The Australian Church, a church without martyrs

I was reminded the other day of the saying of Tertullian that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The reminder came in an article written by the Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi in which he recounted the history of the Ugandan church and its martyrs. Orombi’s predecessor, Archbishop Luwum was murdered by Idi Amin in 1977. Seeing how events were turning Luwum said to a fellow bishop “They are going to kill me, I am not afraid”.

The martyrs have always been an important source of courage for Christians, indeed Fox’s book of martyrs was central to Christian reading because it highlighted that life without faith was unliveable.

Martyrs are owned across denomination and times. While we may claim the world’s martyrs as our own it seems to me that their blood is spilt in a particular place and it is the church of that place that is nurtured from it.

Who are our martyrs? I must admit that no names of Australian martyrs spring to mind. The closest examples that I can think of are the Christian martyrs killed by the Japanese in New Guinea and the brothers killed only recently in the Solomon islands. It seems that the great cloud of witnesses from whom we should draw courage belong to other times and places.

The Australian church is a church without local martyrs - a rare thing indeed. The church in Australia was not born out of violence and turmoil and for that we can be thankful. Or can we? Perhaps it explains why we are so lukewarm. We cannot imagine that our lives would be at risk because we attend church on Sunday mornings.

We may ask why we are a church without martyrs. One reason is that by the time this country was settled a certain balance had been achieved between the church and the state in England that was exported to Australia.

Thus the church that was planted here was already at peace with the secular authorities and there was no need for confrontation. The state had come to a certain arrangement with the church.

Part of this came about by means of a curious deal. It was said, following the religious wars that raged throughout Europe after the reformation, that religion in the public sphere was dangerous and a threat to peace.

Aided by a church that was losing its focus it was thought that the proper place for religion was not the public sphere, that is the political sphere, but the private.

Christianity was about the salvation of the individual and had no place in politics. Each man or woman was to commune with God on their own terms.

However, a careful study of the wars of religion reveals that often Protestants killed Protestants and Catholics killed Catholics. These were not wars of religion at all but wars caused by the rise of states. The reason for supposing that religion was a threat to peace was largely fabricated.

Nevertheless, having promulgated this view and relegated religion to the private sphere the state took over more and more of the church’s original role.

This saw the state take over all of the areas of life for which the church had previously been responsible. It used to be that the parish was responsible for the poor and the destitute. It used to be that the church was at the centre of education. It used to be that archbishops dealt with kings and often paid for it with their lives.

The message that religion was dangerous in the public sphere was produced by the state in order to relegate it to the private sphere and to then take over the traditional role of the church. The conversation that we overhear in the Old Testament between the prophet and the king has been silenced, it is now only the king who speaks.

This is why in Australia there are very few faculties of theology at our universities and only minimal and badly resourced Christian education in our schools. This is why when the church says something political there is always a politician who will spout off about the separation between church and state.

The state is quite happy to have us along, as long as we do not rock the boat. Indeed much of the church’s work in education and health and social services is funded by the government. By and large, the church has accepted this situation. Religion is private, it is between the individual and God and should not be exported into the public sphere for that will only cause trouble.

If you trace the ministry of Jesus in the gospels it is obvious that it was a public ministry that had the potential to undermine the authorities both religious and civil. His ministry was political, that is why they murdered him. Of course it all begins with the individual who is convicted of the truth of the gospel but then it has repercussions on how that individual participates in society.

In the gospel we hear Jesus predicting the turmoil that will come in his wake, turmoil even between father and son, mother and daughter. This is what happens when the truth of God confronts the lies of men. There is conflict and division. Men and women are led to see a new reality and they cannot then coexist with the old.

For the community of Jesus is an alternative community to that of the world, and its members exist as resident aliens in that world. When the church becomes so embroiled in the secular, so that the gospel is compromised, it loses it reason for being.

We are a church established in peace and at peace. But I wonder if the price of that peace is the neutering of the gospel. Is it rather the peace of assimilation to the order of the state in which the gospel loses its character of crisis?

Australia does not have its own martyrs but what it does have, in every capital city and every country town, are memorials to those who were killed at war. These memorials contain lists of the names of young men killed in wars overseas. If you like, these are the martyrs of the state: they died not for their faith but for the nation.

We in Australia are familiar with sacrificial death and we have deep respect for it. In our minds it is a noble thing to die for one’s country but we are not sure what to think about someone who dies for the faith.

For why should such a thing happen? Since religion has been relegated to the private we see no prospect of it ever happening. There is no reason for us to come into conflict with anyone and no reason to think that we would even have enemies.

Meanwhile the church in Australia continues to founder. The response of many denominations has been to import the latest church growth guru to teach us how to rescue the church. But the reason that God is killing our churches has nothing to do with management: it has all to do with the deals we have made in the past with the state and with ways of thinking that neuter the gospel. We have simply painted ourselves into a corner.

For example, under the ideology of multiculturalism we have bowed to the notion that Christianity is only one form of spirituality among others and that we should not assert its truth. To do so would be disrespectful to other religions. All is relative and who would die for something so conditioned?

In our education system it is commonly thought that students should make up their own minds about religion. However, education presupposes that they do not yet have minds enough to make up. If the gospel is about truth how come students are expected to decide for themselves? We do not undermine other disciplines in this way. What if we told them that they must make up their own minds about chemistry or history?

The upshot is that faith is seen to be idiosyncratic as if one was born with the “religious” gene. It is certainly not something for which one could give one’s life.

We could argue that our society does not need the gospel as much as those in the third world who have to deal with murderous tyrants and persecution. We in the West have made it; we feel that our institutions of government and justice are relatively free from corruption. We are the lucky country and that luck places us in a comfortable position in which the gospel is not needed. We are like the man who built bigger barns.

But sin abounds. Murders and rapes are committed. Marriages fail leaving children damaged. The consumer culture short changes those who buy into it. Many live lives of quiet desperation. Our fascination with science and technology wains and art is increasingly shallow.

Who will save us from endless runs of Big Brother, foot ball fever, celebrity worship, the lotto life, and the race to extend our life spans? Who will save us from the mentality of commercial television quiz shows?

We do not need more church growth gurus or mission statements or strategic plans. What we do need is to remember who we are.

We are the body of Christ through whom all things were made.

We are the salt of the earth without which life is tasteless.

We are the leaven in the lump without which the loaf is inedible.

We are the heralds of the new reality called the kingdom of God in which the lion will lay down with the lamb and the child will play over the hole of the asp.

There is just as much at stake for us as there is for men and women who are murdered for the faith they hold.

It is just that our demise will not be marked by bloodshed but by the almost imperceptible erosion of all that is good and true. The only thing that will be valued is what the market values. There will be no solid place we can place our foot.

Our only hope is the church, staggering, struggling, confused and fearful but bearing the only source of hope, Jesus Christ before whom kings will shut their mouths.

The church lives by those who are convicted of the truth of the gospel. There can be no Constantinian establishment of Christianity, the church must make its own way in the world. Whenever it receives money from the lotteries commission to repair buildings it cannot afford to maintain, whenever church agencies receive money from government and whenever any denomination sees itself as having a privileged relationship to the secular powers it loses its character as an alternative community. Such arrangements preclude the very idea of martyrdom and the church loses its proper place in the world.

It is no wonder that the church is failing in Australia and was perhaps set to fail right from the beginning.