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.
"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."
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.
"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."
GOD SAVE AUSTRALIA AND GOD SAVE THE USA!
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.
So the conservative party there is called the "Liberal Party". Interesting.