How dare Christians vote!(Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics in Australia)(Book review)

Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics in Australia, by Amanda Lohrey; Black Inc. (Quarterly Essay, Issue 22), 2006, $14.95.

AMANDA LOHREY'S essay Voting for Jesus is the latest in a series of laments that Christianity is playing too great a part in public life. The book is notable, however, for the author's strange view of what constitutes democracy and her lack of acquaintance with the subject matter. Let me begin with Lohrey's take on democracy.

The Australian census reveals that around 70 per cent of the population claims to have some affiliation with an Australian denomination. Of that group, some 400,000 maintain regular contact with their church. As grass-roots organisations, the Christian churches maintain an impressive network of local congregations touching the lives of countless Australians through their religious ministrations, social services and educational institutions. This country is far from godless or irreligious. In the last census, the number of Australians professing "No Religion" surprised observers and actually declined.

By way of contrast, less than 1 per cent of the population belongs to a political party and a fraction of that number attends branch meetings or contributes to policy deliberations. In fact, the membership figures for the two major Australian political parties are so low and participation so meagre that statistics are not publicly available. This country is governed by very small and, one might suggest, elitist organisations that could not reasonably claim to represent either the breadth or the complexity of the people subject to their aspirations or authority.

And yet, Amanda Lohrey is nonetheless willing to chide churchgoing Christians for wanting to influence political debate and shape public policy. In her view, they are seeking to have an effect on Australian society and culture that is inconsistent with either their size or significance. The statistics suggest otherwise. Because a clear majority of Australians claim some association with the church, there ought to be some public reflection of the religious beliefs and Christian values of the people from which the state derives its authority to govern. If the convictions and outlook of the majority are to be respected and regarded as a legitimate source of social and political homogeneity, the state should be free to uphold the religious ideals of the population and require certain behaviours without necessarily insisting on the beliefs on which they are based.

Because societies require an overarching story to give them group coherence and a sense of collective purpose, there is nothing inherently wrong with the state being party to the transmission of the particular moral story--in this case the Christian story--that links the majority of people within the society it seeks to govern. To banish the Christian story from public discourse or to discount its influence on the constituents of a nation is to succumb to the tyranny of the minority and to distance he state from the ordinary life of its people.

Having exposed a distorted view of democracy, it is not altogether surprising that Lohrey fails to make sense of highly nuanced theological concepts. As a novelist who occasionally writes about politics, she has a dubious claim to be a competent commentator on phenomena she clearly does not understand and which, in any event, she tries to distort for her own ideological purposes. By way of example, Lohrey is mistaken if she thinks Christians are (or ought to be) "committed to that great humanist project, a secular liberal democracy in which freedom of conscience is paramount". Jesus instructs his followers to discern divine truth and to pursue the Kingdom of God irrespective of how popular that might be to the host society or palatable to the dominant culture. The Christian political vision is neither reflected in nor exhausted by social conservatism.