A Word for Wednesday

 

A Worldview for Sale!

(Photo krb - 2019)

Back in the heady days of the mid 1980s I was one of the original members of the Careforce Council. Some of you may remember Careforce. It was the body set up by the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn to coordinate and enable the social welfare activities of the Diocese. It was the precursor in this Diocese to the National body Anglicare. I was a member of the Council because, by then, I had fairly wide experience working in social policy at a national and local level. We were very much finding our way and we had few resources. It turned out that Bill Pearcy, the Council's Executive Officer was the arms and legs of the organization. Without Bill the Council would have been just another talkfest. I stayed on the Council for the first 7 years until it was reorganized in the leadup to it becoming part of the national body Anglicare. Looking back on that time I only have one regret and that is that the formation of a Diocesan body to some extent allowed church communities to disengage with the wider world in providing for the needs of the poor and certainly to walk away from their role in advocacy. Charity without advocacy changes nothing.

In the crisis over declining church membership which began in earnest in the 1990s disengagement became the modus operandi. The first thing to suffer was the end of serious ecumenism. Denominations believed that maintaining the way they did things and looking after their people would see them through the crisis. It didn't. 

As the crisis deepened, the conservative right wing of the church, who saw themselves as the owners of modern orthodox, moved to take control. Their way, the 'right' way, was to dominate, as it does now. It was easy. 'He who pays the piper calls the tune,' and the bottom line became all important. Gone was any serious debate about the issues of the day. They were of no relevance to a church that was disengaged from the community and in any case the church always had a ready answer to any issue. Typical was its response to the same-sex marriage debate where the church publicly threw its weight behind the conservative no campaign. The result is that the church has lost its place at the table of decision-making and the people have lost their advocate for rational decision making on social issues. As the church disengages with the world, more and more people disengage with the church.

The Advent story is not pretty. We await the coming into being of the Kingdom of God through the birth of a baby, born to a refugee couple in an occupied nation, where the ferment of revolution abounded, born in a stinking stable because there was no room for them anywhere else, with the lowest of the low, shepherds - outcasts, to witness the event, and thus the radical action of God to emerges. And whatever happens with the institutional church, as Rachel Held Evans puts it, the whole story of Advent is the story of how God can't be kept out. God is present. God is with us. God shows up - not with a parade but with the whimper of a baby, not among the powerful but among the marginalized, not to the demanding but to the humble.  

Advent blessings and peace to all.