The lobbying push on the religious freedom bill — which the government has booted into next year, perhaps hoping for a death and resurrection — is gathering pace. How’s it going?
Not well, not well. News Corp is going big with a report from the Centre of Independent Studies (the right-wing thinktank which shares its acronym with Russia, which must make for hilarious mix-ups when receiving orders) on religious life in Australia. Or one finding of the report, anyway — that “80% of Australians believe respecting religion is important in a multicultural society”.
But oh no, the rest of it was not from heaven sent. A majority believe religion divides more than it unites, and a clear majority — 64% — believe employers should not be able to discriminate on religious grounds. Only 30% believe even a specifically religious employer should have the right to discriminate.
Whoops.
That’s about the same as the yes vote in the marriage plebiscite, and support for legalised abortion. It’s almost like there’s a broad secular majority in Australia, with a general base of socially progressive values. What to do?
The report’s authors, Monica Wilkins and Robert Forsyth, have an idea: ignore public opinion. The results show, they say, that there is “public misunderstanding about what religious freedom means”.
The people think it to be about private belief they hold in their hearts, when really it’s about religious institutions and visible practices of faith. Forgive the poll respondents, Lord, for they know not what they think. Thank God the anti-elitists of the CIS are here to help them out.
The poll rather inadvertently reveals the truth about the religious freedom bill: that it is an expression of the weakness of organised religion, not its strength or social importance. Seventy percent of Australians told the last census they are religious: 52% Christian, 8% other organised, 10% not specified. Christian church attendance is at 15.5% of the population once a month or more.
That is one of the least practising religious societies in the world.
The churches do not actually have a congregation. What they do have is property, tax-deductible status, hospitals and schools, both the latter essentially co-run with the government via state subsidies. With the money and power from these organisations, they can hire spokespeople and lobbyists to argue for more help from the state in keeping their organisations going.
They don’t always get value for money, as this morning, when Monica Doumit, director of public affairs at the Archdiocese of Sydney, and Bilal Rauf, a spokesperson for the Australian National Imams Council, went on RN and rapidly needed divine intervention from host Hamish Macdonald.
Doumit argued that the church needed the right to discriminate in the hiring of staff at St Vinnie’s which led Macdonald to wonder politely what terrible conflicts were occurring at the Clarinda oppy (my version, not his) that warranted a law to sort it out. At this Doumit did a full rosary of bluster.
Rauf stressed the need for religious vilification laws, citing the recent assault of a pregnant Muslim woman “who had her head stomped on… I mean that will be pursued as a crime, but the hate aspect is missing”.
It is Bilal. Stomping on a pregnant woman’s head is a crime, against a person. The idea of adding a US-style hate tariff suggests preferential treatment, and that a pregnant woman who got her head stomped because she talked back and the Jack Daniel’s is finished is somehow less-wronged against.
The bad faith around this bill is extraordinary. “Hospitals” aren’t just hospitals anymore if by that we mean wards with nuns soothing fevered brows; they are billion dollar high-tech body factories. If churches manifest their mission by running hospitals then good on ’em, but they now do so as part of a universal health service, and the rules of public secularity should apply — even if there’s a sepia photo of Sister Wilfred hanging over the flower shop.
The same goes for aged care, by and large. Churches should have a right to hire and fire on specific religious grounds for core faith activities, with government subsidy coming in under a threshold of, say, 5-10%. And if they were to limit themselves to that, progressives should support them on the grounds of the institutional autonomy they might want to claim: hiring and firing at an LGBTIQ radio station, for example, or an Indigenous organisation.
Religious bodies have most of that already. They want expanded state-enforced hiring and firing laws to strengthen their institutions and rebuild the congregations they are losing to secular modernity.
Why don’t they try rebuilding their reputations first?
There is no substantial attack on religious freedom in Australia. There is cultural racism directed at West Asian Muslims, much anti-Indigenous and anti-African-Australian racism, and a comparatively small (and disproportionately reported) anti-Semitism.
There is, however, vigorous criticism of the Catholic church for its collapse into satanic, adversarial manufacture of hardcore, dog-collared paedophile predators over several decades — and the CIS’ survey shows just how few Australians want to extend them a special legal status.
Time to retreat, fathers and sisters and others. You may come to rue the day you were so desperate to open up this discussion, which may have people willing to ask why their taxes fund sexist, archaic religious curricula in schools, or why substantial businesses have a tax deductible status.
Truly, God moves in mysterious ways. Maybe she’s an Australian, and doesn’t believe in herself.
Does Australia need a religious freedom bill? Will the government pass it anyway? Let us know by writing to boss@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication.
Crackerjack article Guy!
“…..Catholic church for its collapse into satanic, adversarial manufacture of hardcore, dog-collared paedophile predators over several decades ”
As Norman “Nugget” Alfred Vale May would say “GOLD GOLD for Australia GOLD”
Yes, a good article and an important issue, but I thought that was an unfair slur on satanists. The “satanic panic” false recovered memory debacle of the 80’s/90’s was no joke and ruined some innocent peoples lives.
As an aside, some Wiccans/Pagans I know are watching the religious freedom laws with some interest. There may be unintended consequences for the Xtians.
No, i mean satanic – small s – in the judeo-christian sense of the general adversary, that which is other to good and life. Rather than the pagan/Levayan satanist thing which is the idea of a natural force of will
The satanic panic wasn’t about pagans, but a belief in a living God, with a living adversary in Satan.
I read their remark about wiccans as being a new topic, not related to their objection to your use of satanic.
I get what you mean, though. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I can’t say something or someone is metaphorically satanic.
Yes, true on both points. I get over sensitive at this time of year. Luciferian is I think more the term used now by that subset of the lose collective that is neopaganism, partly to leave Satanic to others to use as they will. I could be screwing up the theology here though…
And, I wouldn’t want to live in a world without black metal and it’s theatrical satanism.
Fair enough, thanks for the explanation. I can get a bit sensitive about religious vilification 🙂 but to be honest I know that’s not what you meant.
There’s just not many to stand up for the witches!
Happy Saturnalia to you. And thanks for some great articles this year.
Religious paedophiles are treated better than same sex/gay people, churches and religious bodies want the right to discriminate against gay people and at the same
they want the right of priests at confessionals to protect paedophiles, personally I think its more about protecting their right to make tax free millions from the faith of the gullible. if there is a heaven not many of these thieving hypocritical bastards will make it.
We do not need a religious freedom bill.
Many of us will take notice of what churches say – only if they answer – the following:
1) Why on earth is Scientology still considered a religion ?
2) Why on earth don’t they pay taxes like the rest of us?
Agree wholeheartedly, Maisie! Can’t come soon enough!!
Scientology is still considered a religion because it is just as real as the other more mainstream ones. How does one draft a law that excludes Scientology from tax free status but allows Catholicism to keep theres?
The people who claim religious belief would be nowhere near as numerous if their parents had not been given the right to ensure that their own children were indoctrinated at a very young age into their own set of mythologies. Where is the protection for the young in this religious freedom bill?
I’m an atheist, but even I find this a hard one. There are lots of “values” that are not religious but might be equally the result of delusion. Are they less harmful to children because they’re not religious in nature?
The best we can do, I think, is to remove all subsidy to churches and private schools.
Yes, I agree, it is difficult. Parents will naturally try to pass on their values and beliefs to their children, but these may often be modified through contact with others in society as a whole. But when these beliefs are reinforced by Christian schools (or Madrassas), or in other institutions that reinforce these beliefs, they persist. Given our current crises, we need a more rational world, and not one that accepts that we can destroy the world because one day we will ascend into the some kind of heaven.
As Richard Dawkins said, “religion is not hereditary.”
He also said that religious education was child abuse.
This ‘religious freedom’ bullshit has always been a straw man. Yes, the churches want to reserve their property and power, but what the nut bag right wing culture warriors want is a special right to discriminate, in direct contravention of church dogma. And, as Guy points out, we are confronted by all this confected nonsense at a time when the reputation of all churches is in tatters.