A Prime Minister's Preferential Option for the Poor, and the Planet (by Jim Wallis)
Last weekend in Australia, I had the opportunity to have a four-hour dinner conversation with Kevin Rudd, the new prime minister. I have written about Kevin as a new-style Labor political leader who talks openly about his faith in a secular country.
I asked him about the "apology" he made to the Aboriginal people of Australia as his first act of government. "It is the thing I am most proud of," he told me. Just days before, the newspapers all carried a front-page picture of Rudd and his cabinet ministers lined up on chairs in a meeting with Aboriginal elders at an Indigenous community in the Northern Territory (the heart of the Aboriginal homeland). They were there to discuss how to narrow the gap between the health and life expectancy, education, income, and a whole range of other key indicators between the white and Aboriginal populations of Australia.
During the day we met for dinner, Rudd had been on the Great Barrier Reef, inspecting the "bleaching" of the spectacular Australian treasure due to global warming. He told me that environmental protection and climate change were issues on which he wanted Australia to lead.
Rudd is a Catholic and the first time we had dinner a couple of years ago, he told me he had been a longtime reader of Sojourners and my books. He is indeed well-read theologically, and we had a very good discussion of Catholic social teaching, church history, spirituality, faith, and politics in both the U.S. and Australia, and the power of revival to spark social change -- the theme of my latest book.
He has a special fascination for and attraction to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who helped lead the "confessing churches'" resistance to Hitler. I must confess how unusual and enjoyable it is to discuss Bonhoeffer with a prime minister; he has even written about the theologian in one of Australia's leading magazines -- an article that could easily have been in Sojourners. What most draws Rudd to Bonhoeffer, he writes in the article, was his insistence that the vocation of the church is to be "a voice for the voiceless" and "to speak truth to power." I've always thought there was no better description of the role of the church in the world.
I encouraged the young prime minister not to underestimate the influence of middle-sized countries, like Australia, in providing global leadership on some of the most important issues of our time. I heard Rudd's assessment of his first G8 meeting this spring, of the U.S. image in the world, of our presidential candidates whom he is eager to get to know better. Rudd is very committed to addressing global poverty and climate change, and to making Australia a leader on both.
We sat for several hours at a lovely outdoor restaurant up in Cairns, the tropical northeast corner of the country. Security was certainly much lighter than a similar meeting with a U.S. president is, and I enjoyed how ordinary people would come up with their children to meet the prime minister. Every time, the Australian head of state would extend his hand and a warm smile to say "Hi, I'm Kevin." Very nice indeed.
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Comments
Nice to see this account of our Prime Minister, and I really do commend Kevin Rudd on Bonhoeffer, linked in Jim's article. One of the reasons I voted for his party! (We don't vote for Prime Ministers in Australia, unlike the US presidential system.)
Mind you, I thought Rudd was an Anglican...
I just checked... He is a former Catholic.
Posted by: Neil | August 4, 2008 6:58 PM
Many of the people who visit my site are from the Great Nation of Australia and I am grateful for them. I want to say to all of them that they should be proud of their P.M. He is a voice of reason speaking out in a time of chaos.
Whether he is Roman Catholic or Anglican is no matter to me, he is showing the true meaning of Walking in Christ. God bless him.
Posted by: Paul@wholy4chirst.com | August 4, 2008 9:25 PM
The apology should be repeated in the U.S.
Posted by: Kai | August 5, 2008 10:26 AM
Wow. Australia is light-years ahead of the culturally & historically ignorant U.S.
Posted by: Quetzal | August 5, 2008 10:33 AM
Thank you so much for this post; I may print it as a hopeful reminder for myself.
While speaking recently with a friend who is from Brisbane (many miles south of Cairns, but also in Queensland), she was telling me about the shocking rises in the cost of water. Her mum and family are now limited to 4-minute showers, and we had a good conversation about how that has altered their awareness of climate change (they had dismissed it as a 'wild tale' a mere ten years ago).
Another friend, who has over 25 years experience as an oceanographer, is morbidly hopeless about what's happening to the Great Barrier Reef; the implications are ominous for a number of reasons that aren't relevant to commenting here.
Meanwhile, in the USofA, I learn on my daily Internet checks around the news and blogs that Obama is a Rock Star, that McCain's campaign is run by lobbyists (some of whom have exceptionally unsavory clients in their past). After the US politics-as-circus, I envy Australia and suspect they'll be leading the way on global climate issues. (After all, their continent is a living example of problems with water supply, aridity, and storms.)
The ability of the Australian Aboriginal tribes to have mastered such hard environmental circumstances is testament to their ingenuity and (at least, in previous eras), social cohesion within tribes. They have precious knowledge, and it's gratifying to learn that Mr Rudd surely recognizes that fact.
The nexus between integrity, ethics, and the ability to lead becomes more and more clear. Climate change requires good leadership, and for that reason, I'm very grateful to read your thoughts about PM Rudd.
Thank you so much for writing about this.
Mr Rudd is up against monstrous forces, and he'll surely need strong faith to bring him through.
Enjoy Cairns, safe journeying.
Posted by: readerOfTeaLeaves | August 5, 2008 2:04 PM
so there is a drought in the desert. shocking. don't forget record ice this year in antartica. and nasa redoing its formulars to reset 1934 as the hottest year on record. roger
Posted by: roger | August 5, 2008 3:23 PM
roger: "so there is a drought in the desert. shocking."
Thank you, Roger, for modeling the compassion of Jesus for us. Non-Christians are no doubt impressed.
Posted by: carl copas | August 5, 2008 5:03 PM
Roger: we Australians are used to droughts -- and occasionally floods! -- in our vast deserts. What has concerned us has been drought in our prime food growing areas. We are not stupid, believe it or not. Kevin Rudd's concerns are shared by the majority here, on both sides of politics, argue as we might over best policy on these matters.
I am afraid the climate is simply not answerable to our preconceptions and prejudices. It does what it does, and we, if we are wise, listen to those who give their lives to studying it -- as the majority of climate scientists have done, reaching one ineluctable conclusion -- and that is, we have to learn to pull our horns in if we care at all about future generations.
Doesn't mean every word of Al Gore is gospel, but it does mean paying attention, Christians especially because they have a sense of stewardship as part of the package, but of course all people of good will too, whatever their faith, or lack of faith.
Posted by: Neil | August 5, 2008 8:31 PM
Railing against climate change won't make it go away. Environmentalists are in a real panic about where we are currently and where we are headed. It is time humanity grew up, accepted the responsibility for proper stewardship of the planet God has generously gifted us with, and started making a positive difference in this world. I applaud Australia's PM for setting a good example and if Australians are to lead the way, more power to them. We could use a good and decent example to follow.
Posted by: J.S. Brooks | August 6, 2008 6:41 AM
Wow. Australia is light-years ahead of the culturally & historically ignorant U.S. - Quetzal
This should be the title of every commentary Jim Wallis writes after visiting a foreign country and their new leader. Just take out "Australia" and insert the name of the country he visited. Well done Quetzal.
Posted by: Martin | August 7, 2008 9:37 AM
J.S. Brooks: "we could use a good and decent example to follow."
Amen. Used to be that planning for the plausible worst contingency was considered common sense. Now it's called alarmist. God gave us brains and reason; apparently it's asking too much of some folks to utilize them.
Posted by: carl copas | August 7, 2008 11:50 AM
Say what you will about the threat of global warming. Here's some fact:
Global warming is it is measured and closely watched by scientists across many disciplines. Each gallon of gas we burn puts 20 lbs of CO2 in the atmosphere that has a half-life of 100 years. Ice core samples dating back over 800,000
years show that climate has gone up and down in coordination to CO2 levels. The alarm is that not once in that 800,000 year period did CO2 ever get up to 300 parts per million. Today, we are at 387 PPM and going up at about 2.75 PPM per year. That rate is accelerating because of China and India's
rise in consumption. Scientists also know that around 250 million years ago (end of the Permian) CO2 went up to 450 PPM and Earth experienced the greatest mass extinction out of the five total extinctions, even worst than the 65 Million-year one (end Cretaceous) caused by the meteor. At the current rate of 2.75 PPM per year we will reach 450 PPM within the next 30 years. Back in the '70s there was little hard science to back up the glacial advance theory. Not so this time.
There is good reason for concern and for changing our wasteful ways. As Christians we are to be stewards of the earth, not pillagers of it. More oil derricks off the coast will not lower gas prices for the poor now, nor will they lower the emissions mentioned here later. As for Al Gore, he's acting on his beliefs and getting his point across. That's more than many do today and is to his credit that he does so.
If our government persists in resisting changing this nation's wasteful ways, they will be like many ancient nations and city states that preceded them, governments who felt their resources would never run out. In time, they faced environmental depletion, the land would no longer feed them, and their peoples stopped supporting them. Those wasteful governments of the past are extinct. Continue down the path we are currently taking and we will soon join them.
Carl: I agree with you completely.
Peace.
Posted by: J.S. Brooks | August 7, 2008 7:15 PM
Speaking as an Australian who ran as a candidate at the last federal election won by Rudd, let me inform readers that in dumping the former Prime Minister John Howard, Australians dumped a man who did not openly promote himself as a Christian but who nevertheless conducted himself in a Christian manner and the government he lead resisted for the most part the forces of godless secularism. Australians replaced Howard with Kevin Rudd (we call him KRudd) a man who likes to promote himself as a Christian but who is known by those close to him to have a short fuse and a foul mouth. His government and his party (Australian Labor Party) has a decidedly unchristian agenda with an overtly pro-abortion, pro-homosexual stance.
Posted by: Ewan | August 8, 2008 4:52 AM
Ewan: "likes to promote himself as a Christian but who is known by those close to him to have a short fuse and a foul mouth."
Sounds like George W. Bush.
Posted by: carl copas | August 8, 2008 11:24 AM
Unlike Ewan, I did not run for the Australian election and belong to no political party. I concede that John Howard identifies as a Christian and is in many respects a decent man. I also recall that he played the fear card time and again and that in his time out treatment of asylum seekers made me, as a Christian -- and many others in churches from the Catholic through to the Uniting Church -- deeply troubled. It is fair to say 1) Ewan is absolutely partisan and 2) would have rather a lot in common with those US Christians who find Sojourners a touch disturbing.
Posted by: Neil | August 9, 2008 2:10 AM
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