Monday, September 15, 2008

Confounding expectations

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24319889-5003900,00.html

[The Australian] 15 Sep 2008--His reputation among many secular Australians -- those who have heard of him at all -- is of a stuffy, hidebound old churchman. Among self-styled progressives, including some from our more liberal churches, his name is synonymous with reactionary religious cant.

These lazy and unfair misconceptions say much more about 21st-century Australia than about Jensen. But for public figures, image is important. I must confess that in 2005 I paid insufficient attention to Jensen's Boyer Lectures, which have been republished here with "minor updates and adaptations".

The Future of Jesus is not the book I expected it to be. There are only glancing references to the issues of sexuality and sanctity of life that so bitterly divide conscientious people. And Jensen puts aside the ugly doctrinal disputes that, in recent years, have distracted so many in the Anglican Church hierarchy (including him).

It is well known that Jensen's views on these matters are deeply conservative. But he recognises that labouring them would not advance what he calls his chief aim: "to inspire widespread, adult reading of the New Testament Gospels". The Gospels attest that the two prime concerns of Jesus of Nazareth were personal faith in God (repentance) and social justice on earth, in that order of importance.

Jensen sticks to these basics and in the process delivers a measured and incisive indictment of neo-liberal Western society.

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