‘I Want a Man’, anonymous poem, Above Rubies, Jul. 2005 (distributed in October owing to financial constraints), 18:

No, I won’t sign the lib’s petition,
To do away with wife’s submission,
I’d be a fool to boss my spouse,
I want a man and not a mouse!

[And I thought their prose was crook!]

Australian Prayer Network, ‘India: Miracles Turn People to Jesus’, 17 Oct. 2005:

In Chattisgargh State, a deadly snake wrapped itself around a 15 year-old’s hand during a church planting seminar. He managed to brush it off but it fell on someone else. That person also managed to shake it off and it finally landed on an open Bible. It died on the spot. The witnesses who did not yet know Jesus were astonished and many have started following Jesus.

[My colleague Bronwyn Thompson immediately trumped this with a story about a two-headed Indian hermaphrodite - but you can't win 'em all.]

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Filed in: Their Own Mouths

Have you ever participated in a Web vote on a matter of public interest? Perhaps it was run by a radio or television station or a newspaper or magazine. Many of the questions, usually seeking a yes/no answer, relate to issues canvassed in this blog e.g. ‘Should sex education be mandatory in Australian schools?’; ‘Should the government move to limit funding for IVF treatment?’ Naturally, these sorts of questions attract the interest of Religious Right organisations.

If you carefully follow the course of voting on these issues, you may notice that it often traces a particular trajectory. Take a recent Melbourne Age online poll on the question, ‘Do you support the proposed [Victorian government late-term] abortion regulations?’ (These regulations would implement a 48-hour ‘cooling-off’ period and mandatory counselling before a late-term abortion.) After about 2,600 votes had been lodged, ‘yes’ was running at 42% and ‘no’ at 58%. However, at the 3,000-vote mark, ‘yes’ had improved to 45%, while at 3,500 votes, ‘yes’ was up to 48% (the final score, as far as I can tell).

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Filed in: Christian Right, Creationism

Evangelical Christians are supposed to think and act in certain prescribed ways, based on a particular understanding of the Bible. This supposed predictability has given rise to the concept of evangelical Christendom as a sort of monolithic bloc, or as a tribe of near-automatons, blindly following their authoritarian leaders. This idea is false.

Respected American pollster George Barna has been studying the beliefs and attitudes of evangelicals for years. In 1997, his research disclosed that 55% of those who had made ‘a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important [to them] in life today’ (i.e. ‘born-again’ Christians) did not believe in the existence of the Holy Spirit. In case you need reminding, the Holy Spirit constitutes one-third of the Christian God – although St Athanasius might object to my wording – and if you don’t believe in the Spirit, you don’t really count as a true evangelical.

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Filed in: Christian Right, Evangelicals

Back in 1994, Andrew Lansdown, then the pastor of Collie Baptist Church, WA, wrote a creationist pamphlet called Evolution? Lansdown later joined Life Ministries and has been the subject of an earlier blog item (13 May 2005).

The first part of Lansdown’s pamphlet was reprinted with minor modifications in the evangelical weekly New Life of 6 Oct. 2005, together with a brief introduction to the notion of ‘Intelligent Design’:

I should note at the outset that, in my view, if there is an intelligent designer, the God of the Bible is the most plausible candidate.

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Filed in: Catholicism, People

Australia’s Religious Right groups like to play up the significance of Christianity in Western history. This is rarely done with subtlety, but Richard J. Gibbs’ recent effort on the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) website deserves special mention.

According to Gibbs:

Christianity has the world’s first and best psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist and scientist … [T]he Bible is a scientific study of social and political life using these scientific methods.

Christianity has the best leader, teacher, counsellor, helper, healer and judge the world has ever seen. Christianity has answers and solutions to all social, political, economic, scientific, cultural, legal and personal problems …

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Filed in: Christian Right, People