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During the Howard decade, religion took on an importance in Australian politics that it arguably had not had since the Split. Kevin Rudd’s leadership bid included a pair of articles about the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and, once elected, his government marked its opening with a quasi-liturgical national apology.
Religious studies scholars, political scientists, sociologists, theologians and cultural critics met at Macquarie University in September 2008, to ponder religion’s significance in Australian public life over both the more recent and more distant past, and to contemplate the future religion-politics interactions in multicultural, multifaith Australia. A particular strength of the workshop was its interdisciplinary breadth.
 Members attending the Religion and Australian Politics Workshop, Australian National University, 22 & 23 September 2008. (Click picture for larger version.) |
Several papers dealt with specific religious communities. John Warhurst's analysis of 'The Catholic Lobby Since the 1950s' examined the successes and failures of the Catholic church's efforts to have a say in Australian politics, on topics from private schools to human rights. Against the tendency in much reportage either to portray the church as a single voice or to be baffled by its internal differences and complexities, the paper disentangled the various strands of both theology and institutional practice in Australian Catholicism, and examined how each has played out in politics since the Split.
Muriel Porter looked at the similarly elaborate divisions within global--and Australian--Anglicanism, with particular attention to sometimes far-reaching ramifications of what to outsiders can seem fairly obscure debates. What has lay presidency at the eucharist to do with opposition to gay and lesbian clergy? Both reflect the curious theological and ecclesiastical history which has set Sydney Diocese at odds not just with most of the rest of Australia but also a large part of the Anglican communion worldwide, and set up an unlikely alliance with some of the world's poorest Anglicans.
Suzanne Rutland and Colin Tatz both considered Australian Jews, with Tatz paying particular attention to the often-noted involvement of some Jewish experts in opposition to racism in this country--while disagreeing with the significance sometimes read into this phenomenon. And James Jupp gave a seldom-heard insight into the internal and external politics of Australia's Serbia Orthodox diaspora.
Another group of papers dealt with religious diversity in multicultural, multifaith Australia. Andrew Markus considered what the Social Cohesion Surveys can tell us about religion in Australia, while Andrew Jakubowicz explored the media's treatment of religious and cultural diversity.
It would be hard to think of a more telling case study of media treatment of religion than the longrunning 'Catch the Fire' case between two Pentecostal pastors and three Muslim converts, which tested Victoria's religious vilification law. Hanifa Deen, in the midst of releasing her book on the case, The Jihad Seminar (UWA Press 2008), asked what the various sides hoped to gain from the marathon [case and?] concluded that, from the Muslim side, it had surprisingly little to do with religion; while, from the pastors' side (popularly dubbed the 'Two Dannys'), every extra day before the tribunal meant another day to spread their version of the word through the international media which quickly pursued the controversy.
A further three papers considered the relationships between religion and state from various perspectives. Holly Randell-Moon, having just completed her PhD on religion in Australian politics, examined Australian religion-state relationships through the lens of the Constitution's Section 116, which prevents the Commonwealth making any law for establishing a religion or imposing a religious test for office. Marion Maddox recalled several recent controversies about the place of religious ideas in political debate, and proposed that, rather than trying to exclude religion from the public square, we should treat it as part of the legitimate matter of public debate, much as we do with the many other bodies of thought---economic, sociological, political and so on---which inform the positions of key players, and end up translated into policies affecting us all.
Rodney Smith contrasted the prominence of religion in the 2004 federal election with its very different, and much quieter, role in the 2007 campaign and Kevin Rudd's Bonhoeffer-inspired leadership. He pointed out that the movement often given the shorthand name of the Christian Right has, in Australia, usually represented a triumph of spin rather than a genuine mass movement. A relatively small number of activists had succeeded in creating the impression of a conservative religious groundswell, which retreated in the face of Rudd's determined effort to point out that 'God is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Liberal Party'.
The papers will be available on the Macquarie University Centre for Research on Social Inclusion website early in 2009, and the convenors are currently exploring other avenues of publication. The papers summed up a research effort by numerous scholars from various disciplines which over recent years has substantially increased both the attention paid to religion as a factor in Australian politics and the analytical rigour with which it is addressed.
They also marked out directions for a continued research agenda. Howard's Australia, in an international context substantially shaped by Bush's 'crusade' against terror and conservative 'family values' agenda, occupied one rather particular place in the range of ways in which religion-politics interactions can be understood. Rudd's approach is not only informed by a very different religious take, but finds itself in an international climate whose dominant superpower now has a leader shaped by the Christian social activism of the civil rights movement.
MARION MADDOX (Macquarie University)