Religion's place in the public square

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Apologetics

Religion’s place in the public square

By Rowland Croucher and others ⋅ August 3, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

July 07, 2009

Kevin Rudd’s audience with the Pope should be welcomed

THE peculiar hostility among sections of the media, and on blogsites, over Kevin Rudd’s audience with Pope Benedict XVI this week reflects a narrow world view. As he prepares to meet the Pope, who has recently signed his third encyclical, Charity in Truth about globalisation, the Prime Minister’s long-standing interest in religion is in tune with a wider rebalancing of public debate, in which faith and its principles seem set to play a larger role after taking a backseat in recent decades.

The notion that secularism and modernism signalled the demise of religion in the public square has permeated European philosophy for two centuries. It escalated across most of the western world in the second half of the 20th century after the upheavals of the 1960s and remains popular with left-liberal urban elites, especially baby boomers. Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan captured the mindset when she wrote: “My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.”

Just nine years after The Economist ran the Almighty’s obituary, two of its most senior staff, editor-in-chief John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, have published God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World. In a recent extract in The Weekend Australian, they argued that European notions of modernism and faith being mutually exclusive are increasingly isolated. Religion is assuming a fresh importance in many places, from the Middle East and the US to Africa and South America.

Secularism and the separation of church and state have been positive, consistent features of Australian life since 1788. Religion has also served the nation well, especially in education and health services, and continues to do so. Whatever the different interpretations, the ideals of personal responsibility, a good work ethic, and treating others as as we would like to be treated ourselves, are inherent to most religions. They make solid values on which to bring up children and build communities and a nation. In recent decades, some individuals, including churchgoers, have tried to complement or replace scriptural values with various forms of environmentalism, earth-worship and the Gaia Hypothesis. History will judge how fleeting and limited such notions prove to be.

Religious faiths, as American philosopher Francis Fukuyama recognised in The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order have a role in creating moral rules that bind a society together. The disruptions from the 1960s to the 1990s, manifest in rising crime, declining interpersonal trust and the breakdown of the family and society, Fukuyama contended in 1999, are likely to precipitate a reconstruction of the social order. In this, he predicted, religion would take on a bigger role than it has for a couple of generations.

In Australia, with our strong tradition of choice and religious freedom, politicians, like Mr Rudd and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, a convert to Catholicism, are as free to be as interested in religion as others are to be disinterested.

On Sunday, Nine Network political commentator Laurie Oakes took umbrage at the prospect of the Prime Minister “dabbling” in the matter of Mary MacKillop being elevated to the ranks of Catholic saints. Mr Rudd will be at the Vatican not as a religious emissary but as a secular leader, interested in recognition for an Australian whose contribution to educating the poor was outstanding. It is appropriate for the Prime Minister, whether a Christian or not, to raise such a matter.