The religious right on the move again

If you thought that the Australia’s Christian Heritage National Forum (ACHNF) might be about the denial of “Christian values” in the Howard Government’s policies on asylum seekers, the destruction of trade unions, low paid workers, people with disabilities, AWB scandal and corruption, the Westminster system and ministerial accountability, the stolen generation and reconciliation, or the war in Iraq, then it was going to be another grey day in Canberra.

Rather, the forum, which came together on August 6-7, 2006, was about combating “the Marxist” and “secular oriented” Australian historians. It was about rewriting “the curricula of all schools in Australia”, expanding chaplaincy services, informing migrants of Australia’s Christian history, expressing regret that the ALP and the ACTU were no longer following JC, to publish “good news stories” and to build a “broad based coalition” because both historians, the media and churches had failed.

It was about rallying the troops from the religious and political right for another bout in the history wars: a “holy band history” if you like, instead of a “black band”.

It is gospel time in the nation’s capital or so it appears.

First we had “the national day of prayer and thanksgiving”; then the current forum a few months later; this will be followed by the Australian Christian Lobby’s (ACL) conference in September (“Building a Nation of Character”; “dress smart casual” with keynote speaker Peter Costello, and hear the President of the HIA discuss, “Self reliance-significance of home ownership in strengthening families and building nations”); then in October the Parliamentary Prayer Network will arrive; and the year will end up with the National Australian Christian Leaders Conference and the Australian National Prayer Breakfast.

Conferences and forums such as these do not, like fairies, mysteriously appear at the bottom of the garden, or for that matter in Parliament House. Neither do agendas or cash to run them.

Most are characterised by ongoing accountability and transparency problems. Funding sources are secret, the role of organising committees or the organisations behind them is unclear, and while they solicit “donations” there is an absence of financial transparency.

The ACHNF was sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC is the organisation distributing “creation” DVDs in schools) and Perichoresis. CCC is a perennial warrior of the religious right. Almost every significant American political and religious right organisation has CCC support or cash behind it. Perichoresis is an unknown organisation “dedicated to spreading the news of the Gospel in the light of the trinity”.

Like other similar conferences, they are run and organised by men. One woman sits on the organising committee of the Forum; of the 30 or so speakers, less than a third are women; and of the “parliamentary hosts” only two are women.

It was a meeting with all of the code words of the religious right: “values”, “Christian heritage”, “family”, “the denigration of Christian values”, and “attacks on Christianity”.

The Prime Minister “praised the contribution of Christianity and endorsed the forum”. In a message he said “the Judeo-Christian ethic, the progressive spirit of the enlightenment and the institutions and values of British political culture have been central to the development of Australian values”.

Note that the political and religious right are always more comfortable with the Ten Commandments, than with the Sermon on the Mount. Watch Peter Costello at the forthcoming ACL conference

The underlying objective of this forum, as with other similar conferences, is always to be found in the issues to be discussed and the speakers selected. The forum discussion, in this case, was around four themes: culture and education, social services and the family, business and commerce, and law and politics.

When it came to education, the forum organisers had a choice. The speaker could be a representative from the religious elite private school system. Or alternatively a female, or a member of the teachers union, or a church attendee, who believes that the elite religious private school system, and the booming Christian community school movement, do not reflect “Christian values” and in fact are white-anting and will ultimately destroy the state school system.

In the end it was the religious elite private school ex-principal who spoke.

Business and commerce was just as predictable.

On the day the forum met, Catholics were reading the Bishop of Parramatta’s statement, that the Howard Government’s Work Choices legislation was “manifestly unjust” and that the Government had “failed in its duty to promote the common good”. At the same time, the major churches in their submissions to the Fair Wage Commission were rejecting economic arguments that “cuts in real wages for the low paid would boost employment”.

The forum organisers could have had the Bishop of Parramatta to speak, or a church-attending worker who could have affirmed the Christian values which provide the basis, for her opposition to Howard’s industrial relations or welfare to work policies.

On the other hand they could provide a platform for a CEO on $3,000-an-hour(100 per cent increase in one year): who runs Australia’s biggest liquor retailer; who’s company is the biggest operator of poker machines in Australia; who cuts jobs in Australia and off shores them to Asia; who’s company was “found to have misled consumers”; which took “$500 million out of the pockets of milk processors and farmers, passed some of it on to consumers and pocketed the rest for its shareholders”; which had just been fined some $9 million for price fixing; and continues to be a major distributor of tobacco, much of it produced by child labour.

There are no prizes for guessing who spoke.

To complement that speaker, they could have chosen someone to affirm that the industrial relations system of conciliation and arbitration had delivered justice and a fair go for both workers and management, or they could have chosen someone who by their very position is complicit in the destruction of that system. Guess who.

For this forum, the agenda was clear.

Historians had failed to tell the truth abut Australia’s Christian heritage, children were being corrupted, immigrants knew nothing about Christianity, the media was oppressive and “controlling values even of Christian communities”, but while the “Great South Land has been marked out by God’s spirit and by prophecy”, there is still hope.

When conservative preachers, politicians and unrepresentative para-church organisations get together, then pew-sitting parishioners need to be wary, and should carefully read the fine print before they accept their next invite to Parliament House.