Salt Shakers Journal November 2007

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Editorial (in full below)
November 24 will be a very significant day in the life of our nation. Elections are not something we should take for granted. Every three years we should count it a privilege to help decide which candidates, and which Party, is best placed to lead this nation for the next three years.

Feature article: The key issue of the coming Federal Election
Richard Eason argues that the key issue in the upcoming election is whether we elect a party which upholds a Christian worldview, rather than a party that is governed by secularism. He demonstrates why this is so important using examples from history and law.

Federal election 2007 - Christian Values Checklist
Our ‘Christian Values Checklist’, giving party positions on a range of moral issues, is enclosed with this Journal. It has been prepared with other groups.

ANNOUNCING Salt Shakers E-Journal
Starting this month we are able to send our monthly Journal by email in PDF format.

News and Action
Cloning Update; WA: Prostitution; Citizenship test; Heinz Advertisement

Marriage is good for you
Jenny Stokes argues marriage (ie the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life) is great for the participants, great for society and great for the children born into the family.

Victoria: Decriminalisation of Abortion
The Victorian Law reform Commission is taking submissions about the decriminalisation (read legalisation) of abortion in Victoria.

Post abortion stories
Women are starting to speak up about the harm done to them by abortion. Men and parents are also joining them because abortion doesn’t just affect the woman - it affects all those involved in the decision.

Unnatural families: Homosexuals and IVF
Two cases involving parenting by same-sex couples resulted in legal cases last month. The decisions have not been made yet. …At the federal level, Medicare currently pays for the use of IVF for single women and lesbians (where States allow it).

Television standards in decline
The Australian Communications and Media Authority, the government body responsible for monitoring standards, has found that Channel 7’s Home and Away program breached the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice in May by airing episodes featuring pole-dancing and sex talk that were beyond their “G” classification.

Democracy and basic human rights: Two Christian Inventions
Dr. Augusto Zimmerman argues that “law and basic human rights are inseparable” and that this derives from the “biblical description that God has expressly revealed his ‘higher law’” and exhorts us to continue fighting for the Christian worldview.

Book Review: Faith, Money, Power: what the religious revival means for politics.
Amber Sparrow reviews this book by Margaret Simons and finds it to be “really just a short investigative look at Hillsong Church , its success and its failures, with Family First thrown in for good measure”.

A Bill of Rights for Australia? Or Tasmania?
Jenny Stokes analyses what a Bill of Rights would mean for Australia and points out that Tasmania are very close to implementing one for their state.

One God? George Bush & Muslim leaders
US President George Bush made two revealing statements in an interview in the Oval Office with Al Arabiya television last month. He said “I believe in an almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God.”

Interfaith Fast - or Farce?
Yes, that’s right! Compromise! An interfaith fast was held in the USA on October 8 with the aim of ‘ending the war in Iraq ’.

World News
USA: Ten Commandments; UK: hate speech laws; Anglicans; USA: Mum and dad banned; USA : Teens and morning after pill

Editorial (full version)

November 24 will be a very significant day in the life of our nation.

Elections are not something we should take for granted. Every three years we should count it a privilege to help decide which candidates, and which Party, is best placed to lead this nation for the next three years.

The responsibility we ALL now have as citizens must not be taken lightly. As the front page of our October Journal stated “He who falls asleep in a democracy will wake up in a dictatorship”. (Otto Gritschneder)

We must think and pray very carefully about who we vote for.

We need to find out who our candidates are and what they believe. To know what ‘worldview’ they will promote – Christian, Humanist, Islamic, Hindu, etc. Everyone has a worldview – a set of assumptions that underpin their decision making. That worldview will dictate their stand on important issues like abortion and homosexual relationship registers as well as who will give you the freedom to choose your child’s school. We need to know how they will care for our ageing population and who will best run our hospitals but we also need to understand their worldview on issues like the environment and workplace relations. Their worldview will either sacrifice the welfare of people on the altar of ‘climate change’ or sensibly promote proper care for the environment while still putting people first. It will also affect how they treat small and large business. Will they give the freedom required to adequately run small businesses; will they support the man making the investment in larger businesses? Or will they support union domination and control over free enterprise?

All these issues are our responsibility.

A recent newspaper headline in The Australian, following the funeral of Kim Beazley Senior stated, “Beazley snr: morality before politics”. It commented on his Christian faith and went on to quote Bob Hawke who once said that if Mr Beazley Snr. “hadn’t got diverted from politics by Moral Re-Armament (MRA) he could have, and should have, got the leadership of the party. He was a better orator and intellect than Whitlam.’’ MRA was started by Christians and it was those strong Christian values that Hawke is saying got in the way of Kim Beazley Snr’s politics.

It might also have been because he castigated his Party for losing its way in 1970. ‘At a Labor conference, faced with an agenda that included legalising abortion, allowing homosexual couples to adopt children and abolishing censorship, he let rip with his most famous denunciation: “When I joined the Labor Party, it contained the cream of the working class. But as I look about me now all I see are the dregs of the middle class. And what I want to know is when you middle class perverts are going to stop using the Labor Party as a spiritual spittoon”.’

That is the sort of Christian determination and commitment we need in our politicians today, but we cannot leave it to someone else to bring it about. We must not simply be concerned with OUR needs and wants, our own ‘hip pocket’. It is imperative that we select the right people rather than leave that selection to someone else.

The countdown has begun – we will be part of the outcome, like it or not.

Our ‘Christian Values Checklist’, giving party positions on a range of moral issues, accompanies this Journal, we trust it will enable you and your friends to make Godly choices on November 24, 2007.

Yours in His service

Peter & Jenny Stokes