Mr. Rudd has stated: “People have been wrestling over the role of Christianity in politics for the better part of two millennia and the dilemma is no better defined than when it began, when it comes to questions of policy, there rarely is an absolute, authoritative, universal Christian response. But there are a set of values informed by Christianity that should shape your response to the debate.”
Mr. Rudd said that believers cannot be confine to a narrowly define set of moral issues and family values and further added that Christians involve in a secular democracy has a responsibility to inject their view into policy debate. He stated that: “There is a temptation to compartmentalise the Christian message into those topics that suit us and those that don’t, the tradition of Christianity in politics that I come from doesn’t see a personalised health and wealth gospel as the beginning and the end.”
His speech comes after criticisms from the federal government regarding the church leader involvement in the industrial relation debate. “We do not see human beings as simply another commodity that can be traded on a market; they have a dignity as the work of the Creator where human beings require protection” which was quoted by Mr. Rudd. He further went on stating that: “In politics we feel uncomfortable talking about these things because of the enormous capacity to be misunderstood,” since the media has a secular mindset that seeks to pigeon-hole believers making it difficult to present a Christian world view.
This point of a secular mindset which the media possess is also picked up by Dr Peter Jensen Archbishop of Sydney who suggested that the media has a guilty role in editing out the ‘Jesus-speak’ since it is not secular. He stated: “I might talk about the current industrial relations legislation that is coming, but I am doing so because I believe in a God of relationships, who puts relationships higher than mere money-making, if I am simply reported as speaking about weekends, then what I am saying is not distorted but destroyed.” Dr Jensen further went on saying the focus on the media by limiting itself to what the church does or fails to do rarely engage with God’s real message to humanity because: “God is a great communicator, but we are not great receivers, God wants to speak to us in order to establish a fitting relationship with us. It’s no mistake that Jesus is referred to in the Bible as the ‘Word’ of God’.”
Dr Jensen says journalists must question why they think God who has gone to such extreme lengths to reveal Himself to humanity is of no interest to the public where: “There are hundreds of thousands of Australians who can’t find the most central fact of their life dealt with in the media. I wonder in economic terms if the media can afford to be a ‘foreign country’ to so many people. God tells us, ‘by your words you will be judged’. God does not forget them. We are accountable for what we do with words.”
Officially opening the conference Donald McDonald the ABC Chairman, agrees with the suggestion of rising secularism in the media where on his reflection on a visit to the BBC it contains an engraved prayer that read: “The building would be inhabited by ‘people who incline their ears to whatever is good might tread the path of virtue and honesty’.”
However Mr. Donald said: “The sad fact of the matter is that if that building were built today it would not contain a plaque like that, in 1931 it was considered perfectly natural to make a statement like that in public; today it would be too embarrassing that a statement of ‘private’ belief would be considered appropriate for a corporation.”
Mr McDonald quoting from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pointed to the need for television stations, as well as other media, to begin to give space to the moral voices, and begin to discuss what justice might mean in tomorrow’s world where: “His call is not one for a good news network, His call comes from a profound love of his fellow man and a love of God that tells us how to behave towards each other.”