just another plug for great resources on The Geneva Push

Jane Caro on religion in public on Q&A

Did any one else hear the strange explanation by Jane Caro on Q&A last monday about politics and religion?


A question was asked in relation to Tony Abbott whether religious views ought to have any place in shaping social policy.


This was Jane Caro's response:

 I think you're making a really interesting point and I want to take John on a little bit about this, because what I find, as an atheist, is that I have an opinion but people who are - who have a faith have a belief and that seems to take sort of precedence over an opinion and the problem is I'm always asked to kind of pussyfoot around people's faith but mine's just an opinion. But it is about, particularly for women - I think religion has a very poor history in the way that it has treated and allowed women to reach their full personhood and I think, for women, very devoutly religious leaders who like to make their religious beliefs very public, and we have seen Tony Abbott, particularly in the RU486 debate some years ago, allow his religious beliefs to intrude upon his position as minister for health at that time. So women are very, very wary of that very strong religious belief. Private religious belief is a different thing. Public religious belief is the difficulty.

This is just weird. Atheists have opinion and that's ok for public policy. Religious people have faith and  that's dangerous for the public. 
1. Caro's belief about God is permitted in public. Even if it is the view that God does not exist and that belief in God should not inform public policy she has expressed that these 2 views on God can shape public views. 
2. Where does Caro come up with the opinion/faith dichotomy? She clearly doesn't have an understanding on how faith and knowledge work
3. Even if one accepted Caro's dichotomy, by what law of reason should atheistic opinion be taken as morally/epistemologically/politically superior to religious belief? Caro uses the old argument about  the treatment of women. Sure, some religious groups treat women appallingly. I would also argue (as do others) that secular/feminist ideologies also de-womanise women, making women conform to a very particular view of womanhood. Women who marry, have children and stay at work are often belittled in our society. Why? Because they break the mould of the feminist ideal. I would argue that Christianity esteems womanhood like no other belief system, esteeming both female equality and difference. Bot so often social commentators appeal only to the straw man.
4. To concede, Caro was having to answer questions off the top of the head and it's easy to sit now and critique and harder to sit in front of a camera and answer questions off the cuff. Had she given a prepared answer it may have been more nuanced. I can only assume

great sermon on serving by Driscoll

listened to it this morning. Challenging, edifying, etc. Many pertinent truths here for all our churches I suspect

pics from beach baptism

here's a few pics from our baptisms at Parkdale beach from Feb 7th. thanks Karl for the great shots

sermons on Daniel

two sermons on Daniel ch.2 uploaded to mentonebaptist.com.au

part 1 - pursuing wisdom in a hostile world

part 2 - God of history. God of future

money can't buy you life

Sermon on Psalm 49

Melbourne Advance with Mark Driscoll

On Feb 3rd 15 men enjoyed breakfast together (thanks Shebu for the food) & spent 1.5 hrs talking with Mark Driscoll about church planting. Great stuff. There may be a few things Driscoll says that I wouldn't buy into hook, line and sinker but I still hugely respect the man and still learnt heaps  from the morning.

Thanks Guy for organising the first 'Advance' and for uploading the vid from the day (we agreed not to upload the first half of the vid as their was loads of personal stuff no one will want to hear, like - 'hi I'm Murray and I'm married with 3 kids')

link here to see the vid - Advance

keller with the 'big issues facing the western church'

Tim Keller on the Gospel Coalition blog:

The Big Issues Facing the Western Church

1. The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S. In an interview, sociologist Peter Berger observed that in the U.S. evangelicals are shifting from being largely a blue-collar constituency to becoming a college educated population.

His question is–will Christians going into the arts, business, government, the media, and film a) assimilate to the existing baseline cultural narratives so they become in their views and values the same as other secular professionals and elites, or b) will they seal off and privatize their faith from their work so that, effectively, they do not do their work in any distinctive way, or c) will they do enough new Christian ‘culture-making’ in their fields to change things? (See here.)

2. The rise of Islam. How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? The record in places like Africa and the Middle East is not encouraging! This is more of an issue for the western church in Europe than in the U.S., but it is going to be a growing concern in America as well.

How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?

3. The new non-western Global Christianity. The demographic center of Christian gravity has already shifted from the west to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The rising urban churches of China may be particularly influential in the future. But the west still has the educational institutions, the money, and a great deal of power.

What should the relationship of the older western churches be to the new non-western church? How can we use our assets to serve them in ways that are not paternalistic? How can we learn from them in more than perfunctory ways?

4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel. The basic concepts of the gospel — sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife — are becoming culturally strange in the west for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to ‘think like a missionary’–to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian western culture.

How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic ‘mental furniture’ to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?

5. The end of prosperity? With the economic meltdown, the question is — will housing values, endowments, profits, salaries, and investments go back to growing at the same rates as they have for the last twenty-five years, or will growth be relatively flat for many years to come? If so, how does the western church, which has become habituated to giving out of fast-increasing assets, adjust in the way it carries out ministry? For example, American ministry is now highly professionalized–church staffs are far larger than they were two generations ago, when a church of 1,000 was only expected to have, perhaps, two pastors and a couple of other part-time staff. Today such a church would have probably eight to ten full-time staff members.

Also, how should the stewardship message adjust? If discretionary assets are one-half of what they were, more risky, sacrificial giving will be necessary to do even less ministry than we have been doing.

On top of this, if we experience even one significant act of nuclear or bio-terrorism in the U.S. or Europe, we may have to throw out all the basic assumptions about social and economic progress we have been working off for the last 65 years. In the first half of the 20th century, we had two World Wars and a Depression. Is the church ready for that? How could it be? What does that mean?

Dr. Tim Keller is the Senior Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Manhattan, NY and a Council member with The Gospel Coalition. For more resources by Tim Keller visitRedeemer City to City.

Daniel sermon series

starting this Sunday morning at Mentone Baptist - Daniel.

Is God King? Where is his Kingdom? How do I live in this world? What is the Christians' relationship to culture? All these questions and more will raised over the next few months.

Beach baptisms this Sunday

Two of the young men at Mentone are making their profession of faith in Christ by getting baptised this Sunday evening.  People are welcome to come along

Church is at 5pm  - at Mentone Baptist Church
at 6pm we're heading down to Parkdale beach for the baptisms.
Afterward there is a free BBQ at the beach.

photo from one of our baptisms in 2009

Suffering well - Chandler interviewed on yahoo

interview

Matt is a tremendous testimony to Christ