Evangelical Christians value children and want justice. So why have we put no real pressure on the Australian government over the treatment of asylum seekers in mandatory detention, ask ANDREW CAMERON and TRACY GORDON.

The arguments against mandatory detention, especially for children, are straightforward enough. Malcolm Fraser, Robert Manne and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) lay them out – none of whom are considered especially left wing.

But perhaps the most puzzling aspect has been the relative absence of evangelical Christian comment. On the face of it, we would expect evangelical Christians to have been the natural enemy of these developments. After all, we value justice, love children, and want people from all over the world to have a chance to hear the Christian gospel.

Of course, there have been some helpful comments. At his inaugural press conference in 2001, the then-new Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, made headlines when he said that “the Federal Government could improve its game in this area” and that we need to “ask ourselves how we are treating the alien and the stranger in our midst”.

But there has been no sustained evangelical commentary or campaign. On the whole, the application of any real pressure upon the Government has been from secular people and organisations such as Manne, Fraser, HREOC and the Children Out Of Detention organisation. Fraser hopes that “as more Australians understand the reality of what has happened, more will demand a change of policy”. But will evangelical Christians be among them?

Earlier this year HREOC released their report into detention called A Last Resort? It found that Australia’s immigration detention laws create a detention system that is fundamentally inconsistent with the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the Australian Government is a signatory. Our centres were found to be cruel, inhumane, degrading and mentally harmful.

But what might have prevented evangelical commentary and action? What makes it so difficult for us to object to our government’s practices in this area? Our reactions are quicker and more focussed when it is proposed to ban Christian schooling, or to advance our own health using the corpses of the unborn, or to legislate for same-sex ‘marriages’. Why not so when children are locked in prison for several years?

Perhaps the problem is a simple lack of information. If so, the HREOC report – a thorough investigation by a reputable government agency – has definitively outlined the situation, at least as it pertains to children. The way is open, then, for us to rise up. But informal conversation around churches suggests that this won’t happen. The hindrance would seem to lie elsewhere.

Perhaps we simply struggle under a sense of helplessness, a lack of clarity over what to do. Years of political inaction, in a popular culture that is suspicious and bored of government and in which, as children, we learnt only the bare rudiments of the operation of government, has left us unclear on what to do. If so, then here is a problem requiring our long-term attention: after all, Adolf Hitler rose to power using entirely legitimate democratic processes and without a clear, effective challenge from Christians along the way. But until we give this matter such attention, a clear and simple start is (as always) to write to the relevant government officers, whose addresses are now available on the internet.

It is easy to suspect, though, that the problem goes deeper (particularly if it turns out that few of us write such letters). Perhaps we think apostles Peter and Paul teach us that governments are simply and only to be respected and obeyed. It is easy to forget, though, what the apostles say government is for: in Paul’s phrase, the ruler is “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4), and for Peter, rulers exists “to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Peter 2:14). Christians stand in an uneasy relationship to government: on the one hand, we support leaders as a good gift from God, but on the other hand, we remind leaders that their authority is to enforce God’s good, on God’s behalf. Evil government action is outside the bounds of what Christians are called to support.

Or perhaps we are so aware of the heart’s evils that we think nothing can be done for the wayward hearts of our leaders. We remember Paul saying “the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31), and since our ‘core business’ is to work with God in his reconciliation of the world through Christ, we conclude that this is our only business.

However, it seems that neither Peter nor Paul agree with this conclusion. There is other business flowing from God’s ‘core business’. Like Paul, Peter says that “the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved” – but then he exhorts us to be found “without spot or blemish, and at peace,” a way of life fitting to our destination, “a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:8-14). For Peter, the passing of the heavens leads to an increase in righteousness here, not to its demise. Likewise Paul exhorts that “as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people,” even if the emphasis is to be upon “the family of believers” (Gal. 6:10).

We might also find that Paul’s emphasis upon “the family of believers” is misapplied and misunderstood. Most Christians are deeply absorbed in the affairs of family: their own family (soccer, maths coaching, music practice, tax returns) and the church ‘household’ (music rosters, Bible studies, flowers, setting up, packing up).

Is it possible that amongst all this, we have actually lost our true identity? We too were outsiders, welcomed into the kingdom of another. We too are the undeserving recipients of the kindness and grace of another. We too have been rescued from a filthy gutter, washed clean, and adopted – even married – into a new family.

We are those who would most be expected to know what grace, generosity, hospitality and welcome might look like. Like the thief on the cross, the one released from just punishment is most able to see the wickedness at work when the innocent are punished (Luke 23:40-43).

But instead, perhaps an endless round of church and family activity has left us thinking that we are the true insiders. Perhaps we have become the kind of people who would have argued against the Gentile Cornelius’ inclusion (Acts 11:2-3), or the kind of people who remember the small things of morality but who “have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23). Most sadly, then, perhaps we have allowed our gospel identity to be subverted by talk-back radio commentators and the like, so that to belong, as an insider, is to be Australian, and Christian, and not a Muslim refugee. When we hear ourselves repeating, with the crowd, that ‘we must be protected from them’, then we know that we have lost all sense that the Kingdom of God should really have been protected from us.

The government has made some improvements. But the human heart corrupts us; and if the hearts of Americans corrupted them at Abu Ghraib, perhaps it is time to confess that as Australians, our hearts have corrupted us at Nauru, Baxter, Woomera, Villawood, Port Hedland, Christmas Island, Maribyrnong and Port Augusta.

But thankfully, we are also those who know that even with the most grievous and heinous failures, God never hardens his heart against the cry of repentance. Jesus’ unnerving story (Matt. 18:23-35) of the man who tried to get a piffling debt repaid to him might reflect the hard-hearted posture many of us seem to have taken toward genuine refugees and their children.

But we can avoid that man’s hardness of heart by drinking deep from the picture of the King’s first encounter with the man: The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go.

Dr Andrew Cameron, lecturer in Ethics at Moore College and researcher Tracy Gordon are part of Sydney Diocese’s Social Issues Executive. This is an edited version of a recent SIE briefing. Access free weekly briefings via email: tracy.gordon@moore.edu.au