Do better as Christians

THERE IS a bit of false victimhood going around at the moment.

Over the years I’ve observed a very tricky device used by some of us in the commentary industry. You turn a power dynamic on its head and cast the powerful as the victim and the powerless as the perpetrator.

One of the best examples of this occurred during the time that Phillip Ruddock was at the helm of the Immigration Department.

Asylum seekers detained for years on end in remote Australian detention centres took the extraordinary steps of sewing their lips together and even digging graves for themselves.

The then Minister described these actions as ‘moral blackmail’. In this way us everyday Aussies living in freedom were the victims being oppressed by the powerless and voiceless held behind the razor wire.

So Andrew Bolt played this card beautifully last week. The ABC published a challenging and well-reasoned article by journalist Julia Baird titled ‘Submit to your husbands’.

The article written by Baird, a Christian from all accounts, examined the way that some members of the Church had endured domestic violence with perpetrators using twisted interpretations of scripture as justification.

This article was built on twelve months of research interviewing survivors, counsellors, priests, psychologists and academics from a range of Christian denominational backgrounds.

I first became aware of the article as it was shared through an online Christian community named Common Grace.

Common Grace had been focusing on doing better as Christians and the broader community when it comes to violence against women and children.

Their campaign has been going since May this year. Both Baird’s article and the resources of Common Grace have largely been asking questions around the culture that Christian Churches create when it comes to the matter of equality of women and men.

As part of the Christian tradition the Common Grace community has facilitated an examination of conscience and a call for prayer and repentance.

So how did Mr Bolt respond to this? In last week’s Bolt Report he not only decried this as, “The ABC’s War on Christianity”, he also suggested that the timing was all about making the Church look bad as Cardinal Pell returned to Australia to face sexual abuse charges.

You will see some of this “War on Christianity” argument in yesterday’s edition of the Chronicle. Mr Bolt asked in his show, “What about the Muslims? What about the Aborigines?”

A bit like a schoolboy response, “You caught me stealing an apple, but the other boy stole 3 oranges.” Incidentally the first in this series of articles was on Islam and domestic violence.

Instead of a genuine conversation about the role of religion in domestic violence, we replay the culture wars, and the story becomes the left wing ABC beating up the Church.

Of course the Church has done marvellous things for society and continues to do so in our own community. Anybody down on their luck, homeless or destitute will be beating their way to the door of the Salvos, Vinnies, the Base, MetroCare or any number of parish Churches across our city.

But that is not the point. It is not a weighing scale where the good can outweigh the bad. The Royal Commission into Institutional Sexual Abuse has shone a light into many Christian denominations which has been long overdue.

I have heard the Brisbane Catholic Archbishop Mark Coleridge describing the Catholic Church as being ‘graced by the Royal Commission’.

The reality is that the Churches did not come to this point in history without the spotlight being shone on them by the secular media.

Whether this media has an agenda or not, the focus must always be on listening to and responding to the voices of the victims.

Defending the indefensible or shooting the messenger might make for good ratings or win a battle in the culture wars but it will not help one little bit to bring about a safer community for all of us.