God gets a stake in affairs of state (the rise of Christianity Downunder)

AUSTRALIA'S holy war began under lights at the Sydney SuperDome. The combatants did not know it at the time, nor did the 20,000 strong crowd who poured in on this winter's night to celebrate the annual conference of the Hillsong Church.

As music filled the arena, the fervour washed over the congregation. They raised their palms to the heavens, closed their eyes and swayed to the rhythm of God.

But something unusual was afoot. On this night last July, the Almighty was eclipsed by a pasty, middle-aged man who emerged onto the stage to a thunderous applause.

Peter Costello - Baptist, family man and federal Treasurer - stood in the spotlight and praised Hillsong for promoting "the values that made our country strong".

He then took a swipe at those godless scribes in the media who had dismissed Pentecostal evangelist churches such as Hillsong as repositories for happy-clappers and religious extremists.

"The editorial writers might not understand it," he said. "But I want to say to you, more lives have been transformed by Jesus Christ than by the editorial writers."

On that winter's night, Costello's very public message resonated far beyond the confines of the SuperDome.

In Brisbane, federal Labor frontbencher Kevin Rudd was spellbound by the footage of Costello holding sway over a euphoric army of Christians on questions of faith and family values.

"When I saw Costello addressing Hillsong I thought something was afoot," Rudd says. "I really began to think that something was up."

Rudd, a committed Christian, had several large Pentecostal-style evangelist churches such as Hillsong in his own electorate in Brisbane. He knew better than most of his Labor colleagues that Costello was doing far more than professing his shared faith with true believers.

Costello was also sending a subliminal political message that had the potential to seriously harm Labor's electoral prospects: God = family values = Liberal Party.

"[It is] below-the-radar campaigning against the Labor party," Rudd says. "And it sends the constant message that Labor is anti-family. I think many [conservative politicians] see themselves as the natural party of God. There is an arrogant self-image that Jesus really is the Liberal member for Bethlehem South. I just think that is complete crap."

Rudd was sufficiently alarmed to discuss it with his Labor colleagues. Sources say Labor's shadow cabinet - chaired by the agnostic Mark Latham - held "a long discussion" on the issue of how Labor should try to keep God on its side, or at least to stop him from becoming appropriated by the conservatives.

But it was already too late. At the Paradise Community Church in Adelaide, another political party was busily blurring the divide between politics and religion.

The Family First party - established almost entirely by members of the Assembly of God church - was quietly mobilising a small army of religious helpers to fight its first federal election on a promise to restore Christian family values.

At the time, some in Labor ranks dismissed Rudd's concerns as overblown. Surely a few public church appearances by government ministers and a rookie political fringe party would not inflict more than a minor flesh wound on Labor's chances, they argued.

Surely God belonged just as much to the Labor Party as he did to the conservative side of politics?

MONTHS after Labor's election loss, Rudd is sitting in his Parliament House office talking openly about the God Factor - a topic that was until recently considered something of a political taboo.

But this is a topic dear to his heart. Rudd is chairman of a new caucus working party set up after the election to investigate the new links between religion and politics in Australia. But this is much more than just an academic political analysis. It is also a journey into the changing religious soul of Australia.

"We are trying to find out what is happening out there," he says bluntly. "What we are seeking to do is understand the underlying changes in the social and values fabric of Australian society. These are changes which don't identify themselves in opinion-poll research but are occurring at a much deeper level.

"We want to understand what the Liberal and National parties and their co-combatants [Family First] are doing overtly and covertly to respond to this phenomenon. "[We also want to know] what implications does this have for Labor."

Put simply, Labor believes it has been outfoxed by the conservatives on God, values and faith. Now it is planning to fight back. For the first time in a generation, Australian politics is locked in a battle for God. Labor MP Lindsay Tanner, a Victorian who retired from the front bench to the back bench to help debate the party's future, says Labor has no choice but to launch its own counter-crusade.

"There is growing community concern about a wide range of values issues which are naturally connected to religious observance," he says. "The challenge for Labor is to address issues like pornography on the internet, the increasing sexualisation of childhood, and accept that these concerns are legitimate and serious. For too long people in the Left of politics have ignored problems like family breakdown and social problems, and the emergence of parties like Family First reflects this."

Historically, Labor has always fared worse than conservative parties with religious voters. The 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes found that 81 per cent of Liberal voters and 92 per cent of National Party voters said they have a religion compared with only 72 per cent for Labor and 53 per cent for the Greens.

If Labor is both alarmed and perplexed by recent trends, then it can take comfort from the fact that other social commentators are also struggling to reconcile the notion that religion is making a political comeback at a time when church attendances are falling.

The 2002 Wellbeing and Security Survey found that the proportion of the population who claimed to attend religious services at least monthly had dropped from 20 per cent in 1998 to 18.6 per cent in 2002.

Meanwhile, weekly religious attendance as a proportion of the population had dropped from 9.9 per cent in 1996 to 8.8 per cent in 2001. But these figures mask the changing nature of religious observance, which has seen a sharp growth in Pentecostal denominations at the expense of traditional Catholic, Anglican and Protestant denominations.

More people (about 200,000) now attend Pentecostal churches - and offshoots such as Hillsong, Assemblies of God and Catch the Fire - than attend conventional Anglican services (178,000), according to the 2001 National Church Life Survey. Observers believe this trend has only increased in recent years.

It is these fast-growing, cashed-up Pentecostal evangelical churches that are driving the new marriage of God and politics.

"The political influence of the Catholic church seems to have waned on all but 'life' issues," Jim Wallace, executive chairman of the Australian Christian Lobby, wrote recently.

"And the increasing liberalisation of parts of the Anglican and Uniting churches rendered them unwilling to oppose legislation that angered many in the pews. However, this all changed at this election. The evangelical side of the church saw the mantle had fallen to them and picked it up."

The problem for Labor is that these new Pentecostal churchgoers have a more natural affinity with conservative politics than they do with traditional Labor values.

These churches draw their strongest supporters from one of the country's fastest-growing demographics - the aspirational, upwardly mobile, new-money middle-class living in the outer suburban mortgage belts of the big cities. They are largely hostile to the welfare state and believe heavily in self-made wealth.

"The current Penecostal upsurge reflects the changing economic climate," says Marion Maddox, senior lecturer in Religious Studies at Victoria University in Wellington, who has written a new book about religion in Australia titled God under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics (Allen & Unwin).

"Pentecostalism is very successful in places where there is a heavy reliance on service industries, on [information technology] and on small enterprises where individualism thrives. These churches attract people who are working themselves up and who want reassurance that they are making progress."

For these people, who often live in outer suburbs dominated by soulless shopping malls, the church offers a spiritual dimension to their lives.

Labor is concerned about the fact that congregations such as Hillsong and Paradise embrace Costello and other visiting conservative politicians as if they were kindred souls.

"The challenge for Labor is simply not to concede this group," Rudd says. "Pentecostal Christians in my experience have an active history of social engagement. They are very decent people. The challenge for us is to engage and work with these church communities to confront the below-the-radar campaign by conservative MPs."

ON a Sunday morning at the Paradise Community Church in Adelaide, head pastor Ashley Evans is pacing the stage.

"God is getting us ready for something bigger," he tells the 1000-strong congregation. "Yea," they shout back in unison.

As Evans delivers his sermon, Peter Harris is sitting in the church's boardroom upstairs trying to rebut suggestions that his new federal party, Family First, is either strictly a Christian party or that it has any natural antipathy towards Labor.

"We don't have a spiritual agenda for Australia," says Harris, the party chairman. "If someone wants to Christianise Australia, someone else can go and do that."

Yet Family First was founded by, and is still dominated by, members of the Assembly of God Paradise Community church. The party's promotion of traditional Christian family values and its opposition to abortion, IVF and gay rights is almost a mirror image of the beliefs of that church.

The party says it does not favour any side of politics, yet more than 95 per cent of Family First preferences in the last election went to the Coalition.

Relying almost entirely on its Pentecostal support base and shrewd preference deals, Family First won 2 per cent of the national vote, decisively influencing several key lower-house seats and getting its first senator, Steve Fielding, elected to parliament from Victoria with the help of Labor preferences.

Harris and other Family First leaders including founder Andrew Evans, party leader Andrea Mason and Senator-elect Fielding are keenly aware that Australians are naturally wary of Christian parties. At every turn they have downplayed Family First's Pentecostal origins, fearing that it will limit their future electoral potential.

They say that it is the values, rather than the Christian link, with which they want people to identify and that as the party expands, the party's Pentecostal origins will become less important.

Maddox says that in playing down its Christian affiliation, Family First is copying the "tried and true strategy" of US conservative evangelical organisations.

"They play down their religious association and instead emphasise terms such as family, common sense, decent, middle-of-the-road. These are motherhood words and focus groups go wild when they hear them."

She says no one was more frank about this approach than former US Christian Coalition boss Ralph Reed, who said: "I do guerilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know 'til election night."

Rudd says he understands why Family First wants to play down its religious affiliations. "But if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, then it probably is a duck, even if it does not want to self-declare as a duck," he says.

Rudd says he is concerned that Family First goes too far in blurring religion with politics. "I have profound reservations about a religious denomination establishing a political arm," he says. "Anyone who claims God is on their side and who makes a further claim that God is therefore on the side of a party I think fundamentally misreads the New Testament."

Ashley Evans, senior pastor at Paradise and son of Family First founder Andrew Evans, says there is nothing wrong with churches having some political influence.

"I don't believe that political parties should impose a spiritual agenda on the community," he says, shortly after delivering his Sunday service.

"But I think this debate has crossed over into some people claiming that [churches] shouldn't get involved at all - that we are barred from participating in a democracy."

The Christian lobby's Wallace agrees: "People with an anti-Christian agenda say the church should not influence the state but if the church isn't, then someone else is and it will be someone else's values."

But at Paradise, the divide between church and state is perilously thin. Evans says he has never advocated his flock to vote for Family First. "If I started to pump the pulpit about Family First that would not be a smart move," he says. "I would lose my congregation."

At the same time, Evans has invited church member, party leader and Senate candidate Andrea Mason on to the stage to tell his flock what she is doing and to wish her luck.

But Labor is not so much concerned about the emergence of Family First as it is about how the Liberal and National Parties are also harnessing religion to their advantage. When looking to end the Labor Party's 20-year grip on the Sydney seat of Greenway at the election, the Liberals turned to Louise Markus, a prominent member of the massively popular Hillsong church. The impact of the Hillsong connection remains speculation, but Markus scored an upset win.

When another committed Liberal Christian, 30-year-old Michael Ferguson, also scored an upset win in the Tasmanian seat of Bass, he immediately vowed to take his Christian values to Canberra.

Sniffing the wind only two days after the election, National Party leader John Anderson outlined a pro-family agenda for the Government, including a re-examining of censorship laws and greater protection for children.

"You have a number of people of very clear Christian belief coming into the parliament ... the very fact that [Family First] has come into being and engages [in] dialogue tells you something," he said.

While the Government is keen to lure the Christian vote, Prime Minister John Howard is also aware of the practical limits of religion in politics.

The manner in which Howard quietly but ruthlessly stamped out Tony Abbott's post-election call for a new debate on abortion suggests that religion will come second if it threatens votes.

This week, as politicians once again fanned the abortion debate, Howard once again made it clear that there would be no change to abortion laws. At heart, Howard is a secular pragmatist who lacks the religious zealotry of his US counterpart George W. Bush.

So are there any parallels between the Christian conservatives in Australia and the powerful US Christian Right?

"There are some striking similarities in their techniques and their strategies and in the way they present themselves to the public," says author Maddox. But she also points to significant differences.

"Much of Australia's Christian Right has a lot more trouble with policies that increase social inequality than do their American Christian Right models."

Family First, for example, is critical of the Government's treatment of asylum-seekers, advocating a more compassionate approach. But the biggest difference is simply that the US is more religious and is therefore more tolerant of religious influence in politics.

More than 53 per cent of Americans say they attend church regularly and more than two-thirds pray regularly. The born-again President Bush invokes God often, and has implied he received divine inspiration to strike at al-Qa'ida targets and prosecute the global war on terror.

But Australia's Pentecostal movement is growing along similar lines to its more established US counterpart. Churches such as Hillsong and Paradise deliver what are more rock sermons than anything resembling traditional religious services.

With live bands, backed by 30-member youth choirs, hi-tech sound systems, lighting, smoke machines and giant video screens, these churches are attracting young followers in their thousands.

"The spirit of God moves in this place," says young worshipper Judy Hughes as she enters Paradise church. "I used to go to a Uniting church but nothing much happened. You didn't hear of miracles."

By contrast, miracles seem to be on tap at Paradise. "If you need a miracle today, come up to the front and show your faith," the warm-up pastor says to the crowd, as the pews empty and a long line of people walk to towards the stage.

The messages these churches give out are also different. It is more aspirational and upbeat than traditional churches. There is no dwelling on guilt or repentance. For them, religion is a celebration of God and the promise of a better future.

Rather than focus on wealth redistribution, these churches talk openly and unashamedly about wealth creation. In this respect, they are more natural allies of the Liberal and National parties than Labor. Brian Houston, pastor of the cashed-up Hillsong church, once wrote a book titled You Need More Money.

This might appeal to Treasurer Costello, but his brother, the Rev Tim Costello, chief executive in Australia of World Vision, is less impressed.

"My fear is that there is a strand of prosperity teaching in the Assembly of God which could unravel them if people started to believe that Jesus was just a formula to get rich," says Tim Costello. "Most mainstream Australians are concerned about egalitarianism."

Labor's Rudd says his party has only just begun to explore the changing patterns of religion in Australia and the political implications. "It is a work in progress," he says, and neither he nor his party pretend to have the answers yet. He says there is no reason why Labor cannot reclaim the ground it may have lost with Christians.

But he adds that the party will have to shed its traditional wariness about engaging directly with local churches - a wariness derived from fears that such close ties may complicate the historical separation of church and state.

"Since its inception the Labor Party has been a proudly pluralist secular party," Rudd says. "But we do also embrace traditions which have come out of Christian churches and the challenge now is to proudly own that.

"We have a broader debate about underlying social values going on in this country in which we must engage and, as a party of the centre-Left, respond to. We need to reclaim three things for Labor - the individual, the family and the community."

Says Tanner: "The best answer to those who fear serious religious intrusion into secular politics is to deal with the community concerns that are fertile ground for such a development."

So far, there has been no serious intrusion of religion into Australian politics, but traditional divisions are now being blurred. The political message for this year is not that Australians are becoming more Christian. Rather, it is that questions of faith, family, morals and community have walked on to the political stage in a way not seen for a generation.

The battle for God has only just begun. But it seems that this holy war is not for everyone. At Hillsong's Sunday service at its Waterloo branch in Sydney, a young red-headed man in his early 30s, who identifies himself only as Dwayne, closes his eyes and sways to the music.

He says he was not religious and never went to any church before coming to Hillsong. Now it is a big part of his life. "Why would you leave something like this?" he says.

And what about politics? Does he also want to see God on the front benches of parliament?

"Politics isn't my scene," he says, before raising his hands to the sky and chanting with the crowd. "Jesus take my life, take all of me."

I'm Catholic and I'm VERY unhappy with the Catholic church for a number of reasons, first and foremost its failure to respond effectively to the evil of Islamic terrorism.

The problem for Labor is that these new Pentecostal churchgoers have a more natural affinity with conservative politics than they do with traditional Labor values.

These churches draw their strongest supporters from one of the country's fastest-growing demographics - the aspirational, upwardly mobile, new-money middle-class living in the outer suburban mortgage belts of the big cities. They are largely hostile to the welfare state and believe heavily in self-made wealth.

"Pentecostalism is very successful in places where there is a heavy reliance on service industries, on [information technology] and on small enterprises where individualism thrives. These churches attract people who are working themselves up and who want reassurance that they are making progress."

There's a quiet shift happening down here similar to what is happening in the US. In the US you have the conservative heartland and the liberal coasts and the divide between them is growing (an over generalisation I know). Here, it's the liberal inner city and the conservative outer suburbs/bush (again an over generalisation).

Australia and America may be two different countries, but as Frank Lavin, the US ambassador to Singapore, once observed:

Australia and the US are such similar societies that when the native of one visits the other, he does get that slightly spooky science-fiction sensation of having passed into a parallel universe.

Wonderful, it sounds like the Christian church in Australia is gaining members by leaps and bounds.

One thing, though, and I could not be more serious, I really hope that people are coming to Christ for His sake alone, and sadly I speak from my own personal experience.

"My fear is that there is a strand of prosperity teaching in the Assembly of God which could unravel them if people started to believe that Jesus was just a formula to get rich," says Tim Costello.

Do they love Christ, or is the Prosperity "Name it and Claim it" teachings? Are they in it to serve God, or to try and get God to serve them?

I mention this in humility and Christian love, because I've seen some real ship wrecks in the ministries that stress "prosperity" to the exclusion of most other things.

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