Speaking together: a methodology for the National Council of Churches' contribution to public policy debate in Australia

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Sydney University. Ann Wansbrough March 1999 The National Council of Churches in Australia has undertaken, in its constitution, to speak out on matters affecting oppressed people and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and more generally on issues related to justice, peace and integrity of creation. This thesis offers a possible methodology for investigating the issues, as the basis for speaking with one another as churches, with the poor and oppressed, and with the policy-makers. The focus is on issues related to economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights in the international human rights instruments. Part 1 examines the criteria that a methodology must meet if it is to be consistent with the NCCA constitution. The rest of Part I is devoted to the policy context. Chapter 2 looks at some of the issues being examined by church agencies. Two case studies in the Appendix look in more detail at two specific questions. Chapter 3 examines the public policy process. Chapter 4 looks at the international human rights instruments that Australia has ratified, and what mechanisms in Australia are used to implement those rights. Part II has separate chapters on the traditions of the Orthodox, Anglican, Roman Catholic and Uniting Churches, as well as the international and Australian ecumenical tradition. These chapters attempt to deal faithfully with the different approaches of the different traditions, while asking a common set of questions of each. What does this tradition see as the role of the church in the public arena? What is the attitude of the church towards human rights? Does the church adopt a critical attitude towards its own life as well as the life of the world (does it have a sense of selfsuspicion)? What does the church say about its methodology for thinking about what it should say and do? What methodology is implicit in actual documents about public policy issues? Case studies in an appendix supplement these chapters by examining over 30 examples of church documents dealing with public policy issues. A number of common themes emerge which provide the basis for the methodology proposed in Part III. Part III begins with the ethics of public policy debate. What is required to debate policy issues in an ethical manner in a pluralist society? The final three chapters (11-13) are devoted to the methodological proposal. Chapter 11 proposes a hermeneutic circle that is an elaboration of that proposed by Juan Segundo. His circle was for liberating theology; the elaboration in the thesis is for policy work in the light of theology. Chapter 1 1 also looks at the appropriateness of using such a circle for ecumenical work. The methodology is not dependent on the validity of Liberation Theology, since it is based on the analysis of church traditions in Part 11. Discussion of the methodology begins with a recognition that there are many competing realities in pluralist Australia. The methodology gives priority to the reality experienced by those whose human rights are violated or at risk in public policy: Indigenous people, the poor, and so on. The role of the church is to provide and promote an alternative discourse. The rest of the chapter looks at the methodology required to provide that alternative: ideological suspicion and critique. It includes an examination of the nature of ideology. Three elements of ideological critique are discussed: human rights analysis, structural analysis (the analysis of power relations in the policy process) and policy analysis (the validity of policy proposals). Some suggestions are made about the types of questions required to move from abstract methodology to concrete method. An appendix provides more detailed examples. Chapter 12 looks at theological suspicion and analysis. There are three tasks. First, to recognise and critique the way theological concepts have been appropriated into the dominant discourse to give it legitimacy. The second task is to recognise that ideological ideas sometimes become incorporated into theology in a way that undermines its integrity. So there must be critique of theology itself. The churches need a sense of self-suspicion, as some of their documents acknowledge. The third task is to renew the theological tradition in the light of questions of justice. In this task there is substantial help available from those biblical scholars who use a “double hermeneutic”, that is, who in their scholarly study of Scripture bring reality and tradition into dialogue, to discover elements of the tradition that have been neglected or not fully understood in the past. Chapter 13 looks at the outcome of the process. It suggests that the contextualised process of chapters 11 and 12 needs to lead to middle axioms (i.e. general directions, policy principles, criteria). The thesis thus draws together the two major strands of ecumenical method historically: middle axioms and contextualisation. Middle axioms provide the criteria for evaluating public policy and for suggesting alternatives. The point of the whole process is action. In this way the hermeneutic circle becomes praxis. The methodology is a circular process, so that the various parts interact and understanding is deepened over time. A brief fourth appendix discusses some questions arising from the thesis itself, such as “Is it possible to talk about method?