to stir with love....

Moorehead is impressed by the bleak and tragic beginnings of the colonies that became Australia. Her picture, of course, is of a land which was very hot and very dry, even in winter. Things have not changed as the south-east of the country reels from a drought that shows little sign of breaking. Back then, this land was but a far-away prison "of little interest to the architects of this penal experiment in Whitehall, for whom the terra nullius, the no man's land of Australia, from which there could be few hopes of return, offered a remedy to the alarming rise of crime. It was its very remoteness that made it so attractive."

She refers to well-known historical works by Robert Hughes That Fatal Shore and Thomas Keneally A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia in her "colonial dispatch". But she also adds novels by Kate Grenville The Secret River and Roger McDonald The Ballad of Desmond Kale, to illustrate the brown dusty red ochres of despair that arose from the colonial confrontation with the great Australian isolation. And so Australia has grown with a shadow, a "dark stain". This is also a discussion in which she intends to bring her readers up to date, by showing how this tortured self-definition has re-emerged in Australia's recent political past. The political story behind two stories - of Eva Sallis's The Marsh Birds and Linda Jaivin's The Infernal Optimist - is of a national psyché beholden to a concerted effort by the leaders of the Federal Parliament to stare down our historical past. Australia has caught itself on the morally compromised "Pacific Solution" barbed wire of detention centres built for the "illegal queue jumpers" from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

From this angle the story of Australia's recent past connects the political exploitation of defenceless and frightened people, who have fled for their lives, to the 160,000 convicts sent to the Great South Land prison settlement. Moorehead shows how the recent arrivals, the asylum seekers, became a useful pawn for a group of politicians desperate for re-election, and who maintain their power by appealing to "core values". These values are then traced all the way back to Australia's earliest colonial beginnings, to a squalid and brutal prison perched on the banks of Sydney harbour.

Moorehead's argument hones in on the end of the transportation of convicts. "But by 1840, the Whigs, under Lord John Russell as home secretary, had decided that transportation was not only immoral but efficient, because it encouraged corruption, failed to act as a deterrent to crime, and was economically unprofitable. A spirit of reform rather than punishment was in the air." She continues: "What came next was willful amnesia. A history so shaming, so full of violence committed against Aborigines and convicts alike, needed to be forgotten. Australian history was tacitly deemed to have begun only around 1850, with the daring exploits of the outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang, the gold rush, and the legendary expeditions to explore the interior."

Yes, some will dismiss her review as just another "black armband view of history." But she is not exactly trying to endorse the alternative "white blind fold" view, either. Instead, she is linking Howard's "Pacific Solution" - and by implication many other policies as well, including the illegal invasion of Iraq - to the Prime Minister's defence of his actions in terms of "core Australian values." Yes, implies Moorehead, that is true. This amnesia is indeed basic to Australia's heritage.

This reminder of our national forgetfulness is important to us as we think about our Christian political responsibility. Do we not inherit a Christian tradition of willful forgetfulness? And if we don't want to forget our current responsibilities we will do well to remember what it is we inherit, even if it is our own tradition of amnesia.

That might sound convoluted. But don't send this tract off to the WPB just yet. Let me try and indicate something of the depth of the problem we face in trying to overcome this amnesia. Consider, as an example, the biblical passage Hebrews 10: 23-25 and then ask about the way this has typically been interpreted. Having expounded the full consequences of Christ's victory, in the restoration of God's purposes for His creation, the writer urges the followers of Christ Jesus, to keep on meeting together in order that they may "stir up one another to love and good works." This writer is not pleading for regular Sunday by Sunday church attendance (with mandatory coffee and cake "chat" sessions afterwards) which come to demonstrate how civilized we are. This is about the Christian task of building each other up in every way in the faith: in families, in public life, in working the land, in science, in art and literature, in education and also in the life of congregations. It is in fact a passage that assumes that Christianity is on a collision course with a tradition of civil and civilised religion that is content to keep church things holy while politics can stay a dirty business for ever.

Since the late 18th and into the 19th century this text has been regularly interpreted as a "clincher" in any discussion about the way attendance at church services should function in the Christian life. But if this verse has been used in order "to keep the church show on the road" then the battle has been lost before it has been fought. Such a prevalent interpretation easily forgets the responsibilities in which we Christians have to live out our lives, as citizens, as workers, as farmers, as students, as family members. But the text is not about "going to church" or appending a fellowship to one's daily life. It is telling us what being the people of God means. Christians need each other as they serve God in their lives. A tradition that takes this text and uses to keep the church's pews full will, in the long-run, be self-defeating. And does not the weight of evidence before our eyes today in the diminished numbers that attend Christian worship confirm the point?

The biblical admonition is that Christians are called to consciously incite one another to do good, which is the opposite of any amnesia about our life in this world. The implications of this are significant. Christianity as a way of life, not just a Sunday-by-Sunday habit, needs to figure out how we are to serve in the many responsibilities God has given us. But saying this is easy. How should we now understand the revival of the heritage of Christian political forgetfulness that views faith as a habit, as a psychic twitch that follows us everywhere we go? How is this forgetfulness to be overcome? We will have to discuss this further another time.

In the meantime, here in Victoria we now enter the final days before a State election. Why not consider arranging your visit to an electoral booth on Saturday by walking there with a fellow citizen from your neighbourhood and discussing how you as a citizen propose to nurture public justice. It might not get you onto any front page, but why not develop this as a useful and regular polling-day tradition with your friend. You might even think and pray about an initiative with a few Christian friends. But keep it open. A little yeast can make a whole lump rise and as we meet to stir one another in our voting, we can remember that our citizenship is a gift for which we can thank the patient rule of Jesus Christ, the ruler over all local and state governments, of this country, around this region and over the entire earth.

Bruce C Wearne Tuesday, 21 November 2006