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Stanley Hauerwas
Stanley Hauerwas
The Elimination of Evil
Greg Clarke
The following is an address given by Greg Clarke at 'Trubar’s Evil series', in October in Slovenia
| Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak in the series
celebrating the 500th anniversary of Trubar’s birth. He is not a figure
well-known in Australia, but the events of the European Reformation are
indeed significant for the shape of Australian culture. It was the
post-Reformation Church of England that first brought Christianity to
Australia, sending chaplains to teach and pastor the penal colony. We
are a nation shaped by preaching to sinners—whether they be the poor
souls of thieves deported from England, or the sometimes savage and
self-serving colonials. Modern Australia is born out of trying to make
good of a bad situation, trying to turn a prison into a paradise.
Australia is a beautiful place to live, but nevertheless great
corruption, selfishness, injustice and violence remain. Which means that evil is a topic of enduring interest to us, as it is no doubt to you. Our contexts are different—Australia, a young nation; Slovenia a much older one; Australia an island continent, in some ways cut off from the wider world; Slovenia a significant part of Europe’s struggle with a violent past and violent ideologies. However, the idea that evil could be done away with, eradicated, finished and that we would never see suffering again—well, that is a most appealing hope to all nations. Surely, the elimination of evil is one of the underlying intentions of social policies in many of the world’s nations. We may not expect to see it, but we expect to pursue it as a goal. |
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