to simply shut them up and close them down, because they've got as much democratic right as anybody else to argue a view, so long as that view's tempered by reason. But what I'm saying is that for Christians arguing their view within the polity, to be reminded again of the social justice tradition of the church, that's an important meeting place between that tradition of Christianity and the principles for which my political party have stood the last 115 years.
Stephen Crittenden: Is Australia a Christian country? Are its values Christian? Is its future Christian? That seems to be what The Sydney Morning Herald thinks you're saying.
Kevin Rudd: Well therein lies the great question of our age. I don't have any particular prophetic insight into that one. There's a very interesting book which I'm sure many of your listeners have caught up with in recent times written by Cardinal Ratzinger just before his elevation to the papacy, about the future of Christianity in Europe, and the dialogue between faith and reason within the European tradition, and the future of what Cardinal Ratzinger describes as 'the West without Christianity'. It's an important contribution to the debate; I don't propose to have any magical insights into this, but certainly when you look at where the West has come so far, so much of the richness that we enjoy within what we describe broadly as Western culture, comes from a Judea-Christian tradition and an Enlightenment tradition. It would strike me that this represents a sensible compact for the future as well, faith harnessed with reason, and that's not to suggest that anyone or everybody should have a form of faith, not at all. But these have been good underpinnings for where we've undertaken the journey thus far.
Stephen Crittenden: It strikes me that you're making something of a real personal commitment in this piece to work on reducing poverty in Australia if Labor gets re-elected. I wonder is it time for a domestic portfolio?
Kevin Rudd: I'm perfectly happy with what I'm doing as there's a fair bit of poverty off-shore, let me tell you. About 1.4 billion last time I look at the World Bank report. Look, there's no point being in government unless you intend to do something.
Stephen Crittenden: I guess I'm making the point that you're talking very much in this piece about domestic issues of social justice and poverty. Are you doing what Peter Costello's been doing, speaking outside your own portfolio precisely in order to raise your profile across a much broader range of issues?
Kevin Rudd: You know, sometimes things are as simple as they appear, and that is it's one hundred years since Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born. I admire the bloke, and I wanted to do a major piece on Bonhoeffer in this his centenary year, but I've been determined to do this, in fact I agreed many months ago to deliver a lecture at an international conference on Bonhoeffer at Whitley College at the University of Melbourne, which I did a couple of weekends ago. The Monthly heard that I was doing this, and the two exercises were combined.
Stephen Crittenden: A final question. You mentioned Ben Chifley in the piece, and you mentioned his great line about the light on the hill, and say he was consciously referring to the Sermon on the Mount; are you also trying to reconnect the Labor party with some kind of Christian perspective? Are you suggesting that it may have been damaged by not taking religion seriously enough?
Kevin Rudd: No, that's not where I'm coming from. My remarks are primarily addressed not to the Labor party itself, they're addressed to the broader Australian community, and the electorate at large. Remember from the census data that 70%-75% of people profess a belief in God, so this is not exactly a minority pursuit in Australia. In 100 years time maybe it will be, I don't know, but this piece that I've written is addressed very much to people out there in the Australian community who are Christians; I'm not attempting to address this message to those who are not, and I treat those who are not with complete respect. Many of my colleagues in the Labor party are not believers, and they are dear, close friends of mine whose views I profoundly respect. That's the good thing about our show, it is literally a broad church on these sort of questions.
Stephen Crittenden: So that if Australians tend to be wary of politicians who claim God is on their side, that's actually not what you're saying in this piece at all?
Kevin Rudd: Not at all. I mean I'm too much of a student of history to know that if you looked at the history of the First World War, the British Empire, God, King and Empire, the German troops in the trenches opposite with inscribed on their belts, 'Gott mit uns' 'God is with us', and then any student of history is very wary of any claim to God being on their side. God is not owned by any political party and never will be. My concern is there's been a de facto slide into a proposition in Australia in the last decade, that the natural party of God is the Liberal party, that God has somehow become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the conservative side of politics. That's why some of us have decided to speak out, and because I'm Chairman of the Parliamentary Parties Committee on Faith Politics and Values, I've also got a responsibility to do so, to reclaim the ground, and I think that's important at this stage in Australia's political history.
Stephen Crittenden: Great to have you on the program.
Kevin Rudd: Thanks for having me.
Stephen Crittenden: Well let's hear another extract from the first of Archbishop Jensen's two addresses to his Synod.
Peter Jensen: As the Sydney Anglican community, we have committed ourselves through the diocesan mission to an evangelistic outreach of significant proportions. It's not quite as demanding as the invasion of Europe, but it does require energetic and planned effort on a large scale. Furthermore, we are evangelising in a hard place at a hard time. I'm always interested to hear from our African friends, who are experiencing vast evangelistic success. They confirm that when it comes to secular Western culture, they would find it as hard as we do. It's a daunting project. I'm not in the slightest surprised that we are finding it rugged work, and sometimes dispiriting. We mustn't be dismayed, however, at the difficulties. The failure of secularism creates opportunities for the Gospel, and the failure of secularism becomes plainer by the month.
Only this afternoon I read to my delight and surprise, some remarks by Mr Clive Hamilton, an observer and a commentator on our society, who pointed out that in his opinion in the end we will have to go back to the churches, for the sort of transcendent values that are needed in a community, if our community is going to do well. Progressive politics, he thinks, will come from the churches, because of our interest in the matters that concern our real humanity.
Secularism fails to support the central concern of the truly human life: relationships, the very point that Mr Hamilton and so many others are making. And Australians regard relationships and families as their chief source of happiness.
Stephen Crittenden: Archbishop Peter Jensen in his dispirited minor mode. If that's his minor mode. Indeed.
Well here at The Religion Report we were keen to follow up on his reference to Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute at the ANU. How interesting that a leading think-tank associated with the progressive side of Australian politics, should regard the churches as the only future for progressive politics in this country. Clive Hamilton was speaking at a conference in Canberra earlier this month, convened by the ACTU, the Australian Conservation Foundation, ACOSS and the National Council of Churches.
Well Clive Hamilton, thanks for joining us. Looking around the room at these four groups, I understand, trade unions, environmentalists, the welfare lobby and the churches, you said: 'Curiously, in an age in which the mainstream churches are said to be in terminal decline; I believe that they hold the key to a new, progressive politics.' Why?
Clive Hamilton: Well I ask myself where a new progressive politics could come from. What social movement or what sort of motivational yearning could generate it in an affluent society characterised by profound loss of meaning. And it seemed to me that certainly the new politics couldn't be found in environmentalism, important and crucial as environmentalism is for our future. Nor can it be found in the social democratic model of the trade unions, important as they are in protecting the interests of their members. And when I asked about ACOSS - I love the work that ACOSS does in standing up for the underprivileged - but in an affluent society I don't believe that any of those social movements have the key to a progressive future. But when we consider the churches, not so much the churches as institutions, but the area of human concern that the churches have traditionally represented, I think it's with those deeper aspects of life that are articulated by the churches in their better moments, those that transcend the individualism and materialism and selfishness of modern affluent societies. It's in that that we can find the roots of a new progressive politics.
Stephen Crittenden: Now this is a development of your work over recent years on the emptiness of affluence. Can you just explain the link there?
Clive Hamilton: Well I came to a realisation a few years ago that the old model that many progressives had operated on was out of date and irrelevant, and damaging in fact. And that is a view that the principal problem of modern society is material deprivation, and in rich countries like Australia in fact, the opposite is the case. The principal social and personal problems we have arise out of the sicknesses of affluence over consumption, loss of meaning, and the damage to our relationships that materialism and selfishness causes.
Stephen Crittenden: Wealth doesn't make us happy, in fact we're all very unhappy.
Clive Hamilton: Well this is the contradiction of modern life. For decades we were promised that if only we attended to the economy and pursued higher incomes, then we'd be happy. But the tragedy is that we're not. In fact arguably, having conquered material deprivation, for most people, not all, but for most people in a country like Australia, we see a rash of psychological disorders, and a pervasive emptiness in everyday life.
Stephen Crittenden: Do the churches perhaps represent what's left of the left?
Clive Hamilton: In some respects, yes. I think they remain the repository of the deeper yearnings that some elements of the left were motivated by. There's always been a tradition in the left to focus on not so much on material deprivation but on alienation, the sense of the loss of self, the way in which modern industrial society deprives people of the opportunity to pursue a more truthful, a more authentic life. And I think there are many people in the churches, (and I should say particularly in the Catholic church, and I have no connection whatever with the Catholic church, it is merely an empirical observation) seem to have a strong recognition of that stream of progressive thought that has run through the last 200 or 300 years.
Stephen Crittenden: Interesting you should say the Catholic church, because it was in his speech this week to the Sydney Synod that the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, picked up what you had said just the other day. Also the case, isn't it, that the churches in so many of the important issues that are being debated today, are issues that transcend left and right often involve a moral view that transcends left and right, that it's important the churches know where they stand. People like Peter Jensen know where they stand. They're so familiar I guess with foundational thinking that they can fight their way through the flim-flam.
Clive Hamilton: Well I think the error of post-modernism which is so dominant, is that it has no metaphysical foundation for a moral critique. And in a way that's the fundamental problem of modern society, and I think it's crucial for people on the progressive side of the fence to acknowledge that and engage in a moral debate, which means developing new moral foundations for moral law. Now the problem as I see it, is that the anxiety and yearnings which ordinary Australians have about moral decline, has been articulated by people that I fundamentally disagree with, by people on the right, who I think often distort that moral anxiety for right-wing political purposes, and I think the left, for want of a better word, really needs to get over its fear of engaging in moral judgment and moral argumentation and to go back to the community with a moral vision so that the right can no longer monopolise and distort those sorts of concerns.
Stephen Crittenden: In fact, is a moral approach to these questions in some ways the only weapon that will work against the really scary monsters that confront our society?
Clive Hamilton: Well look, absolutely. I think every political debate is a moral debate. If you open up a newspaper today, on any day, in virtually every story there's a moral argument going on, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise. And that goes particularly for economic arguments, they're really moral arguments. And we really need to engage, because so much moral argument is actually being presented as if it's an argument about the facts or about a political dispute. And it seems to me that we need a new politics of morality, which is rooted in some of the traditional concerns of progressive people, in social justice, in the maldistribution of power, and the way in which that affects the capacity of people to pursue a truly fulfilling life.
Stephen Crittenden: The public and the media sometimes get wrong footed when conservative church leaders come out on a different side of some political issues than you might have expected. Peter Jensen, for example, came out strongly against the government's new IR legislation; and the Sydney Anglicans, despite their opposition to gay marriage, are signalling that they would probably want to give their public support to this Bill in Canberra sponsored by Warren Ench, that's going to give equality to gay people in other areas, such as superannuation, and that they would do so on justice grounds, on civil rights grounds. There are all sorts of odd realignments going on.
Clive Hamilton: And what a good thing that is. I was very surprised when Jensen came out against the IR legislation; I wasn't surprised when some of the Catholic bishops, whose history is far more solidly rooted in protection of workers' rights. But you talk about surprise at some of the churches coming out with unexpected positions. That's nothing compared to the surprise of some of our supporters when we speak out on moral issues, particularly relating to sex. When we at the Australia Institute produced a report three years ago, expressing alarm at the way in which young people, teenagers in Australia were exposed to huge amounts of pornography, particularly on the internet, we argued, from a factual basis we felt, as well as moral basis, that this was very damaging, and yet in response to that, a lot of our more traditional supporters were very puzzled as to why we would have entered into territory that's more often associated with those of the moral right. But we're not afraid of engaging in moral issues, and the most difficult ones are to do with sexual relations.
Stephen Crittenden: Just the other day you, I guess caused a new kind of moral panic in the top end of town, accusing David Jones of sexualising children in its advertising.
Clive Hamilton: Well we're very concerned about the issue of modern culture and marketing and the way in which sexual imagery is being used at younger and younger ages. Of course there's a very widespread concern about this across the community, and we've had a tremendous amount of response from all sorts of people, from those you might traditionally expect to be worried about that, to right across the spectrum to progressive people who say 'Yes, this is a serious problem that we have to address.' And the interesting thing is that if it had been the so-called 'usual suspects' of Fred Nile or someone like that saying these things, everybody would have yawned and said, 'Oh yes, he would say that'. But because we at the Australia Institute are on the progressive side of the fence and aren't supposed to talk about those things, let alone object to them, when we do analyse them and take a position, it attracts a lot of attention. I think that's a very good thing, because traditional ideological barriers, or distinctions, have really eroded and fallen down in recent times.
Stephen Crittenden: Now this leads me to I guess, my big question. Does the progressive side of politics, perhaps need to re-think what it means to be conservative, and what it means to be progressive, perhaps even consider claiming the conservative mantle for the left, on the basis that conservatism may in the current climate, be the only true progressivism.
Clive Hamilton: Well you see there's a fundamental contradiction within conservative politics nowadays. On the one hand you've got a degree, sometimes a great degree of moral conservatism in which - and John Howard is a good illustration - who tries to stake out ground recognising the moral anxiety and moral concerns of ordinary Australians. But on the other hand, economic liberalism, which he also espouses very strongly, is at the centre of the problems that are being created. I mean for example, the industrial relations legislation is a pretty serious assault on the family. There's no question about that. I mean it makes jobs more tenuous, it's more likely to lead to longer hours, it's definitely not good for marriages or relationships with children; giving free rein to the market very often leads to an erosion of moral values, and I think the work we've done on pornography and on the sexualisation of children is an illustration of that. So here's a real contradiction in the heart of conservative politicians.
Stephen Crittenden: But what about in the minds of the left though?
Clive Hamilton: Well in the minds of the left, there are similar difficulties, because whilst often being in favour of more government intervention, the left has traditionally been very opposed to governments intervening in moral issues, and yet we've argued, in the case of access to pornography on the internet for instance, that governments should intervene, and take stronger measures to restrict it, because we see a lot of social damage being done by it. So I would argue that the left too needs to take a more balanced position and accept not only greater regulation by government of business activity, of the labour market and trade perhaps, but also accept that government, expressing the wishes of the citizenry after a proper debate, should also take a stronger role in some of those areas of moral concern where the left have traditionally been too afraid to tread.
Stephen Crittenden: Just finally, let's come back to the churches. You say you're not talking about the churches riding in to the rescue as institutions, many people would say the mainline churches are dead or dying. Do the churches get it? Aren't they hung up, tearing themselves apart about issues that the wider community is not remotely interested in?
Clive Hamilton: Look I think the churches don't get it, but I think a lot of theologians and lay church people do get it. So I think the greatest obstacle to the churches having influence over politics in the future, and social change, is the institutions themselves.
Stephen Crittenden: So you're really putting your hope in, I suppose, talented individuals within the churches?
Clive Hamilton: Absolutely, and let's face it, in the history of Christianity, it's always been talented and inspired individuals who have brought about radical change.
Stephen Crittenden: Thank you for being on the program.
Clive Hamilton: Thank you.
Stephen Crittenden: Well there you have it. Dr Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute, and Archbishop Peter Jensen, proving that you can have your cake and eat it, be conservative and progressive at the same time.
That's all this week. Thanks to our producers, Emma Hoff Williams and Jenny Parsonage.
Kevin Rudd MP
Dr Clive Hamilton
Executive Director, The Australia Institute
Title: The Monthly Magazine
Stephen Crittenden
Emma Hoff Williams
Wednesday 8.30am
repeated 8pm
Presented by
Stephen Crittenden
date added: 12 April 2007