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10th September 2004
Courting true believers
Samantha Maiden
10sep04

WHEN Treasurer Peter Costello started preaching the message of the Gospel to 800 worshippers at the Scots Church in Melbourne earlier this year, he urged a spiritual fightback against the forces of moral decline in the nation.

Just days after handing down his ninth budget, there was no mention of tax cuts, baby bonuses or an inter-generational threat to Australia's fiscal outlook. Instead, he declared the answer to Australia's problems was to be found in the Ten Commandments.
His simple message had the crowd in a state of rapture. Worshippers were rising to their feet, applauding the Treasurer, before singing How Great Thou Art and Amazing Grace.

"We do not have to look far to see evidence of moral decay around us," Costello told churchgoers. "We see it and hear it in entertainment like rap music, in songs that glorify violence or suicide or exploitation of others.

"Drugs break up families and marriages. Many addicts end up in prostitution or burglary. These outcomes are the very antitheses of all values set out by the Ten Commandments about how to order society."

Far from advocating a role for government in fixing the nation's problems, Costello urged the faithful, who gathered on the day of the Pentecost, to consider the power of prayer.

"I do not want to suggest that there are no initiatives the Government should take," he said. "But I do want to suggest something much more radical and far-reaching.

"I want to suggest that a recovery of faith would go a long way to answering this challenge."

It was a stirring message to action for those present. "It was more than an address!" declared the Catch The Fire Ministry's next newsletter.

And in that same newsletter, president of the Catch the Fire Ministry, Danny Nalliah, or "Evangelist Danny", declared he would be standing for the Senate in Victoria under the umbrella of Family First, which has already won a seat in the South Australian parliament.

This power of prayer has long been a feature of US politics, where TV evangelist Pat Robertson claims to receive messages from God that US President George W. Bush will be re-elected because, "the Lord has just blessed him".

But as Australian families search for meaning in their lives, disillusioned despite rising wages, McMansions and plasma TVs, is God returning to centre stage in the federal campaign?

Yesterday, Family First leader Andrea Mason, the first Aboriginal woman to lead an Australian political party, confirmed the party would field Senate candidates in the October 9 poll.

She said Family First's policies reflected a sense of moral values and Christian ethics. "We didn't see that there was a party that was solely working hard to look out for the conservative families," Mason says.

On October 9, several political contests with a religious flavour will be decided. In the outer-suburban areas of the nation's capital cities, this return to religion is sparking new churches, low-fee private schools and a demand for values in political life.

There are two Jewish candidates -- Labor MP Michael Danby and Liberal challenger David Southwick conducting a bitter contest in the seat of Melbourne Ports. "It's a bit exotic and a bit surreal, but I think this is a very intelligent electorate," Danby says. "I think people make their decision based on who is experienced with these sorts of issues.

"Issues such as education and security are particularly worrying voters at the moment. There are guards on the schools because they are afraid of terrorist attacks and people have an interest in those kinds of issues because they fear another Beslan or Bali."

In the western Sydney seat of Greenway, social worker Louise Markus, from the Hillsong community -- one of the largest congregations in the nation -- is challenging Labor's Ed Husic, a Muslim.

The man who confessed to the sin of adultery, Liberal MP Ross Cameron, is asking for the forgiveness of the committed Christian voters of Parramatta, as he contests the election against Labor's Julie Owens.

Despite an increasing number of Howard Government frontbenchers who proudly declare their religious beliefs, God is not a member of the Liberal Party, says Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd.

Raised a Catholic and now a practising Anglican, Rudd is a self-confessed God-botherer who still applauds Australian's healthy tradition of robust secularism.

"Nothing revolts me more than anyone who is a Christian seeking to publicly exploit their private faith for political purposes," he says. "Secondly, there's a bit of a view being put around by the conservatives that God has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Liberal Party. Last time I looked, Jesus Christ was not the Liberal member for Bethlehem south or the National Party member for Nazareth central.

"Anyone who infers that 'God is with us', I think, fundamentally misreads the New Testament."

However, in bookstores and shopping malls, Rudd does detect a shift in mood.

"I think people are returning to some form of small 'r' religion or embracing a new capital R religion in terms of fundamentalism," he says. "Look at all the self-help books in every store you walk into. And any close scrutiny of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth would suggest he has a searing message for everyone engaged in policy and public life. [But] at the end of the day we should be judged for what we do, not what we say, let alone where we pray."

Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews says a return to traditional values is shaping politics, noting the rise of the Family First Party which will deliver vital preferences to conservative parties.

"There's been a kind of rejection or decline in the values-free notions and approaches of the past couple of decades," he says. "Religion is not a factor in the campaign in the old-fashioned way that people used to think of in Australia, where a pastor or a minister preached from the pulpit about how people should vote in an election.

"[But] it's interesting that the growth in the Christian churches, in particular, has tended to be in the outer suburbs of major cities. That's reflected in a number of ways, for example the growth in non-government schools has been largely the smaller, Christian schools in outer-suburban areas of the capital cities. It's not just Christian, I'm thinking of the corridor in Melbourne that runs the length of Springvale Road ... and you have very strong Christian communities but you also have some of the biggest Buddhist churches being built as well and Islamic communities."

The role of religion in Australian politics is something Andrews believes has always been present. One of the consequences of the split and the emergence of the Democratic Labor Party in the 1950s also provided a bridge from the Labor Party to the Liberal Party for Catholics, he believes.

In the past, many associated the religious Right with anti-abortion message. But Andrews also sees an emerging political consensus in the community that there are too many abortions and the practice of late-term terminations should be reconsidered.

"I think that there's been an underlining uneasiness, if I could put it that way, in the community for some time about particularly late-term abortions," he says.

"People generally would say there are far too many abortions, they would also say they don't want to entirely see them prevented. I think there's a more, nuanced debate about it today than there might have been 10 or 15 years ago."

Despite previously comparing Costello's criticism of church leaders speaking out on issues including Iraq as reminiscent of strategies employed by Hitler, World Vision Australia chief executive Tim Costello applauds his brother's public embrace of religious faith.

"I'm very pleased that the prevailing wisdom that was 'don't talk about your faith, they'll think you're a religious fanatic' is over," he says.

"But I don't want to go down the American path where people declare their faith ... to get votes. I believe it crosses the line when someone says 'with the authority of God or the pastor that this is God's candidate'."