(Above: secular purists, not Muslims or Hindus, are more likely to find this scene offensive).Scott Morrison clearly doesn't get out and about, tucked away as he is in the seat of Cook in the Sutherland Shire, scribbling about The rightful place of God(s) in Australian society. They must do things differently in the shire:
I am not surprised, because as people of faith they understand that their religious freedom is only as safe as it is for those who hold a different belief.
Hah, if that's Morrison's observation, he's bloody unobservant.
To try to pin the blame of the divisiveness of religions on secular purists is such a joke, I kept chortling for a good hour or two. I mean, for a start, I always found the scientological volcano above the shop awnings in George Street a huge joke, and I love a good Christmas tree. There's nothing like chopping down a pine tree by the dawn's early light and watching the tree bleed sap, knowing it'll be a slow and painful death as I down the ham and chook over the Christmas season.
But why do Christians always whinge about secularists having it in for Christmas?
Clearly Morrison has heard nothing about the war on Christmas being fiercely waged in America, and not just by secular purists but by religionists of an unChristian kind. To which all I can say is happy holidays, and turn to Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor, November 9, 2005:
NULMAN: Well --
O'REILLY: So you're basically only knocking out your nutty customers. And why do you want them anyway?
NULMAN: When businesses make decisions to be inclusionary as opposed to exclusionary, they do it on the basis of wanting to invite all customers in.
O'REILLY: But what --
NULMAN: They don't want to exclude customers --
O'REILLY: They are inviting all customers in --
NULMAN: What happens very often is that the message gets through to the customer that -- who is not Christian --
O'REILLY: Yes.
NULMAN: -- who is Muslim, who is Jewish, who's, who follows another faith, Buddhist, that they are not being invited in or catered to. When we counsel businesses, what we want to do is invite everyone in.
O'REILLY: Well, they --
NULMAN: "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays," Bill, does not offend Christians.
O'REILLY: Yes, it does. It absolutely does. And I know that for a fact. But the smart way to do it is "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Season's Greetings, Happy Kwanzaa." (here)
But then we all know from The International Jew that the Jews have long engaged in a war on Christmas (as you'd expect of the descendants of Fagin and Shylock?)
And as for the way Christians get on with Islamics, clearly Mr. Morrison hasn't read about the upset caused to our favorite author Hal G. P. Colebatch when it comes to the way Islamics are being favored in Britain these days.
But Morrison himself is wonderfully tolerant:
For this reason I have always been perplexed as a professed Christian by objections to Australian women wearing a hijab in public. I recently walked the Kokoda trail with one young Australian woman who wore it the entire way – quite an effort.
So every time a Christmas tree goes up in a mall and some secular fundamentalist calls for the chainsaw, they should speak for themselves and not seek to appropriate the cause of religious freedom for my Muslim or Hindu brothers and sisters in faith.
So every time a Christmas tree goes up in a mall and some secular fundamentalist calls for the chainsaw, they should speak for themselves and not seek to appropriate the cause of religious freedom for my Muslim or Hindu brothers and sisters in faith.
Well lordy lordy, let's not get into the nuances of whether a hajib is a burqa, let's wonder at how Bronwyn Bishop can end up being called a secular fundamentalist by one of her own. After all, you will recall that Bronnie, in The Punch, that torpid, tepid conversation declared:
Perhaps the time has come to declare the burqa an instrument of harsh and unusual punishment and change the Declaration of Human Rights to have as its first statement – women are human beings not chattels.
Now settle down Scott and Bronnie, let's sort this out like logical rational secularist funadmentalists, as if we've been blessed with a Spockian insight into humanity.
But wait there's more blather:
Communist Europe? Suddenly Russia is Europe, or eastern Europe the same as western Europe, or - let it be remembered - just like the fellow travelling of the Christian churches in Nazi Germany until the heat in the kitchen got too hot? Oh if only it had held true in China during the Opium Wars.
Well the news that the separation of church and state was all about protecting the church will come as news to philosopher John Locke, or Thomas Jefferson when he penned the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom:
... no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
I'm not exactly sure how making sure you don't have to attend any place of religious worship or support any belief or ministry is all about protecting the church, as opposed to the freedom not to worship or to worship in your own way, but I'm sure Morrison can find a work around. Especially as he quotes Jefferson without actually showing he has the vaguest clue what Jefferson was on about.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
But in the usual way of these things, fundamentalist secularists always cop the raw prawn while the religious argue amongst themselves. Morrison has the cheek to blather on about how the Australian constitution upholds freedom of religion while at the same time relying on the blessing of Almighty God for the people uniting in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth.
But section 116 (here) of the Constitution is actually extremely limited, which is how we get holidays on the religious festivals of Easter and Christmas, and the federal government cheerfully funds all kinds of private religious schools, since the law mentions the establishing of any religion, rather than the US reference to laws respecting the establishment of any religion - room for lots of hairsplitting, and plenty of scope for passing a law requiring a person to do an act which their religion forbids, such as sending the Jehovah's Witnesses off to war.
Freedom of religion has always been contingent - as in the matter of blood transfusions, or for that matter traditional aboriginal beliefs - but as usual Morrison is intent on drumming up the notion that fundamentalist secularists persecute Christians and prevent them from speaking out. As if we could ever find a way to shut Pell or Jensen up.
The attack on faith is designed to intimidate faith communities into political silence. Many Christians and church leaders today shy away from speaking out and becoming involved in politics for fear that they or their church will be publicly vilified, labelled as partisan, or assigned to a pejorative stereotype imported from the US, which has no parallel in Australia.
If any ‘religious’ right exists in Australian politics, you will not find it in the Church. I would also be very surprised if true religion had any influence over it. And I say this as someone who holds very strong pro life and marriage views.
WTF? And which Church is the Church? Is is such a broad Church that it includes all in a holy catholic church of Christians?
And as for the religious right not existing in Australian politics? Well so much for the Jensenist and Pellist heresies. Not to mention the Reverend Fred Nile or our very own Senator Steve Fielding and his Family First party, or the DLP or John Howard's secretive furtive meetings with the Exclusive Brethren.
Nor should we forget in our prayers all those Christians in their prayer groups, attended by Chairman Rudd no less, especially the ones who hold very strong pro life and marriage views, and love to dog whistle the same down in the Shire.
Then there are the efforts made to weaken faith based institutions through the use of anti discrimination and vilification laws to tell churches what they can teach in their schools, what they can say in their pulpits and how they reach out to help people in their communities. Just wait until they get a Bill of Rights. In Victoria they are currently contemplating laws to prevent Christian schools from their right to exclusively employ Christian teachers.
Then there are the efforts made to weaken faith based institutions through the use of anti discrimination and vilification laws to tell churches what they can teach in their schools, what they can say in their pulpits and how they reach out to help people in their communities. Just wait until they get a Bill of Rights. In Victoria they are currently contemplating laws to prevent Christian schools from their right to exclusively employ Christian teachers.
Lordy, lordy, still they go on about the Victorian law. When it's the right of any loon to employ their own preferred brand of loon to teach the young. About the way the bushfires in Victoria were started by god to punish Victorians for their abortion law reform. And creationism is great science, if dressed up as intelligent design.
Well if Morrison can go on about how right it is for scientology believers to teach young kids on a scientological basis, I can go on and on about how bizarre it is that tax payer dollars are funding Exclusive Brethren schools.
That's right, the Commonwealth government funds cults, including assorted Christian cults.
Part of the problem with the faith and politics debate is the superficial understanding of today’s church community. People of faith are interested in a lot more issues than is generally reported or understood. Faith inspires passion and commitment equally on issues of poverty and looking after creation as it continues to do on the big moral questions, such as the sanctity of life and marriage.
But what about the persecution of fundamentalist secularists. Sob, bring back the Inquisition and the Salem witch hunts I say, along with a pile of faggots on which to burn the assorted ratbags who don't have a clue about the sanctity of life and marriage.
The other challenge is the propensity to confuse engagement with political debate as blind partisanship. There is no block Christian or any other religious vote out there. Surely we can be more sophisticated than that. After all the Church is not the trade union movement.
The other challenge is the propensity to confuse engagement with political debate as blind partisanship. There is no block Christian or any other religious vote out there. Surely we can be more sophisticated than that. After all the Church is not the trade union movement.
Well you have to hand it to Morrison. For sheer cheek, the good lord should see him in purgatory for telling porkies. While we might argue about the size of the religious vote, or the strength of the way it acts as a block - things have changed from the times of the DLP - to say that there is no religious vote is to denigrate John Howard and the assiduous, skilled way in which he cultivated that vote, and stole it from minority parties.
So what else has Morrison got to offer? William Wilberforce and Desmond Tutu, and the right for people of faith to bring their religion into politics.
Well of course you can bring faith into politics. Politicians like Morrison do it all the time, and at tedious, inane length. And if you do, you can expect to be sent up, as the right now regularly does about Chairman Rudd's Christian virtues and his door stoppers outside his local church.
Okay, slavery was a bad thing and so was apartheid. But if there's no Christian block, if everything is relativist and Christians are repressed and prevented from speaking out, how come there's no gay marriage in Australia, while there is in South Africa?
Okay, slavery was a bad thing and so was apartheid. But if there's no Christian block, if everything is relativist and Christians are repressed and prevented from speaking out, how come there's no gay marriage in Australia, while there is in South Africa?
And be careful about citing Tutu - he supports gay ministers. Damned liberal Christian, why can't he keep his private beliefs out of politics.
But really it's just another dog whistle from Morrison. Buddhists Hindus Jews Muslims or even Scientologists loving a nativity scene while fundamentalist secularists gnash their teeth and howl in pain?
Pull the other one, you gherkin.
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