Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Middleage lefties in denial about place of values in a good experiment
Takes someone overseas to see what most media reactionaries missed over the last election - the place of the values discussion
Christian Soldiers
Faith-driven activists and politicians find that values mean votes
BY ELIZABETH FEIZKHAH
Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2004
"The conservative Christian voice within the Coalition" is speaking with "increasing confidence and assertiveness," says Marion Maddox, author of the forthcoming God Under Howard. The Wellington-based academic, who's spent a decade tracing the links between religion and politics in Australia, notes that on election night new Liberal M.P. Michael Ferguson told a TV interviewer "that he loved the Lord. I can't really imagine that happening in any previous election." Says Baptist minister Tim Costello, "The prevailing wisdom that was, 'Don't talk about your faith, they'll think you're a religious fanatic,' is over."
Talk about it, and they might even vote for you: the government owes its fourth election win in part to candidates like Ferguson, a 30-year-old former campaigner against gay adoption who snatched Labor's key seat of Bass, in northern Tasmania; Louise Markus, a pentecostalist social worker who captured Greenway, on Sydney's northwestern fringe; and Family First, a three-year-old party of Christians whose second preferences boosted the Coalition vote in several marginal seats. David Marr, author of the anticlerical squib The High Price of Heaven, likely had tongue in cheek when he noted recently that "God is working for the Liberal Party." But that doesn't mean he was wrong.
Australia's conservative Christian vote is tiny. The country is not growing more religious, says Maddox, though regular churchgoers (about 1 in 7 Australians) have always been more likely to vote conservative, and theologically stern churches are growing at the expense of more liberal ones. Clearly, the "Christian values" message - pro-life, anti- drug liberalization and gay marriage - also resonates with voters who'd rather spend Sunday on the couch than on their knees. Steve Fielding, Family First's senator-elect, who counts several non-Christians among his 15 brothers and sisters, is sure of that: "We believe we have an affinity with the silent majority of Australians, people who support family values, helping each other, the traditional values that have stood the test of time."
"We've had a good 40 years of that social experiment, and by every indicator - crime, suicide, pornography, drug abuse - it looks like an experiment that's failed."
Full text see
From the Nov. 29, 2004 issue of TIME Pacific Magazine
Christian Soldiers
Faith-driven activists and politicians find that values mean votes
BY ELIZABETH FEIZKHAH
Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2004
"The conservative Christian voice within the Coalition" is speaking with "increasing confidence and assertiveness," says Marion Maddox, author of the forthcoming God Under Howard. The Wellington-based academic, who's spent a decade tracing the links between religion and politics in Australia, notes that on election night new Liberal M.P. Michael Ferguson told a TV interviewer "that he loved the Lord. I can't really imagine that happening in any previous election." Says Baptist minister Tim Costello, "The prevailing wisdom that was, 'Don't talk about your faith, they'll think you're a religious fanatic,' is over."
Talk about it, and they might even vote for you: the government owes its fourth election win in part to candidates like Ferguson, a 30-year-old former campaigner against gay adoption who snatched Labor's key seat of Bass, in northern Tasmania; Louise Markus, a pentecostalist social worker who captured Greenway, on Sydney's northwestern fringe; and Family First, a three-year-old party of Christians whose second preferences boosted the Coalition vote in several marginal seats. David Marr, author of the anticlerical squib The High Price of Heaven, likely had tongue in cheek when he noted recently that "God is working for the Liberal Party." But that doesn't mean he was wrong.
Australia's conservative Christian vote is tiny. The country is not growing more religious, says Maddox, though regular churchgoers (about 1 in 7 Australians) have always been more likely to vote conservative, and theologically stern churches are growing at the expense of more liberal ones. Clearly, the "Christian values" message - pro-life, anti- drug liberalization and gay marriage - also resonates with voters who'd rather spend Sunday on the couch than on their knees. Steve Fielding, Family First's senator-elect, who counts several non-Christians among his 15 brothers and sisters, is sure of that: "We believe we have an affinity with the silent majority of Australians, people who support family values, helping each other, the traditional values that have stood the test of time."
"We've had a good 40 years of that social experiment, and by every indicator - crime, suicide, pornography, drug abuse - it looks like an experiment that's failed."
Full text see
From the Nov. 29, 2004 issue of TIME Pacific Magazine
# posted by Little John @ 2:22 AM 
