Robbie Tulip Blog

The Berlin Wall

The astonishing physical barrier of division that separated West Berlin from its hinterland for three decades from 1961 to 1989 seemed when I was young to be a permanent and immutable feature of political geography.

An old friend recently advised me that in attending this religion conference, the General Assembly of the World Student Christian Federation, I should not discuss religion, as my views might challenge and shock other people

First day in Berlin Sunday 19 June

As you might expect, Berlin is an easy place to visit, with a great train network, and also with a heavy presence of history.  I quite easily caught three trains to get from the airport to my hostel this morning.

I mentioned in my comments written in Singapore yesterday my visit to Korea, where the division of the country between north and south remains in place today, as a source of considerable heartache for the Korean people.   Berlin of course has a similar history as a politically divided city between the capitalist west and the communist east, except that unlike Korea it surmounted the political challenges and reunified at the end of the Cold War in 1989.  Still you can see the bleak functional architecture from the Stalinist influence in East Berlin, very dull, conformist and ugly, contrasted to a more free creative spirit in the West. 

Another big contrast I have noticed in Berlin is that travelling at the solstice I have moved from the coldest and darkest part of the year in Australia to the hottest and lightest time in Germany.  At the winter June solstice in Australia it gets dark at 5pm and the mornings in the south of the country are frosty.  Here in Berlin it is hot, 35

In Athens, transiting.  First visit to Greece, regarded as the

Just arrived in Singapore with Andika Mongilala, reminds me of the last time I was here, 33 years ago in July 1989, travelling to Pyongyang to attend the World Festival of Youth and Students in a WSCF delegation.
My dear wife Caroline Reid had to mail my visa to me here in Singapore as the North Koreans said I had to travel on the World Student Christian Federation visa, not the Australian Socialist Party visa which I had received. I had not received the visa from WSCF Geneva before going to South Korea, from where I had to travel all the way to Singapore to get to the Hermit Kingdom. I vividly remember going by taxi to meet the plane from Australia here at Changi Airport where the mail was tipped out on the tarmac and I found the letter with my WSCF visa. I got to the North Korean Soviet Ilyushin plane just in time at midnight.

Quite a stressful adventure, and interesting memories of a tumultuous time after the Tian An Men Square massacre and before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tragic that North Korea remains such a backward and oppressive enclave while their compatriots in South Korea, with the same history and culture and language over 5000 years, are relatively rich and free.

We used to sing a song with the Korean Student Christian Federation “Our hope for unification, even in sleep it is our dream, we offer even our lives for the unity of our land. Come to us unification, all people in this land pray for you, we offer even our lives for the unity of our land.” Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tbZuQYkIM8

Visiting the two Koreas influenced me to see Christianity as having immense potential for reconciliation, and also to see that communist ideology is a source of poverty and tyranny. Seeing the contrast between systems inspired me to read most of the books of Solzhenitsyn mocking the Soviet regime.

One of my church activities is to serve as Secretary for the Canberra Region Presbytery of the Uniting Church in Australia. In this capacity I represent the Uniting Church on the ecumenical Council of Churches for the Australian Capital Territory. I presented the following short Bible reflection at the meeting of the council yesterday, on Matthew 25:31-46, the Last Judgement. I call this text the SDGs of the Bible, comparing it to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Last Judgement describes the centrality of works of mercy to the salvation of the world, in a way that is directly relevant to modern development priorities. The salvation proclaimed by Christ in this text is supremely practical, while also resting upon the spiritual call to have faith in the grace of God. The Biblical claim is that our connection to divine love is the main thing that matters, as the source from which all blessings flow.  Discussing the love of God for the world can inspire us to ask what we must do to be saved. 

The six works of mercy described by Jesus in the Last Judgement say the key priorities for salvation are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome strangers and visit prisoners and the sick. These all show how the love of God can appear in our lives through a transformation of our world.  These six actions are brought together in the seventh commandment, to treat the least as though they were Christ, like the story of God resting on the seventh day after six days of work to create the world.

Together these commands from Christ form what we can call the sustainable development goals of the Bible.  The starting point for sustainable development in this approach is to see the glory of God revealed in parts of our world that are often despised, rejected and ignored.   The vision of the reign of Christ in the Last Judgement calls us to live proleptically, which means living as though we were now in the kingdom of God.  Simple practical measures that show our love for the least work to include people who are excluded by worldly prejudice, challenging prevailing social values and enabling sustainable development. 

The vision of transformation here is like Saint Paul’s explanation in Romans 8 that the natural creation groans like a woman giving birth as God works for good through love. 

The priorities for change in this vision from Christ reflect the theme of the General Assembly of the World Student Christian Federation, “rejoice in hope” (Rom 12:12). The vision of planetary transformation for sustainable development in the Last Judgement gives a basis to rejoice in hope, confident that faith in God revealed in Christ can show a path to make our world a better place.  

The World Student Christian Federation is a remarkable organisation, though now little known in Australia.  WSCF has a rich history and heritage within the ecumenical movement and in connection to broader social movements through its mission to bring people around the world together in the ecumenical vision of Christ

I will fly to Berlin on 18 June to attend the General Assembly of the World Student Christian Federation on behalf of the Australian Student Christian Movement. It is an exciting honour to be able to do this. ASCM has been my spiritual home, as I have sought to integrate faith and reason in philosophy and religion. This journey to Berlin represents a sort of pilgrimage, combining my university studies in German philosophy and language with a critical approach to Christianity. Berlin is a place I have wanted to go to all my life (or at least since I was 20). The WSCF assembly runs from 23 to 30 June, so I have a few days in Berlin before it starts, and will then stay there until 8 July, with no commitments as yet. My only plans are to participate as fully as I can in the assembly, and to write a short blog every day, trying to be as honest as I can about what I see and what has brought me to this point in life, across my varied interests.

Christianity is such a vexed and controversial topic. I am a regular churchgoer, and an active participant in a range of church activities, but my approach to faith is primarily philosophical, looking to stringently examine and critique all assumptions against the primary values of logic and evidence. That leads me to the view that the meaning of all faith claims is primarily symbolic, not literal, and that all supernatural language has meaning only in so far as it symbolises natural truth.

At my church, Kippax Uniting Church in Canberra, our minister Karyl Davison yesterday preached on ideas that I felt relate well to this perspective, rejecting the church creeds in favour of the simple creed that God is love, and suggesting we are in the middle of a new reformation of Christianity. Such an approach creates an ethical coherence around faith in Christ, while placing the entirety of traditional theology into doubt. That is a complex perspective that most people find hard to understand, but it is something on which I warmly welcome courteous dialogue.

I hope the WSCF assembly in Berlin will be well placed to build engagement and momentum around such ideas. The long history of WSCF since its foundation in 1895 has centred on the theme of being the church ahead of the church, providing a safe and open space for radical exploration of new ideas against an ethic of humility, intelligence and respect. WSCF now finds itself at a crossroads, with traditional faith in disrepute within progressive communities. Restoring credibility to Christianity requires a systematic approach that finds its grounding in scientific knowledge rather than in traditional belief. This is a paradigm shift that calls for careful and informed conversation, aiming to produce a transformative vision of vital relevance for our world today.

Some big themes where a coherent Christian faith could usefully comment include climate change, the Ukraine war, inequality, social fracturing in the context of social media, and human identity. These are some of the topics I hope to discuss in this blog, while also recording some observations of the events of the assembly.

I plan to circulate this blog publicly at https://rtulip.net/blog/ and https://www.facebook.com/AustralianSCM as well as providing weekly email updates.

Out of the Depths

Robbie Tulip

Kippax Uniting Church

Sunday 6 June 2021

Our readings today are from the Old Testament, from Genesis, Samuel and the Psalms. The theme that brings them together is the fall from grace. 

The fall is a simplified mythological story told to explain why there is evil in the world. We hear in our readings of the expulsion of humanity from paradise, of the fraught decision of ancient Israel to put trust in a king rather than in God, and of the Psalmist

Cleansing The Temple

7 March 2021

Kippax Uniting Church

Robbie Tulip

Psalm 19:1-8, John 2: 13-17

Our readings for today are from Psalm 19 and the Gospel of Saint John.  The Psalm explains how the glory of God is revealed in the magnificent order of the visible heavens. The Gospel reading tells of Jesus driving the moneychangers and their animals out of the temple in Jerusalem.  I will use this opportunity to explain how these texts relate to my own theology, which differs quite markedly from conventional approaches.

Before getting into my own interpretation, it is important to reflect on the great power of the Gospel story of the cleansing of the Temple.  The courage and vision of Christ are presented by John at the beginning of Jesus