Over the last 30 years, Australian Churches have regularly raised with the Government and with their parishioners the need to be generous with money. After all, the argument goes, we are a wealthy country with a responsibility to be a good neighbour both to countries in our region, and locally, especially to those less fortunate than ourselves.
Sometimes, this is such a strongly applied principle that the very nature of the faith itself can be rarely moved beyond "Be generous to others as God has been generous to you."
Recently, there has been an increasing number of Australians who have come to question the entire premise. Primarily, there is little evidence to suggest that giving local people welfare raises living standards in any significant measure, or that foreign aid does anything to develop poorer nations over the longer period.
A snapshot of our region actually highlights another more vital reality; it is giving people work, developing local business, encouraging local entrepreneurs and giving the poor the means to create their own wealth that raises people out of poverty.
Australia has recently concluded a Free-Trade Agreement (KAFTA April 2014) with South Korea, a significant player on the world economic scene but one that only sixty years ago was largely devastated by the Korean War (1950-53).
It is not aid that has resulted in the South Korean transformation, it is a philosophy of economic freedom, a striving for excellence and an entrepreneurial class that has pursued wealth-generating enterprise. Australians have also benefitted hugely from South Korean growth; our trade is worth around 30 billion Australian Dollars, and our citizens benefit significantly from competitively priced cars, TVs, electronic and other electrical goods.
Yet South Korea, is only half the Korean story, North Korea is stringently opposed to economic freedom and ruthless in suppressing religious and political freedoms. North Korean restrictions breed massive starvation and poverty, yet in South Korea free enterprise has raised fifty million from poverty to prosperity. South Korea is but a tiny microcosm of the world, yet its basic principles hold true: where people are given economic freedom, poor countries are more than capable of producing wealth. Without this freedom North Korea waits.
It is at this point that Australia's churches have a vital role to play. Currently, most discussions about poverty focus on the need for government intervention, the desirability of minimum wages and the necessity of increased welfare provisions. Yet key components are missing from Church statements on poverty and welfare questions.
How can Australia encourage the entrepreneur? How do we support the essential role of business in providing employment? How can we develop and support those who wish to start their own business initiatives? In short, Australia's churches have underplayed the pivotal and indispensible component in moving people out of poverty — business support, which leads to the provision of employment.
Part of the reason for such neglect appears to be a general mistrust of wealth creation in the capitalist system and a feeling that inequality and greed may result.
A focus on the exceptional wealth of a few individuals often attributes to them selfish motives or corrupt practices. A more truthful analysis suggests that Australia's churches are also perceived as excessively wealthy and with secretive and self-protecting practices. It is not just millionaires within the capitalist system who may be tempted by greed; communists, politicians, trade unionists, footballers, sheiks and bishops can also show themselves to be fragile human beings!
Capitalist nations will always need the rule of law to ensure corruption is contained, but Samsung, Daewoo, Kia, Hyundai, LG and a host of others did not get to the point where they can employ thousands of people in both South Korea and Australia by corrupt and untrustworthy practices. They are successful by providing at affordable prices quality goods that modern Australians are keen to use.
For Christianity, humanity is made in the image of God with a fundamental call to be co-creators in the human future. Importantly, it is God's direction to be "fruitful and multiply" that drives us to a creativity beyond the confines of reproduction alone, to a full humanity with a vocation to keep safe our environment and to care and provide for each other.
Economics and work are not morally free environments; the goods, services and employment they provide are essential to dignity, hope and a strong sense of self. In the fullness of faith and human flourishing, work and enterprise are important components in the Christian life.
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