We are having a lot of announcements from our government that religious freedoms must be protected. There is no doubt that there are areas of the world where religious freedoms are under threat. It is increasingly difficult to be Christian in many Islamic countries, and Muslims in many Christian countries can face daily abuse – in particular women in hijab. Fundamentalist Hindus in India seem to be attacking everyone else. Buddhists in Myanmar are behaving with apparent brutality to Muslims who have lived in the country for centuries. While this level of religious intolerance and violence should not be accepted, there is no evidence I have seen that suggests that Christians in Australia face anything remotely resembling this level of attack or that they are remotely likely to face this level of attack in the future.
The evidence presented does not seem that persuasive either.
The prime minister has mentioned that kids have been stopped doing Christmas plays. He does not present evidence for his statement. He says that Christians have been prevented from discussing the real meaning of Easter. No evidence is presented again. We are told that boards of directors may stop people from being members because of incompatibilities of belief. No evidence is presented, and the PM even seems to think the lack of evidence for it happening now, is evidence for it happening in the future.
If indeed Church groups have been prevented from preaching to their members, or prevented from putting on Christmas plays in the Church, then we do have real problems. But nobody seems to be claiming this. Likewise Christians and others have discussed the meaning of Easter in public with me, with no apparent hinderance. The local newspapers usually have meaning of Easter articles, and editorials, and summarise the various Easter messages from the main churches. There is no one screaming in the papers that Christians should not be allowed to talk about Easter – nothing like the screaming against various right or left wing speakers that seems a regular feature of contemporary debate. Sure people commenting on articles with a Christian slant may be abusive or more likely dismissive, but facing abuse online is a regular event for everybody, and there is often abuse from Christians in return, suggesting atheists are subhuman or deserve to burn in Hell for eternity and often expressing joy at this hypothesis.
We also have continuing tax exemption for religious organisations, even if they seem run for profit or for the income of the leaders. Taxpayer subsidy of religious schools, public money spent on Chaplains to council school children who don’t need any qualifications in counselling, and a total lack of funding for qualified counsellors who are not approved by the local denominations. We still effectively have compulsory religious instruction in public schools – as the NSW government does not allow schools to reveal if they have the substitute ethics courses available. We allow religious schools to sack people if they find them incompatible with their beliefs (ie they are gay, feminist, or the wrong form of Christianity) – oddly this is one area that people say is not strong enough for religious liberty! We have politicians and right wing commentators who have defended the clergy from accusations of child abuse. We have politicians claiming their religion as a matter of course. No one has persecuted them in any effective manner. There is not any movement to curb much of this.
I am absolutely open to counter evidence for impingement on Christian liberty.
All of this, along with the lack of concern for the religious freedoms of Muslims or Buddhists, suggests that there is a level of fantasy in these allegations and they are really about identity politics of a specific group that seeks privilege over others.
Now it is true that the secular state has stopped human sacrifice, religious torture and persecution of other religions. It has tried to stop child abuse by churches, it has recognised rape in marriage, it has allowed women to claim equal rights, and not be beaten in marriage as a matter of religion. It does not allow people to sell their children into slavery, or have them wedded by the age of 12. It has failed to stop male genital mutilation, but that failure is an example of religious power. I would suspect that most Christians and other religious people, can live quite happily with these restrictions.
However it was notable during the debate on whether the State’s category of marriage could be extended to homosexual relationships. No religion was being forced to carry out marriages, just recognise them, as they do other marriages not held in their churches. Many religious people seemed to consider that the attempt to stop them discriminating against others was a threat to their freedom. They naturally did the suggesting that homosexual people were subhuman immoral and deserved to burn in hell line, and seemed surprised that other people responded strongly to these suggestions. Is it that only they should be allowed to abuse others, or that they don’t they see these comments as abuse? Later in the debate when the ‘burn in hell’ lines did not seem to work amongst the general population who don’t think gay people are any worse than other people, they decided to attack heterosexual and Christian marriages as illegitimate if there was no chance of producing children. Naturally they did not put it that way, but that was the logical consequence of arguing that marriage was solely for the production of children. They also kept imagining gay couples will deliberately go to Christian bakers for wedding cakes to upset them. Such are the stands Christians have to take nowadays.
The suggestion of all this, seems to be that Christians should not have to live under the same conditions as everyone else. They demand protection from debate, from having to justify their positions, and from any opposition, even opposition that they have provoked. This campaign, does not seem to be about freedom, but about privilege, and fits the general pattern that right wing identity politics differs from left as it is not about recognising more people’s rights to participate in public life with their full personal identity, but about saying “we are special, and better than others”. It represents an attempt to shut others down. Given Christian history, Christians from minority sects, those who try to live with love rather than condemnation, people from other religions, agnostics etc, should all be worried by this movement.
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