The Truth Made Weird by Dr Simon Kennedy
The Christian Schools National Policy Forum was held on the 24th and 25th of May, at the Park Hyatt in Canberra. Dr Simon Kennedy, who is the Director of the CHC’s Millis Institute, was invited to give a keynote on the first day of the conference. His talk was entitled “The Truth Made Weird”, and was delivered to around 250 Christian principals and board members. Dr Kennedy provided an analysis of the state of public discourse in Australia and the west more broadly. He argued that “liberal democratic culture has morphed from a space of civil political pluralism to a political battlefield.” Dr Kennedy pointed out that there has been shift in our culture from “a culture undergirded by Christian transcendence to a culture of zero transcendence,” which has partly caused the decline in political and public discourse today.
Dr Kennedy then challenged Christian schools to train “Christian humanists”, people who read great books, wrestled with big ideas, and grapple with the deep questions of God and humanity, in order to produce effective Christian leaders. He concluded his talk by saying that “if you develop your schools into places of Christian humane education, whether it’s for the many or a kind of accelerated program in the humanities, you will be on the way to producing graduates who can lead the Church, and indeed the country, through the dark decades ahead.”