It completely slipped past my notice that Kevin Rudd (Prime Minister of Australia) and Malcolm Turnbull (Leader of The Opposition) officially launched the Australian release of the ‘Poverty and Justice Bible’ on September 14 in the Great Hall of Parliament House, Canberra.
Apparently the Christian Parliamentary Fellowship were there, along with representatives of The Bible Society and World Vision Australia, among others. My invitation must still be coming in the mail.
I only found out about the launch by reading Brian McLaren’s blog (don’t ask) where he warmly commends Rudd for his speech at the event (while not recognising Turnbull at all).
I don’t think this rated highly in the media. The Age website carried this brief syndicated report. I couldn’t find any articles at all on News Limited website. The Bible Society has some pictures of the event and relevant links here.
I’ve written here before about my concerns about ‘special focus’ Bibles like ‘The American Patriot’s Bible‘ and ‘The Green Letter Bible‘. Jesus claimed that the central testimony of the Scriptures is about Himself. Making any other focus central is giving priority to something that is really a peripheral issue.
But the point of this post is that anytime the two leaders of our major political parties speak publicly about the Bible Christians should pay attention.
Kevin Rudd’s speech can be found here.
Malcolm Turnbull’s speech can be found here.
I think their willingness to be involved does point to a deep personal association with the Church. It also points to the esteem in which Tim Costello and World Vision are held.
Rudd’s comments stop short of identifying Jesus Christ as being the means through which humanity may have life and have it more abundantly, a task he seems to indentify immediately with the social ministry of the church. But he moved confidently from John 10 to Micah 6:8 and the work of the Micah challenge in promoting social justice for impoverished communities.
His observations about the practice of colouring the highlighted sections of the text being an improvement of Thomas Jefferson’s practice of cutting out the parts he did not believe in were a bit of a hoot.
Turnbull’s speech reveals the fact that he is a far more engaging communicator than his current public profile suggests. He mentions Federal Minister Penny Wong as also being present, the two of them being the present and past federal ministers for water, and then transitions to readings of Isaiah 41 and Psalm 126 where God’s love is compared with streams of water and then moved to 1 Corinthians 13 where love is highlighted. Again, Jesus was absent, but I’ve heard worse attempts to engage with a biblical text than these two. But their talks do exactly what I’m concerned that Bibles of this sort encourage, they both emphasise a secondary theme of the Scriptures while ignoring the central one.
So, without any deep insight into their personal relationships with Jesus we can give thanks that the leaders of our two political parties are conversant with Scripture and seem prepared to genuinely engage with its content. We can also pray that the One about Whom Scripture centrally testifies will strengthen them and reveal His saving love in increasing measure to both of them as we pray for those who rule over us.
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