Well, the serial unveiling of Scott Morrison continues apace and is about the most interesting thing happening in Australian politics at the moment. The Liberal happy warrior is like a Roman soldier-Christian at the moment, his armour stripped away, piece by piece, to reveal a naked torso for the arrows of martyrdom. They thud into him at every press conference. Ever since he revealed that he had prayed for an end to the drought, the game has been on.
ScoMo and his handlers had hoped they could turn him into Howard II, the suburban dag, after five years of the Mad Monk and Flash Daddy Warbucks Turnbull. Alas, he’s now like the chaplain brought in for compulsory RE who must endure 2000 years of theological questioning from teenage smart arses: “if God can do anything why the Holocaust/cancer/can’t I get with Stacey?” etc etc. Morrison could be opening the new Bruce J Tingwell Drainage Hub in Dubbo and someone is still going to ask him if he prayed for better municipal waste management.
Were he your standard cultural Christian atheist — i.e. an Anglican — Morrison could just brush it off. He could say, well, that’s below God’s pay grade, etc, and it would end. But ScoMo is the real deal: a genuine evangelical Christian who, it seems, will not prevaricate on his faith. So he tells us of the children he has imprisoned yet prays for, the rains he prays for, he claims his Pastor would know if there were terrorists in the midst of his flock.
This can’t be a deliberate strategy, can it? Australian suburban dagginess and religion don’t mix. Howard never mentioned God that I can recall, and even when he talked about Western civilisation, etc, it was usually in British terms, not on the Judeo-Christian thing. The school chaplains program was as cultural as it was religious. The Liberal claque that shoved ScoMo into the job must be tearing their hair out at how this is going. Trying to sound like one of us, Morrison has the air of some hip priest in a blue skivvy, about to get out the guitar for “Morning Has Broken”.
This is a source of buttock-clenching embarrassment for most Australians, just about the most functionally irreligious people on Earth. Sure, quite a lot of people are walking around with a theology of sorts in their head — some mix of Deism, poster prints of “Desiderata”, some borrowed Aboriginal animism, and the residual narcissism that seeks a universal force that won’t stop the Holocaust, but will wipe that angry voicemail you left for Troy — but that’s not religion, with its commitment, its boundedness, its specificity.
ScoMo’s got that capacity, what is called in Arabic, islam, submission. The inconvenience of having to bear witness to it at a newly opened jam factory staffed by rehabilitated ice addicts (“prime minister, did God create jam?”) worries him not at all. He is a servant of a higher power. I actually admire him for that. He’s got fidelity to something at least.
Furthermore, he is a servant of a higher power who has very specific character. The Christianity of the Gospels, the testing challenge to absolute struggle of Matthew 25:35-40 is absent here. No one who followed that could be the minister Morrison has been. That Christianity is represented in our country by people like Rod Bower. Its political expression is anarchism.
But Christianity has a dual character. Its other side is not the movement of love against death, but a conformism to power represented by a known god. This is a product of Christianity’s fusion with the official Roman religion of Mithraism in the fourth century CE, and its adoption as the compulsory imperial faith by Theodosius. In that move, the “this-sidedness” of Christianity became uppermost.
The following of an Essenic communist barefoot rabbi, who set faith as an unending challenge, and God as unknowable in this world, became a religion that gave transcendental meaning to imperial purpose, and absolution for its sins. Throughout the religion’s history, this cycle has been repeated. The evangelical Christianity Morrison follows began as fire-breathing dissent in the 19th century, co-parented socialism and American progressivism. When the culture wars began in the 1960s, it crossed to the other side. In the process its loving, fighting God became a new Jahweh, absolving of state violence, whose ethical prescriptions could be read off like a manifesto.
Therein lies the contradiction that has turned Morrison’s faith into a problem for those trying to sell him. Because now, post Godspell (have you listened to this recently? The songs are great!), post Da Vinci Code, post Gosford Anglican church, most of us identify Christianity with its radical gospel version. Imperial Christianity, the mainstay of our religious culture from 1788 to Menzies is now the alien, hypocritical belief system we turn away from. Morrison sees no contradiction in having a silver boat-idol on his desk saying “I stopped these” and worshipping a man who walked on water to save people in boats — no contradiction in praying for the children whose souls he is helping destroy.
We see it plainly, and it turns our stomachs. We see it across all classes and social groups. The only people who can’t see it is the rightariat: the Dan Brown theme park that is The Australian, the blinkered Americophiles at the Tele, Alex Hawke’s Seven Hills happy clappies, Eric Abetz’s Tasmanian Salivating Army, the Spring Street Liberal Tabernacle of Utah Saints, and the chino ‘n’ pearls think tank Sunday schools, who delude themselves into thinking they represent a God-fearing low taxing silent majority out there somewhere.
God knows, maybe the whole ScoMo #prayernation thing is deliberate. Maybe it’s that delusional. But I suspect not. I reckon for every point Morrison gets from a sculled beer, he loses two for praying for better cattle tick control in northern New South Wales.* I reckon it’s driving his Newspoll further south. Keep praying, St Sebastian ScoMo! All the way to 58-42! Post-election, you can gather your dozen followers ’round you once more.
*rural tick control was the subject of Henry Bolte’s maiden speech.
There are two types of Christians. The ones who have a genuine belief and follow this; and the ones who are mainly interested in being able to tell other people what to do. SloMo is definitely the latter.
Also, “the Dan Brown theme park that is The Australian” – this is pure gold!
Even by your glittering standards Guy, today’s piece is pure gold.
So many gems, there’s simply too many to mention.
Genuine laugh out loud moments, like a vintage episode of Mad As Hell.
Bravo! 🙂
I read in other new sites that Morrison’s move to legislate “freedom of religion” could be popular with the electorate because over 50% “identify as christian”.
But I wonder how many would actually identify as “religious”.
What about freedom FROM religion for the many who don’t give a tinkers cuss for the fairy tales that religious salesmen peddle to their respective flocks of believers.
At the time of Scott Morrison’s ascension to the Prime Ministership, the minister at his church claimed it was miracle resulting from fasting and prayer, and would ensure that Australia’s government follows ‘godly principles’. Which begs the question: how would ‘godly principles’ differ from the values of any decent Australian? And do those ‘godly principles’ account for the PM’s continuing obsession with moving our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem – an action with no discernible benefit to Australia and significant downsides – since his church preaches that the Second Coming cannot occur until Jerusalem is Israel’s capital?
Appeasing the Pentecostal Evangelicals and their belief that making Jerusalem Israel’s capital is a necessary and imminent precursor of the End Days and the Second Coming was the major driver of Trump’s decision (sure, it pleased major donors like Sheldon ‘Rip the punters off’ Adelson; but in the big picture less than 25% of Jews voted for Trump – almost all in districts that went Democrat anyway; whereas well-over 90% of Pentecostals voted for Trump, mostly in districts that supported Trump), and I can attest from personal family connections that it is a big live issue in the Pentecostal ‘God blesses you with Wealth’ franchises, including the one Morrison attends.
By the way, climate change doesn’t get a mention in Revelations, so it’s not real either.
As a Muslim who spent 10 years at an Anglican school and who has read a fair bit about different Christian denominations, might I suggest the author keep his theological speculations to himself. And I say this knowing that many of my more polemical evangelical Muslim folk would probably agree with him on the relationship between Roman theology and Roman Western Christianity.
The Christian tradition is very broad, just like the Muslim tradition. And, dare I say, just like the religion of the followers of St Marx.
Otherwise this was a very refreshing read.
I hear what you are saying, Irfan, and while I appreciate your point, I pay good money to hear Guy’s speculations – and yours too! If you guys keep them to yourselves what is the point?
That said, a Muslim who has spent 10 years in an Anglican school would have some marvelous perspectives and I for one would encourage you to share.
Yes Irfan, submit something to Crikey for publication. You always put your case well and sometimes stir things up a bit.
As an atheist who thinks all religions are bollocks and all believers deluded, I’ll take the above speculation any day.
Agree hamster. I was a catholic only because my parents were and they told me I was. Until later when I wasn’t through my own choice. I have heard from pretend Muslims that there are millions of people in Muslim countries who also think it’s all a load of bollocks but have to pretend it isn’t. A bit like Ireland in the 1960 ‘s.
The main function of religion is to stop the poor eating the rich.