Bronwyn Thompson
11-Dec-2007

The remarkable victory of Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party in the 2007 Federal Election brings to an end 11 years of conservative rule under John Howard. Much of the Howard government’s rhetoric revolved around claims of growth and national prosperity. But for many Australians there was a sense of unease during the Howard years with its singular emphasis on economic expansion and rampant consumerism which somehow failed to acknowledge our need for humanity and compassion in government. Australians want a life that doesn’t totally revolve around working and spending. A recent letter to The Age newspaper expressed it thus:

I sense that we want leadership that recognises the intrinsic value of human beings, instead of the cynical exploitation of competitive instincts, prejudice and mistrust. This ethic should extend to foreign policy and international relations. It is my hope that our newly elected leaders recognise all of this, and have the courage to embark on a more humane and responsible way of running the country.
Letter to The Age, 26 Nov 2007

A shocking revelation of the post-election recrimination game has been that the Coalition had been suffering even greater internal disagreement and disunity than even the most cynical voter could ever have imagined. In the weeks after the election, the Liberal Party has spectacularly disintegrated in an orgy of blame-tossing that has astounded even hardened journalists. The Liberals are split down the middle between making a fresh new start or sticking with the tired old policies that saw them thrown so spectacularly out of office. Not quite brave enough to embark on an adventure into the unknown, they have elected the little-known Brendan Nelson as leader, but few commentators see him as a long-term solution to the party’s ills. For the sake of good government let us hope that this once-proud party can resurrect itself from the ashes of a resounding defeat and present a credible Opposition in Parliament, not only federally but in all the states.

Former union official Bill Kelty wrote recently:

Somebody has to tell the Liberal Party a few hard truths. The toughest of all is that the party, not just Howard, has lost touch with a generation. Young people are not better off with WorkChoices, mounting HECS debts, cynicism over climate change, unfair dismissals, with houses they can’t buy, a monarchy they don’t want, wars they don’t support and the use of terrorist threats to undermine liberties.

The imperative is to reconnect with the two great impulses of its existence – the belief in individual freedom and the willingness to fight for small-l liberal values by opposing apartheid, endorsing multiculturalism, standing up to bureaucratic bullying, welcoming refugees and fighting for liberty.
A few uncomfortable truths for a party that’s lost its heart, Bill Kelty, 3 Dec 2007.

The extremist fringe of the Liberal Party might also do well to re-acquaint themselves with the party’s Constitution, which shows that the party’s principles include “freedom of speech, religion and association” and “freedom of citizens to choose their own way of living and of life, subject to the rights of others”.

Neo-conservatism

The latter 7 years of Howard’s rule was closely aligned with George Bush’s presidency and the Republican Administration in US politics. During this period, conservative religious belief had a major influence on American politics, and we saw the re-emergence of the so-called Culture Wars as fundamentalist Christian zealots flexed their muscles and even George Bush himself believed God aided his decision-making. Subsequently, the foolish American adventurism in Iraq which has brought that country to the brink of civil war and destabilised peace prospects throughout the region, has caused many supporters of the Bush Administration to abandon ship. The Republicans have now lost control of Congress, and Bush has become a lonely and ineffective President with dwindling support amongst his own citizens. Howard’s unabashed support for the Bush Administration’s foreign policy was one of many factors that led to his downfall.

The original instigator of the Culture War was Pat Buchanan, who declared war in 1992 during his run for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. He said then:

“There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.”
Republican National Convention Speech, Pat Buchanan, August 17, 1992.

In 2004, Buchanan was still raging:

Who is in your face here? Who started this? Who is on the offensive? Who is pushing the envelope? The answer is obvious. A radical Left aided by a cultural elite that detests Christianity and finds Christian moral tenets reactionary and repressive is hell-bent on pushing its amoral values and imposing its ideology on our nation.
The Aggressors in the Culture Wars, Pat Buchanan, March 8 2004.

It is difficult to establish exactly how the American Christian Right hopes to revolutionise the existing social and moral order without replacing democratic government with a totalitarian theocratic state, presumably run by themselves. While there are many in the Right who work and pray for just such an outcome, the prospects of a theocratic upheaval in America seem remote unless the country collapses into outright civil war. Perhaps that explains why the Christian Right are so keen to keep their guns.

Is there a “Culture War” in Australia

In Australia, Christian Right groups were encouraged by the extent to which their American cousins were able to exert power and influence over some aspects of government policy. But Australia is a vastly different country from America, despite our cultural similarities, and the Christian Right here has been unsuccessful in making any major inroads into politics. Australians generally have a distaste for the intrusion of religion into politics, and the relatively small but noisy Christian Right in Australia has mostly preached to its own small choir.

Nevertheless, the Christian Right has had some successes. It was largely through the efforts of these groups that the Marriage Act was amended in 2004 to spell-out that marriage is between a man and a woman, notwithstanding that this notion was understood by many to be enshrined in common law. Subsequently, some states and territories have signalled intentions to introduce legislation to enable registrations of same-sex relationships. Even the Howard government in its later years expressed some support for these moves, although it over-ruled an attempt by the ACT government to enact legislation. The Christian Right groups have generally opposed such moves, although there has been some division in the ranks. The issue is likely to become more prominent now that progressive governments control every state and the Commonwealth.

On the other hand, the Christian Right suffered a major rebuff in 2006 when both houses of Parliament approved a private member’s Bill to remove the Health Minister’s power of veto over the abortion drug RU486. This was clearly a vote of no-confidence in the zealous Health Minister Tony Abbott, who had earlier attempted to whip up an anti-abortion campaign in Australia, at the same time denying that his Catholic faith influenced his behaviour as minister. The Christian Right mounted a major campaign to defeat this Bill, but the Bill was passed with a significant margin.

It is difficult to define who actually represents the Christian Right in Australia. On some issues, elements of the mainstream churches exhibit right-wing tendencies, but the groups that consistently promote American-style “family values” policies and align themselves with the hard right of Australian politics are generally small, self-appointed groups and individuals who claim to represent a “biblical worldview”. Information about the key groups and individuals are documented elsewhere on the unBelief site. Their policies generally include:

• opposition to abortion
• oppostion to embryonic stem cell research
• opposition to same-sex marriage or even registration of same-sex relationships
• opposition to voluntary euthanasia
• opposition to the availability of adult video material
• opposition to religious vilification laws
• opposition to government welfare
• opposition to multi-culturalism
• denial about human-caused global warming
• support for creationism to be taught as science in schools
• support for right-wing conservative governments and opposition to the “secular left” which is often linked by them with rampant atheism.
• support for physical discipline of children

Before the election, in fact in an address to Christian groups organised by the Australian Christian Lobby, Kevin Rudd claimed that he would govern with a hard head and a soft heart, a philosophy that seems to have struck a chord with many voters. The Christian Right seems to operate from a diametrically opposite position – hard of heart and soft in the head.

A frequent claim of the Christian Right groups has been that Australia is a Christian nation, and they often cite census statistics to support this contention, notwithstanding the fact the proportion of the population identifying themselves as Christian has been falling steadily to its current figure of 65%. At the same time, these groups imply that only “bible-believing” Christians are true Christians, which would appear to reduce the actual proportion of Christians in Australia to something less than 5%.

There are some who claim that a Culture War is being waged in Australia. Prominent amongst these Culture Warriors is Bill Muehlenberg who runs the CultureWatch blog. Bill would have us believe that there is open warfare being staged in this country between Christians who subscribe to a “biblical worldview”, and the rest of us – the secular humanists (read godless pagans) who are driving Australia down a slippery slope of drunkenness, debauchery and apostasy. Amongst the apostates would be those Christians (i.e. the vast majority) who attend mainstream and other non-evangelical churches and who accept scientific theories about evolution and the Big Bang which cleary conflict with the Bible stories of creation. This has led to an anti-science hysteria amongst the Christian Right, who paint science as materialistic, atheistic and anti-religion. The strong evidence-based science behind theories of origins of life, the physical universe and even climate change are airily dismissed by the Christian Right as conspiracy or global delusion. Such ignorance is perpetuated by the more extreme religious fanatics who shield their children from reality and the state of human knowledge by homeschooling them with texts that perpetuate scientific ignorance.

This polarity of viewpoints is often described as a battle between progressivism and conservatism (or orthodoxy). Those inclined toward orthodoxy consider that morality is unchanging, eternal and transcendent, and can only be determined through Biblical revelation. The enemy of these Biblical conservatives are the progressives, who believe that morality should be informed through reason, learning and experience and is therefore open to cultural change.

The problem for Bill and those like him is that most Australians are not even aware that war has been declared over this difference of opinion. They go through life enjoying friends, family, faith and football, completely oblivious to the satanic culture that is apparently enveloping them. And they vote with their heads at election time, blissfully unaware that God wants them to vote Liberal.

To some extent the Howard government fought a cultural battle with Australian society by stifling the independence of the ABC, hampering the universities, and attempting to rewrite colonial history. However, this is a more subtle form of warfare, carried out by administrative fiat rather than by attempting to change hearts and minds, and by all accounts it has largely been in vain.

On the other hand, the Culture War being waged by the Christian Right is essentially a propaganda war, with little political authority to back it up, and which the media and the general public largely ignore. If there is a Culture War being held in Australia, only one of the protagonists is actually in battle, and they are flailing about in a back paddock far removed from the real world.

God’s man defeated

In the recent election, almost all Christian Right groups rallied behind the Howard Government. Some, such as the Pentecostal preacher Danny Nalliah, of Catch the Fire Ministries, went so far as to prophesy the return of the government (note the disclaimer):

I thank the Lord that I just had a one to one meeting with Peter Costello on Thursday 9th August and John Howard on Friday 10th August. The Lord had given me a clear prophetic Word for both of them and I thank Him I was able to deliver His Word in addition to praying with both of these Federal Government Leaders. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to share the details of these private encounters, but I will boldly declare that Prime Minister John Howard will be re-elected in the November election (if the Body of Christ unites in prayer and action) and pass the leadership onto Peter Costello sometime after.
Costello: God’s own Prime Minister, Crikey 14 Aug 2007.

Needless to say, Nalliah subsequently anguished over the failure of this prophecy, but has drawn on the disclaimer. He claimed that God spoke to him the morning after the election in these words:

For My people were not united in prayer and action for this election. If they were, they would have experienced spiritual revival under My freedom reigning in this nation, but now My people have chosen another way. They have not voted for My will, but for self gain and personal change.
Election 2007 – Did I get it wrong?, Danny Nalliah, 29 Nov 2007.

Now one might think that God could have foreseen the election outcome when he conveyed the original prophecy to Danny, even if he [God] was only getting his information from the media polls. But God does indeed work in mysterious ways.

An online prayer organisation, the Australian Prayer Network, was apparently unimpressed with “false prophecies” made about the election. A week after the result, they commented:

Unfortunately there were a number of false prophecies saying that John Howard would be returned, which many Christians received as from the Lord. I am aware from the emails that I have been receiving since the election that many of those people feel devastated, confused and let down because this did not happen.
A new season of incredible change arrives, Brian Pickering, National Coordinator of the
Australian Prayer Network, 1-Dec-07

Pastor Nalliah will no doubt live down this prophetic failure, but perhaps he might be a bit more cautious in the future about making public forecasts based on voices in his head.

The “Christian Values” Checklist

During the election campaign, the Australian Christian Values Institute published the Australian Christian Values Checklist, and scored the political parties according to their policies on these issues. It was supported by several other individuals and parachurch groups associated with the Australian Christian Right. The Australian Christian Lobby was a notable absentee, and they did not promote the checklist during the campaign.

Of the 27 “Christian Values”, the breakdown of topics are:

• abortion,marriage and sex: 18
• drugs: 3
• parliamentary prayers: 1
• christian heritage in schools: 1
• environment: 1
• euthanasia: 1
• freedom from vilification laws: 1
• freedom to discriminate: 1

The checklist placed no demand at all on political parties to declare their policies on poverty, the disadvantaged, indigenous issues, industrial relations, refugees, foreign aid, climate change or the brutality of war, issues that would seem to be of interest to most Christians. Essentially the Checklist was little more than the personal moral obsessions of a handful of individuals with a clear but undeclared party political agenda.

The groups behind the checklist are largely individual “ministries” representing the “hard hearts” of the Christian Right:

• Australian Christian Values Institute, founded and directed by Warwick Marsh.
• Integrity Alliance, set up to implement the outcomes of the Sexual Integrity Forum, which was convened by the Fatherhood Foundation founded by Warwick Marsh.
• National Marriage Coalition, a coalition of 3 organisations,one of which is the Fatherhood Foundation.
• Saltshakers, founded by Peter Stokes.
• Life Ministries, directed by Dwight Randall, Vice President of the WA branch of Christian Democratic Party and a CDP candidate in past WA elections.
• Catch the Fire Ministries, directed by Danny Nalliah, former Family First candidate, who prophesied that John Howard would win the election.
• CultureWatch, a personal blog run by Bill Muehlenberg, who publicly supported return of the Coalition prior to the election.
• Christian History Research, directed by Graham McLennan who stood for the Christian Democratic Party in 1984 and 1998, and has been on the NSW State Executive of the Liberal Party.
• Mens Prayer, also known as Mens Prayer Australia. a little known group but one which regularly appears on most lists of the religious right parachurch organisations.
• Australian Indigenous Prayer Network, coordinated by Kris Schlyder, a former Australian Army officer.

Mainstream Christians have criticised the checklist for being unbalanced:

This Christian values checklist includes many issues worth raising from a biblical worldview. I also will continue to defend biblical standards for sex and marriage and the sanctity of life and so on. But I must conclude that the Australian Christian Values Checklist 2007 is simplistic, reductionistic, and unbalanced. In particular, it is deeply distressing to me that our biblical duty of care for the marginalised and poor in our country (let alone the world) is so woefully neglected.
Sydney Anglicans Nov 2007, Open letter from Canon Sandy Grant.

While any group has the right to participate in the political debate, organisations and parachurch groups calling themselves Christian have a responsibility to be transparent about their political agendas. It is quite dishonest to apply the banner of Christianity to blatant political propaganda, and to infer that a very narrow set of “values” is definitive of Christianity in general.

There are some signs that Christian Right groups are starting to realise that their singular focus on moral reform has marginalised them and caused many people to question their credibility and legitimacy. Over the past year, the well-resourced Australian Christian Lobby has signalled a softening of its previous hard-right stand, which has led to criticism from the more extreme groups.

The Australian Prayer Network, in a statement after the election said:

Many Christians, Christian organisations and ministries predicting and working towards a Howard victory did so on the basis of moral issues which they believed were at the heart of God. They are, but not to the exclusion of many other issues…..
God has removed a Government and many individual Christian members of the Government who in general sought to protect those values. He and the people of Australia have shown they will no longer accept ideology that does not have compassion, mercy and grace mixed with it….
The battle to hold the ground has been ended with one sweep of God’s hand. The battle to win back the ground with positive kingdom strategies has now begun. The old methods will no longer work.
A new season of incredible change arrives, Brian Pickering, National Coordinator of the
Australian Prayer Network, 1-Dec-07

Clearly at least some elements of the Christian Right realise they have image and marketing problems. However, there are arrogant personalities at work here and any move towards more acceptance and compassion is likely to be patchy.

Christian Politics

Until the last two elections, the only political party that claimed to specifically represent a religious viewpoint was Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party (CDP). Through a quirk in the electoral system for the NSW Upper House, Fred Nile and another representive of the CDP have managed to get seats in the NSW Legislative Council with only 3% of the vote. Fred resigned to stand for a Senate seat in 2004, and after failing in that attempt, was selected by the CDP to fill his own vacancy in the Legislative Council.

The Family First Party (FFP), which was largely founded by members of the Assembly of God church, made its first appearance nationally in 2004, when Steve Fielding won a Senate seat in Victoria with 2% of the vote, largely because of a major miscalculation by the ALP which delivered their excess quota to the FFP instead of the Greens. This blunder could come back to haunt Labor in the next 3 years because it dramatically affects the balance of power in the Senate. Fielding will probably lose his seat at the next election.

The Democratic Labor Party (DLP) was founded in 1955 as a Catholic Right spin-off from the ALP. It basically disappeared in the 1970s, but was resurrected in Victoria in 2004, and ran candidates in most states in the 2007 election.

These 3 parties are basically fighting for the same right-wing Christian vote, which totals less than 5% based on recent figures. While there is considerable cross-flow of preferences between them, the 3 parties are simply stealing votes from each other. Below are percentage votes obtained by the 3 religious-based parties in the 2007 Senate election, using official vote counts as at 10-Dec-07. The national average is based on a weighted average calculation. ACT and NT are excluded because the parties did not run candidates there. The Senate is a fairer indication of popular support because the minor parties do not contest all seats in the House of Representatives.

Legend:
CDP Christian Democratic Party
FFP Family First Party
DLP Democratic Labor Party

2007 Senate election:

	NSW	VIC	QLD	WA	SA	TAS	National average
CDP	1.97	0.22	0.26	1.77	0.14	0.00	0.97
FFP	0.60	2.54	2.20	0.85	2.91	2.04	1.66
DLP	1.26	1.02	0.30	0.96	0.94	0.63	0.94
Total	3.83	3.78	2.76	3.58	3.99	2.67	3.56

For comparison, below are the final 2004 results:

2004 Senate election:

	NSW	VIC	QLD	WA	SA	TAS	National average
CDP	2.61	0.34	0.00	1.88	0.00	0.65	1.18
FFP	0.56	1.88	3.37	0.85	3.98	2.38	1.81
DLP	0.00	1.94	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.50
Total	3.17	4.16	3.37	2.73	3.98	3.03	3.49

(Source: Australian Electoral Office)

The 2007 election has clearly been a very bleak one for the religious parties. The DLP stood candidates in all states in 2007, but only in Victoria in 2004, and it would appear that they have further fragmented the religious vote. The total religious vote is basically unchanged, and overall CDP and FFP support is quite dismal compared with 2004. The CDP vote is well down in its major stronghold of NSW, and the FFP’s only real gain has been in Victoria.

The Qld figure is surprisingly low in 2007. A factor there could be Pauline Hanson, who attracted 4% of the vote. While she does not represent a religious platform, she might have pulled some of the redneck right vote that would otherwise have gone to the FFP or CDP.

It is difficult to see any future for these parties. With falling support, few articulate leaders, narrowly-focussed political agendas, and an electorate that is growing tired of the intrusion of religion into politics, they seem destined to become increasingly irrelevant.

Elements of the Christian Right may also be found in the mainstream parties, particularly the Liberal Party, where a hard right faction has taken control of the NSW Branch of the party. This faction, dominated by Catholic Right Legislative Council member David Clarke, his young protege Alex Hawke, and a small army of extremists, promotes the usual agenda of religious zealotry, apparently without regard for the Liberal Party’s founding principles. Hawke, a former national Young Liberals president, was elected in 2007 as federal Liberal member for the “Bible belt” seat of Mitchell NSW, having won preselection for the safe Liberal seat in a brutal battle “characterised by allegations of branch stacking, backroom manoeuvring, and a takeover by the so-called religious right”. See Unholy battle for bible belt.

Former Howard minister, Tony Abbott, who has made no bones in the past about his religious views impacting on his political views and ministerial decisions, is another head-kicking religious zealot who bears watching. Fortunately, we can take some comfort from Abbott’s recent tilt at the Liberal leadership where he was only able to attract 4 supporters.

Troy Rollo, an independent candidate for the former Prime Minister’s seat of Bennelong, summarised the problem with the Christian Right’s political agenda thus:

The problem is not that they hold certain beliefs – the problem is that they require others to act according to their [the fundamentalists'] religious beliefs, and if others fail to do so then they must be punished severely. Their beliefs are simply not subject to challenge, because they stem from a divine source that is absolutely correct, and it is a heresy to question them. The problem is, they are incapable of recognising the absurdity of forcing those beliefs on others when others hold with equal strength incompatible beliefs stemming from a competing divine source, or in the case of secular humanism, a source based on a theory of logic. How are we supposed to choose between competing beliefs of this strength? The religious right will say “you choose us because we are right and we can prove it”. But in that they are no different from competing religions, who are equally certain the Christian religion is wrong and equally certain they can prove it.
Your Voice, Troy Rollo, May 2005.

Conclusion

The Australian people have voted enthusiastically for a new leadership which promised inclusion, compassion, acceptance and social cohesion rather than continued surrender to the heartless spirit of market fundamentalism. The message from the electorate was that Australians want prosperity and a strong economy but not at the expense of fairness and sustainability. There are signs that at least some members of the Coalition have received this message. It remains to be seen whether the Rudd government will live up to the expectations of the electorate for a new approach to relations between the government and the people, and whether the Opposition will set its course in a more positive direction.

The Christian Right will no doubt continue to whine and moan about the society around them, railing impotently about changing cultural values and perceived ills, and digging trenches in defence of a long-lost revolution.