Stimulus Vol 13 Issue 4 November 2005

Table of Contents

The Church and the public forum: John Courtney Murray’s method
Mary Eastham

Evangelicals and business ethics: the Bible
Alistair Mackenzie

St Imulus: Church growth and slowth

Evangelicals and social issues in the 1950s
Peter Lineham

The debate on the United Nations convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women: motivated by fear or a clash of ideologies?
Ruth Low

New Zealand religious affiliations in the new millennium
Charles Crothers

Future of the religious right in New Zealand politics
Raymond Miller

Pulpit: Love actually
Andrew Butcher

What’s cookin’ in Christianity’s U.S. kitchen? Chef Barna’s State of the Church 2005
Bill Dahl

Evangelicals and the homosexual law reform debate 1985-1986
Laurie Guy

Book reviews

New Rights New Zealand: Myths, Moralities and Markets
Dolores Janiewski and Paul Morris

Living in Union With Christ: The Practical Theology of Thomas F. Torrance. Issues in Systematic Theology, Volume 11
Kye Won Lee

The Beloved Community; How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today
Charles Marsh

Bits of...The Kiwi Bible
Chris Grantham

Dialogue

Index to Stimulus Volume 13

November 2005

Editorial

Evangelicals and social justice? It sounds like one of those jokes about the world’s shortest books. You know, like The Wit and Wisdom of George Bush, A History of Military Intelligence, etc. The history of church involvement in social issues in New Zealand has not been an overwhelming success. Much of the settler church’s 19^th century focus was on issues of public morality such as prohibition and appropriate keeping of the Sabbath. While an unintended side effect of the campaign for prohibition was women gaining the vote, there was little focus on wider issues of justice and compassion (with the remarkable exception of Rutherford Waddell’s exposure of “sweating” in Dunedin). And of course, the relationship of the settler church to Maoridom, especially during and after the wars of the 1860s does not bear thinking about.

 

The 20^th century was not much better – witness the disillusionment with the church after WWI, late and largely inadequate concern for the structures of society during the Depression, and the growing pluralism within the churches and muffling of any strong united voice on almost anything of wider societal concern.

 

In our own lifetimes there has been an awakening of evangelical social concern. In June of this year Carey Baptist College held a Colloquium addressing this subject, and Stimulus is privileged to be able to publish five of the papers presented.

 

Peter Lineham discusses evangelical social thinking in the 60s and early 70s and shows how the church uncertainly interacted with the world.

 

Laurie Guy takes us behind the scenes to see how the churches interacted over Homosexual Law Reform in the 1980s, a debate many of our readers will remember very clearly.

 

Ruth Low takes an oral history approach in showing why many women opposed the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

 

Alastair Mackenzie presents part one of an article on ethics in the marketplace (part two to follow next issue). In this article he looks at attempts to develop marketplace ethics from the Bible.

 

“Christian” politics has been very interesting of late. We have seen the almost collapse of the traditional Christian party, however, a “part-Christian” party has retained three seats. Raymond Miller analyses the trends in the religious right, discussing the relative prospects of the religious “micro-parties”.

 

In addition to these articles we present a number of others on supporting themes. Charles Crothers analyses the census results regarding religious affiliation and highlights some themes. As a companion piece to this, an American writer, Bill Dahl, draws on the research of the George Barna research organisation to show what is happening in the churches in the US.

 

So how do we dialogue with our society in the public square? Mary Eastham has some suggestions using the method of John Courtney Murray SJ, a prominent Roman Catholic thinker. Given the history of evangelical relations with Rome, there is of course a measure of irony here! We trust you are stimulated to think about how we bring the gospel to bear on our society.

 

David Cashmore

for the editorial committee

 

Douglas Maclachlan

Publisher

 

EVANGELICALS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Church and public forum
Religious affiliations
Future of religious right

www.stimulus.org.nz

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STIMULUS

THE NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT AND PRACTICE