Preachers and presidents

Presidential aircraft delivered him to the White House or The Ranch; Graham’s staff were seconded to Nixon’s campaign; diplomatic missions were carried out; fellow clergy were unknowingly lobbied at presidential direction; presidential medals are awarded and the Billy Graham Day is declared a public holiday.

For both men it was an evil world out there, Christians are under attack, and the institutions of legislature, military, courts, and the schools all need to be in the hands of Christians. This struggle between evil (“them”) and good (“us”) continues to be fought over everything from who sits on the Supreme Court to the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID).

For Australians, who are pretty laid back about the whole religious thing, the implications are threefold.

First, politicians are a whole lot smarter than preachers. As Graham heralded the national day of prayer, Chuck Colson, Nixon’s Watergate henchman, was declaring that prayer breakfasts and church services were always used for political ends. It’s no mystery, that the scandalous state of schools in the working class suburbs of the cities and remote area Aboriginal schools is met with deafening silence from the churches. With millions stashed in elite school vaults of Christian community schools all over the place, and chaplains employed by the state, politicians can depend on the complicity and silence of the churches.

Australia continues to be an ever increasing secular state, yet the first cut of the 2007 voting patterns indicates that the faith issue will continue to be a significant issue in the years ahead. The rapidly increasing, Pentecostalism and the private, para church companies, such as the Australian Christian Lobby, will drive the religious political agenda, pretty much reflecting the American Religious Right’s agenda.

Finally, forefront in this agenda will be ID. Robyn Williams notes that, “the essence of ID and what it represents … is an anti intellectual threat of the first order”. The rapidly expanding Christian school system - together with hundreds of evangelical chaplains moving into schools - will increasingly see ID taking its place in science classes. Currently the Creation Bus and the Ark Van are touring Victorian schools and churches!

While religion is not a significant issue for most Australians, there is a need to be aware that the US Alliance is more than guns and goods. Richard Dawkins warns, that “the USA is now suffering an epidemic of religiosity that seems medieval in its intensity and positively sinister in its political ascendancy”.