In Britain, people used to say that the Church of England was the Conservative Party at prayer. In Australia the major Christian denominations are increasingly beginning to look as though they are the left faction of the Labor Party at prayer.
Last week alone, a number of church leaders attacked the morality of the Federal government's involvement in the waterfront dispute, only a day after another group of prominent church people claimed that its approach to native title had undermined reconciliation and endangered Australia's international reputation. And when Premier Rob Borbidge said that the churches were guilty of hypocrisy because they were expecting pastoralists to make sacrifices that they seemed unwilling to make themselves, yet another group of clerics accused him of being divisive and irresponsible.
The business of governing often involves compromises which sacrifice probity to expediency. Churches have the right, and even the duty, to challenge governments whose actions fall short of appropriate moral standards, and to articulate the principles which should guide public conduct in a decent society. Politicians who tell church leaders to stick to their worship have a very limited understanding both of religion, and of the history of Western cultures.
So the issue is not whether churches should rebuke governments, corporations and other sectors of society for their moral failings, but whether these criticisms reflect a position that seems to be based more on partisan politics than on theology.
Clearly, it is possible to take a morally defensible position that happens to coincide with a particular political interest on industrial relations or on many other matters of public contention without having any overall partisan intent, however unwilling a government under attack might be to accept this. But it is very difficult to base any judgements about the possible political motivations of the churches on their interventions in a single issue alone.
Rather, we have to look at their track record, and ask whether the moral principles the churches claim to uphold are invoked without fear or favour no matter who the wrong-doer might be. This involves considering the matters on which they take a public stand as well as those where they choose to remain silent.
It is on this point that some of the more vocal clerics are on shaky ground. As Glenn Milne reported in yesterday's Australian, Mr Howard's office has carried out a thorough search to see whether there was any church condemnation of the Hawke government's destruction of the airline pilot's union in the late 1980s, or any concern about the effects this had on the pilots' wives and children. Nothing has been found, even though the issues at stake are similar.
And despite the churches special mission to protect the innocent, they do not appear to have joined with the government and the media in condemning the MUA for allowing children to be part of the wharfies' pickets.
Nor did the mainstream churches speak out against the fraud of "secret women's business" on Hindmarsh Island in South Australia. On the contrary, many prominent clerics gave their support to the fraud. This was despite requests from the "dissident" Ngarrindjeri women that the church listen to their side of the story and the overwhelming evidence showing that the "women's business" had been fabricated to support the interests of wealthy landowners and environmentalists.
Either the churches were gullible, thus casting doubts on their claims to be well-informed on Aboriginal issues and other matters which they speak out about. Or they were willing to go along with bogus claims because they were supported by a particular side of politics, thus casting doubts on their moral integrity.
Of course, there are many in the churches who are very troubled by these one-sided interventions. The Melbourne-based Galatians Group, made up of laity and clergy from both Protestant and Catholic churches, was formed a few years ago to take a more questioning stance about the theological basis for the churches' public statements about social justice and similar matters. Groups such as the Galatians recognise that the churches' moral authority is not eternally guaranteed, and that it can be rapidly squandered if seems to be too closely entwined with a particular political ideology. Others in the churches should be as wise.
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