Connections Archive

The efficient campaigns by Seventh-day Adventists to influence Australia's constitution and the religious stances of the emerging Commonwealth are better known since historian Richard Ely wrote Unto God and Caesar, claiming: "For a church that so rigorously and with such determination believed in the separation of Church and State, the Adventists played politics very well" (1976, pp. 44-5).?In his Murdoch Lecture, Dr Stuart Piggin challenges us to invest similar thought and effort into shaping Australia as a "good society."

Piggin is a careful observer of our movement, especially since he attended an important Adventist History Symposium at Monash University (1985). He is now in essence asking us to consider if our emphasis on the separation of church and state causes us to undervalue the roles of modern Josephs and Daniels in government.

We must ask ourselves, anew, if we are effectively demonstrating how much we care about Christian values, social justice and human wellbeing. We must ponder at depth this urgent appeal as a healthy challenge to study again all the Scriptures say about the responsibilities of those who govern and those who are governed.

Adventists are for Christian values. We are against coercion in matters of faith. So high are the stakes in the contest between good and evil that every initiative for good must be intelligently embraced. Christians are to bear the Good News "to every nation, tribe, language and people" (Revelation 14:6, NIV), including Australasians.

Only one of three Adventist co-founders came to live Down Under. Between 1891 and 1900, Ellen White travelled in New Zealand and Australia, speaking and counselling constantly and writing much. She urged us to defend religious liberty and the vulnerable; without her we would not have "played politics" nearly so well.

White also helped to found Avondale College and completed her classic on the life of Christ at her Cooranbong home, "Sunnyside." The Jesus of The desire of ages was "strong to think and to do." Her commission to us is explicit: "Of all professing Christians, Seventh-day Adventists should be foremost in uplifting Christ before the world" (Evangelism, p. 188).