Quarterly Essay 22: Voting for Jesus (2006), by Amanda Lohrey

Quarterly Essay is fast becoming an institution in the promotion and circulation of ideas in Australia. Having commenced in 2001 with La Trobe politics professor Robert Manne’s scathing and agenda-setting polemic against what he saw as the blatant, ideological denial of the existence of the Stolen Generations by the intelligent Right,[1] QE has increased in circulation and power to become a true challenger to the economically radical/regressive (WorkChoices = good) and socially ultra-conservative agenda being set by publications like News Ltd’s The Australian newspaper, PBL’s The Bulletin, and the journal Quadrant.

Published by entrepreneur and property developer Morry Schwartz’s Black Inc label, Quarterly Essay began in 2001. Since its establishment in 2000, Black Inc has also published the annual Best Australian Essays and Best Australian Stories anthologies (to which it has more recently added Poems, Sports Writing and Profiles) as well as a range of other books (most notably a reprint of Ken Inglis’s The Stuart Case and a number of Manne collections[2]) and the increasingly important The Monthly magazine.

John Birmingham lifted the lid on the so-called ‘Jakarta Lobby’ which has been hiding and trivialising Indonesia’s crimes against humanity for decades in the interests of realpolitik.[3] Germaine Greer sent tongues wagging with a call for Australians everywhere to internalise an ‘Aboriginality’ in order to both understand the problems confronting Indigenous people and save their nation from environmental destruction.[4] Oft-quoted by supporters and critics are Guy Rundle’s assessment of John Howard’s populism,[5] John Button’s evaluation of the Australian Labor Party,[6] and John Martinkus’s account of the West Papuan independence movement.[7]

In Voting for Jesus (ISBN 186 395 2306), Amanda Lohrey takes a critical approach to the mainstream narrative that suggests that Christianity is having an increasing influence on Australian politics, through the apparent popularisation of evangelical churches, the election of Family First members to Parliaments, and the over-representation in the two major Parties of committed Christians like the Liberals' Tony Abbott, Peter Costello and Kevin Andrews (who nevertheless seem to display no discomfort when locking asylum seekers away indefinitely on remote islands despite their total innocence of any crime, causing the deaths of tens of thousands in Iraq outside the scope of international law, and unashamedly stealing oil resources from one of the world's newest nations, Timor Leste) and Labor's Kim Beazley, Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy. Lohrey's thesis is that while there appears to be a creeping religious aspect to many hot public debates, the lack of consensus among Christians on such issues as the Iraq war, gay rights and abortion suggests that 'Christianity' is being used by some as a political wedge-issue to justify their own indefensible prejudices. She adds much to a line of secular-liberal argument begun by David Marr in The High Price of Heaven (1999) and continued through Marion Maddox’s God Under Howard (2005) that is inherently sceptical of Church-based national politics.

She describes well the two main schools of traditional Christianity in Australia: the liberal school, which essentially holds that Christ’s message was one of love, acceptance and tolerance in each individual had the responsibility to live the ‘good life’ and in which judgement was left to God; and the strict-moralist school, which holds that humans are born wicked and must be guided by churches, which require adherence to stringent codes of conduct. A humanist to some degree, Lohrey naturally prefers the former, and, acknowledging her lack of theological training, is unconvinced of the theological merits of the new, market-driven Christianity that pervades institutions like Hillsong. She questions the anti-gay, anti-Green, anti-abortion messages from the churches (old and new), as well as the increasingly slippery tactics they use to mobilise political support.

It’s a perceptive and thoughtful contribution to a debate that Australians increasingly find themselves having, as the apparent rise of a new Christian constituency that almost exclusively votes Liberal (some after giving first preference to Family First). [Russell]

[1] Manne, ‘In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right’ (2001), 1 Quarterly Essay 1.
[2] Including: Manne (ed), Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2003); Manne, Left, Right, Left: Political Essays 1977-2005 (2005); Manne and Peter Beilharz (eds), Reflected Light: La Trobe Essays (2006).
[3] Birmingham, ‘Appeasing Jakarta: Australia’s complicity in the East Timor Tragedy’ (2001), 2 QE 1.
[4] Greer, ‘Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood’ (2003), 11 QE 1.
[5] Rundle, ‘The Opportunist: John Howard and the Triumph of Reaction’ (2001), 3 QE 1.
[6] Button, ‘Beyond Belief: What Future for Labor?’ (2002), 6 QE 1.
[7] Martinkus, ‘Paradise Betrayed: West Papua’s Struggle for Independence’ (2002), 7 QE 1.