I live in a conservative stronghold of an electorate. I know most of my friends at church voted LNP (conservative) for "religious freedom" - or the right to say anything biblical and not legally or socially suffer for it - the Israel Folau Stance. My sister says they might care about things like refugee rights on Nauru but they think they can change the mind of the LNP, who've only ever doubled down on internment for asylum seekers.
I trust God and love his people, I just feel like I don't like them much right now. It raises a lot of questions about Christian community and belonging, along with the question whether a single woman of Chinese ancestry, left-leaning and socially progressive is really going to fit in a conservative white family church? No, I don't want your reassurances, Christian friends. Right now, they just feel empty. I like the people - they're very nice people, but very nice people also put the Jews into Dachau, so that's disingenuous. They want to do the right thing by Christians and by the gospel of the Lord, but in suburbia 'the right thing by Christians' means Scripture in schools and not letting people tell children that they don't have to conform to 'male' or 'female' if they feel like they're something else, or educating children about sexualities "too young" (as though every girl being told how pretty she is, while every boy being told how clever he is doesn't emphasise the difference in the way we treat sexuality).
Donating helps in the short-term, but in the long term, it's about policies that the people donating have no power to make, save for at the ballot box, and in letting their representatives know about it in personal emails, written post, or phone calls. And even that stops at the border of our country. Honestly? For most of us it never even gets out of our head - pushed away by busyness or simple selfishness.
Does it feel like all the activists are atheists and agnostics? That the people who care about others who aren't like them are more likely not to be Christians? Along the way, we've learned to give thoughts and prayers and money...but not time and attention and love.
Surely there's somewhere between piously praying and atheistic activism? A middle ground?
