Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics has a story today about Baptists in Australia and their impact on the government of their country.
Australian Baptists account for only an estimated 1.6 percent of the Australian population, but they played an important role in getting their government to reverse its declining foreign aid budget and to pledge an increase from $2.5 billion to $4 billion by 2010.
Here is the whole article.
The common view about the interaction of faith and politics around here is pretty dim, and rightfully so. The efforts of religious groups to get the U. S. government to enforce by law their views on cultural issues has dominated the landscape in the places where religion and politcs meet. Such efforts stand in stark contrast to this.
That about-face came in no small measure from three Baptists: Les Fussell, CEO of Baptist World Aid Australia; Scott Higgins, development education and advocacy officer for BWAA; and Amanda Jackson, national coordinator for Micah Challenge Australia, whose position is underwritten by and office is housed at BWAA.
Due to their commitment and that of many others, Australian Baptists are still leading global Baptists in educational and advocacy efforts for the Micah Challenge.
That campaign seeks to lobby governments to keep their pledges to support the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, one of which is to halve worldwide poverty by 2015.
"I think that in 2005, we were a strong part of the reason why the government promised to increase aid funding by $1.5 billion over five years," said Jackson. "It was the first year of the campaign and our postcard campaign with Make Poverty History had an impact."
Fussell added in an e-mail interview that prior to the government's decision to increase its foreign-aid budget the prime minister's office received tens of thousands of postcards which underscored the promise the government had made for more foreign aid.
As citizens of nations, people of faith must be involved in politics, and they would lack integrity if their faith had no effect upon this involvement. The example of Australian Baptists may point to an important prinicple for making this involvement positive. According to Fussell:
wealthy Western Christians "read the Bible through the context lens of affluence and fail to see or apply the compelling biblical witness of justice for the poor and the oppressed. Poverty is outside their experience and they fail to see how they, as the rich in this world, may be contributing to the poverty of the remaining 90 percent on this globe."
The key to this is found in all faiths. In some way or another they all teach something related to "it is more blessed to give than to receive." Instead of using political muscle to get the government to do things to help us, people of faith could use the teachings of their faith to influence the government to help those in the world who need it most. This kind of effort, I believe, would help build bridges between us and people with similar moral convictions drawn from a source other than religious faith. Imagine if our faith helped us to work with people of other faiths or of no faith, instead of fighting and attacking them.