The Guardian: Scott Morrison’s partisan interpretation of biblical passages is disturbing for democracy

When the federation’s founding fathers were framing Australia’s constitution in the 1890s, there was intense debate about whether organised religion should get a guernsey. Fortunately, despite the religiosity of the Victorian era, sounder heads prevailed. Unlike in the United Kingdom, our antipodean commonwealth would have no established religion.Admittedly, “Almighty God” makes a single appearance in the constitution’s preamble, but the founders consciously decided to give divinity no institutional role. Instead, they resolved that our commonwealth should be secular, governed by a secular executive and accountable to a secular parliament.The founders knew too well how much blood had been previously spilled at the intersection of religious fervour and the political powers of the state.This isn’t to discount the profound effect of Christianity on our nation’s history. The churches were largely responsible for our earliest efforts to provide education, health and welfare services for the poor. It took decades for the state to assume primary responsibility for what are now regarded as essential functions of government.Equally, Christians of various denominations have been elected to parliament over the past 120 years. But whether MPs were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist or agnostic, they have conducted the substantive business of parliament in secular terms.Irrespective of whether members’ positions have been influenced by theology, philosophy or pure political pragmatism, the terms of debate have been anchored in rational argument, empirical evidence and party philosophy. In other words, in the great contest of ideas, proposals are forced to stand on their merit, rather than relying on the self-evident “truths” of divine relation. By and large, our secular political system has worked. Our democracy has been stable, and our parliament preserved from the theocratic impulses of our more extreme religious denominations.Whenever concerns are raised about Scott Morrison’s Pentecostal belief, it has become customary to point the finger at my own religious practice as a Labor prime minister of Christian faith. The argument goes: why should Morrison be held to any particular scrutiny since Rudd and his family regularly attended their local Anglican church, calling press conferences in the churchyard?Like many things in political life, this has become an accepted meme of the Liberal National party and the Murdoch media. The only problem is, it isn’t true.Yes, throughout our adult lives, Therese and I have professed Christian faith. She was raised Anglican, myself a Roman Catholic, so we started attending one church together as a family. In Brisbane, we attended St John’s in Bulimba, and in Canberra, St John’s in Reid, for more than 30 years.When I entered politics, journalists would occasionally arrive without invitation to pepper me with questions about the news of the day, either before or after services. It was a convenient stakeout for them. Despite my wishing that they wouldn’t gather there, I learned to stop and answer a few questions outside the church gate to avoid a media circus.I have never believed that God was “on my side” in any election campaign – a position, which if held by any prime minister, would be borderline theocracy – nor have I ever believed that God could speak to me or send me revelations about what to do as a politician.My simple, garden-variety theology is this: the God of the New Testament gives preference to the poor, the outcast and the oppressed and, to the greatest extent possible, I should do the same, while also being a good custodian of the planet.From what we can discern from the public record, Morrison’s political theology is radically different.His tradition, Pentecostalism, often emphasises the highly individualised “health and wealth gospel” – that if you are godly, then you will be both healthy and wealthy. Questions of human sexuality tend to elicit a deeply conservative, fundamentalist answer. The Pentecostal tradition also includes communicating with God through “speaking in tongues” and the ability to discern God’s will by being attentive to those with the prophetic “word of knowledge”. In other words, some Pentecostal leaders believe they can communicate directly with God in the here and now, and then proceed to act as God wishes them to. These Pentecostal tenets can present problems for our secular democracy, as elucidated by Morrison’s speech to a Pentecostal conference on the Gold Coast last week.First, Morrison made extensive reference to kings and prophets from the Old Testament. Morrison’s exegesis was highly individualistic. In the case of Isaiah, Morrison’s speech implies that, during the last federal election, God spoke to him through a painting of an eagle (which Morrison interpreted as him being elevated by the divine in his earthly contest against the Labor party).Such a politically partisan interpretation of biblical passages is disturbing for our secular democracy. More fundamentally, it is worrying if the prime minister believes God somehow speaks directly to him.Second, there is a troubling section of Morrison’s speech where he indicates that humans aren’t capable of fixing problems on Earth. Instead, he says, that’s the responsibility of God; and what the country needs, therefore, is the growth of the church.The problem with this approach is that it effectively consigns responsibility for poverty and the despoliation of the planet to powers beyond our control, as we drift to a utopian afterlife. This sort of “millennialism” has been a problem in the church for the past 2,000 years as it diminishes the role of human agency in “fixing” demonstrable social and economic injustices. The logical conclusion is that our best tool to deal with such challenges is prayer, and that’s just a cop-out.Third, the very idea that a prime minister could happily go around “laying on hands” on unsuspecting civilians to impart the healing power of prayer is troubling. The critical thing lacking is the person’s knowledge and consent. This doesn’t seem to bother Morrison, who apparently believes he’s not only the chief minister of the commonwealth but also its chief priest. This is a fundamental breach of the secularity of our political institutions.Fourth, the problem with Morrison’s overall theology – his preoccupation with the kings and prophets of the Old Testament, his diminution of human as opposed to divine agency, and his exercise of priestly functions without permission – is that it undermines the role of reason, evidence and fact in faith.The mainstream church, since the days of St Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, has considered that faith should be tempered by reason. In the long history of the church, fundamentalist traditions have railed against reason and empiricism, instead emphasising absolute faith as the hallmark of an authentic Christian.By and large, Pentecostalism emerges from this tradition. It is a worldview that sits uncomfortably with the extraordinary powers of the secular office of prime minister.Pentecostal churches have long attracted good, honest, Australians from across the political spectrum – but the reality is the Liberal National party is now deliberately targeting these churches as recruiting grounds. In my own state of Queensland, the Christian right faction within the LNP is substantially Pentecostal. These recruitment drives are pushing that party further and further to the political hard right. Secular rationalists are now becoming an endangered species within many branches of the conservative parties, contributing to the growing polarisation of our politics, as in America.It may be that Morrison has solid answers to my reservations. Before becoming prime minister in 2007, I wrote a lengthy essay for the Monthly magazine that outlined my own positions on the role that Christian belief should play within our secular democracy. It is high time for Morrison to do the same, not least to allay the doubts of Australians who have been deeply disturbed by the grainy footage of his extraordinary remarks last week.I have no doubt that Morrison’s faith is genuine. For some years, we attended the same parliamentary Christian fellowship. My question is not about his sincerity of faith, but the need for him to be absolutely transparent with the Australian people, through the secular marketplace of our national politics, about the precise impact of his Pentecostal theology on Australian public policy and politics.

First published in The GuardianImage: ACC