And my claim was that the Christian Right was ‘fundamentally quite compatible with *modernity*’ and then I went and listed all those traits with gender equality as one of them. Which more than you have done.

So now tell me, does anyone in the Christian Right oppose women participating in the workforce? Does anyone in the Christian Right oppose women participating in politics? Two prominent leaders of the Christian Right in the US have been Bay Buchanan (Pat’s sister) and Phylis Schafly, both women.

Jason, these statements are so obviously wrong I don’t even know where to start. Try googling “christian women work outside home” just for starters. Some of the Christian Right are positively medievel in their attitudes to women.

Leaving aside the odd egregious philosophical error in Kevin Rudd’s recent exposition, I would have thought it makes sense for Labor to remind Christians that its policies are anything but incompatible with Christ’s teachings. In fact, as Troppo’s Danielle McCredden observes (in a post about Hillsong last year at her own blog):

In fact, Peter [Costello] has revealed in his statement exactly what it is that separates a church like Hillsong in emphasis from a broad slice of other Australian Christians. He is impressed by young people who aren’t taking drugs, who are involved in music and who accept an emphasis on individual reasponsibility, on taking responsibility “for your own life”. After spending some time at the Forge conference over the weekend, these words blare at me that Hillsong (or at least the Peter Costello version of Hillsong) is not interested in the same gospel that we spoke about on the weekend. The gospel is not about good behaviour and values and taking responsibility for your own life. The gospel is not a self-improvement manual. The gospel is a call to radical justice, discipleship and advocacy for the lost, the broken and disenfranchised. The gospel is a statement that the most privileged and well behaved and politically powerful are less important than “the least of these”.

In fact it’s trite to point out that different churches and individual Christians interpret the Bible in diverse ways, and (although I’m hardly a theologian) no interpretation can convincingly be argued to be unchallengeably correct. Thus there’s undoubtedly plenty of room for Labor (and even Clive Hamilton) to appeal to Christians who read the gospels more like Danielle than like Brian and Bobbie Houston. In fact, those with a more jaundiced view about whether modern Labor can be viewed as “left” or even radically different from the Coalition on economic and social justice issues (except IR) might even think that Kevin Rudd has a fighting chance of sucking up successfully to some of Brian and Bobbie’s prosperity-obsessed flock. I don’t like Clive Hamilton’s chances with the Hillsong mob though.

My only position on religion is the right of the religious to practice their religion peacefully, and not to interfere in the lawful activities of others. As for your jibe about my alleged preference for ‘brown non christians’ (over white christians presumably), you betray the essentially trivial and frivolous nature of your general approach. There are millions of non white christians, and hundreds of thousands of ‘white’ muslims.

I care as little for the theology of the brown ones, of any faith, as I do for the theology of the white ones, of whatever faith. I do however, care about public discourse that relies on a capacity to reason with reference to actual social experience, rather than appeals to authority based on revelation or the text of some tome. This means that people of any or no faith at all not only have a right, but in fact often do make valuable contributions to the democratic debate about political and social options avaiable in a polity. It doesn’t follow that a mature politics includes ‘reading’ a politcal position direct from some theological orientation or profession. To do so it seems to me, does intellectual violence to both the theology and more importantly as far as I am concerned, to the general tone and accessability of the argument in a secular polity. If we are going to proceed now, based on rancorous assessments of the theology of various religious positions, we are in peculiar times indeed.

Jason Soon said:
Relevance, David? Other churches don’t have tax exempt status? Other churches don’t raise money from their parishioners?

It’s very relevent Jason, you associated them with those good ol’ libertarian values of hard work and delayed gratification. I’m sure the congregation share some of those values, but the founders of that “church” are just a pair of hypocritical spongers whose hardest work consists of counting the money they are given after handing around a hat. If that’s libertarian, you can have it.

The major political parties can court these fools as much as they like, and the more they do, the less likely it is I’ll vote for them.

Come to think of it wasn’t it a member of this church who was one of the main protagonists in pissing away 90 million dollars of taxpayer dollars on this new government chaplaincy program. I think you’ll find the Louise Markuses of this world are not really that concerned about small government, thye are more interested in just the sort of nanny-statism that you would detest. I bet you haven’t heard this from Hillsong - if parents want chaplains they should band together and raise the money themselves and assure that the mentioned $90m is spent on more pressing needs in education or used as some minute portion in a push for tax reform.

I would summise Fred you have yet to meet the other ‘mob’.

oops I am indulging in argybargy

At least one can argue with the Christian Left - e.g. show them that, beyond a point, too much redistribution can be counter-productive for the poor and for some kinds of freedom. I wouldn’t know how to even start debating the other mob.

It’s hilarious trying to defend Hillsong on the basis of their prosperity theology, when the Houston’s are so effectively sponging gifts off their congregation and paying little or no tax. Keep boosting for them! I’ll bet they never read out the passage about the money changers and the temple over there.

are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours

Basically, that there was no ultimate recourse beyond ourselves and each other, and that everything done by a government is ultimately done, or at least paid for, by us.
re Obama, he’s basically positioning himself as a republican democrat - hardly a ringing endorsement of nascent left-wing christianity - look, religious lefties can get righty votes, and if they are clever, not alienate the atheists in the base!
Finally, the first two-thirds of your posts reeks to high heaven of that ‘What’s wrong with Kansas?‘-type nonsense which associates ‘right-wing’ economics with poverty, despite the almost-perfect correlation between ‘left-wing’ economics and poverty.

Secondly, your quibble with my gender equality comment does reduce to the fact that women can’t be ordained as priests.

Come on, what percentage of women want to be priests? What percentage of wmen want to have a life outside of marriage and an independent economic life, something that almost all women within a conservative Christian background have access to?

This is a purely symbolic issue which makes little or no difference to wellbeing or the freedom of the majority of women.

As for Hillsong, it’s Bobbie’s marriage to Brian that is the source of her status within the church: “Our roles are that Brian is, you know, senior pastor, and because I’m married to him and connected in heart and soul with him, that I am seen and respected as senior pastor with him also. And I also oversee our women’s ministry at the church as well.” (emphasis mine)

Authority and power flows from maleness. Denying every woman the ability to ever hold a formal leadership role in ordination on the basis of her gender is patriarchy. I don’t object to people choosing that life, but I don’t think that the fundamental patriarchial elements of the system can be pretended away.

And my claim was that the Christian Right was ‘fundamentally quite compatible with *modernity*’ and then I went and listed all those traits with gender equality as one of them. Which more than you have done.

So now tell me, does anyone in the Christian Right oppose women participating in the workforce? Does anyone in the Christian Right oppose women participating in politics? Two prominent leaders of the Christian Right in the US have been Bay Buchanan (Pat’s sister) and Phylis Schafly, both women.

Now even in the case of Hillsong Church, Bobbie Houston is the senior pastor and a woman in her own right. Her husband doesn’t have her chained to the kitchen sink. She is the archeypical Christian right professional woman. Steve Fielding doesn’t have his wife chained to the kitchen sink either.

As far as I can tell, the Christian Right doesn’t have a problem with women making their own living and having their own lives even when married and stuff like that. Presumably they’re serious about marital vows but so are a lot of non-Christian couples.

So you are making an extraordinary claim. If all you’ve got is that abortions are frowned on and they can’t be ordained as Anglican priests, then you’ve got zip.