By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
A CHRISTIAN leader has taken aim at Australia’s oldest interfaith network, calling on the council to strip the organisation of funding.
David Owen, a pastor at Noble Park Christian Church, says Interfaith Network of Greater Dandenong receives “a lot of kudos as a very symbolic group but I don’t see that they actually do anything in the community”.
“They also receive considerable support and funding from the council.”
He said the Christian community, on the other hand, was little recognised by the council.
“If Interfaith wants to keep going, they shouldn’t expect the council to fund them.”
Mr Owen said council money was better spent going to community groups, including any religious group, which provided community help including the pressing asylum seeker issue.
He is part of the Christian-based Multi-Ethnic Support Network which helps about 170 asylum seekers to “learn English and to assimilate” in classes in Dandenong, Noble Park and Doveton four days a week.
In 2013-14 the interfaith network has been allocated $15,500 from the council for organisational support and its annual gathering in October.
This year, St James Anglican Church received $8615 for 150th anniversary celebrations, the Dandenong Eid Festival $5000 and African church groups got smaller grants.
Greater Dandenong community services director Mark Doubleday said the council had a “long term partnership” with the network.
He said the encouragement of intercultural and interfaith communication was a “key strategic action” of the council’s draft wellbeing plan 2013-17.
Mr Owen, who recently criticised Greater Dandenong’s Christmas celebrations, is a member of Dandenong Ministers’ Fellowship and a Christian organisation called Momentum.
He said he took issue with Interfaith Network’s ethos.
“Religions are not fundamentally the same with some differences,” he said.
“They are fundamentally different and have some similarities.
“They say let’s get together and pretend we’re serving the same God. The truth is we’re not.
“We need to look at the ideology behind these organisations. We’ve given our sense of ‘fair go’ and culture away.
“Multiculturalism hasn’t worked anywhere in the world.”
According to its ‘common statement’, the Interfaith Network convenes members of different faiths and promotes “respect and tolerance of each other’s beliefs, cultures and traditions”.
Member Helen Heath said the network was about what was common between people, cultures and faiths.
“The sacredness of life is what underpins it all.
“There’s something special in us as human beings that calls us to be bigger and better than we are.
“Some know it as God. Others don’t name it the same way. It’s the same space that is inside us all.”
In response to Mr Owen’s views that faiths should be “side by side”, she said “people can’t help being together as a community”.
“We shop together, we work together and go to school together. We come together whether we like it or not.”
The network holds regular tours of places-of-worship to promote “co-operation and harmony” between faiths.
“People afterwards say ‘I don’t feel so concerned about it. I can approach that leader at that place of worship’.
“It enriches a community. It adds to a strong community.”
