Lefty preachers please the media but not their flock

Excerpt from Janet Albrechtsen

When Baptist minister Tim Costello fronted the National Press Club to talk about terrorism, immediately some in the media sniffed a family blue. A few days earlier Tim's brother, Treasurer Peter Costello, said that Australia "will never observe sharia law ... we will always be a democracy" and so he suggested that those Muslims intent on bringing sharia to Australia, by one means or another, would be better off setting up home elsewhere.

Brother Tim disagreed, telling a room full of receptive journos that instead of suggesting that those preaching jihad should leave, it was better to "publish, publish, publish, and debate it". No prizes for picking the media's good guy. Reporting the verbal fisticuffs between the priest advocating the three Ps and the Treasurer advocating a different P for sharia lovers (we'll call it "please leave") may be fun, but the real chasm is not between two brothers. It's between politically charged preachers and their congregations.

It's an easy bit of reporting if you're interested. Any journalist sceptical of authority could find it just by flicking through the 2004 Australian Election Study. While religious luminaries such as Tim Costello are preaching a feel-good Greens-tinted policy on terrorism, apparently most of his followers (59 per cent) in the Uniting Church are voting for the Coalition. And according to academics Clive Bean and Ian McAllister, those who regularly attend church are more likely to favour the Coalition. Put another way, if you describe yourself as religious and step inside a church and listen to church leaders such as Tim Costello, the more inclined you are to vote for the conservative parties.

It's no surprise that Tim Costello's remarks may be a blessing for the Coalition. Publish and debate is a neat idea, but I'll hazard a guess that most people have cottoned on to the fact that some of those preaching jihad have more than debating on their minds. Recall the four London bombers who read books and listened to sermons preaching the virtue of launching an Islamic holy war against Western infidels. And then they headed off to the London Tube to blow themselves up, killing more than 50 commuters.

Similarly, the hypocrisy of some hip church leaders must play straight into the hands of their conservative opponents. Where was Tim Costello and his defence of free speech when two Christian pastors in Victoria were found guilty of vilifying Islam for quoting the Koran in a way that was deemed sufficiently disrespectful to be unlawful? Seems the two pastors made the audience laugh. It's a weird logic that has Tim Costello telling us to promote debate about overthrowing secular democratic government and replacing it with sharia. But apparently he is unconcerned when a court tells two fellow Christian pastors who debated the merits of Islam to apologise or face jail.

If your audience is tuning out, it does not augur well for the future of Christianity. But that has not stopped the increasingly vocal group of meddling ministers from sidelining any talk of saving souls and instead sermonising on everything from Iraq and industrial relations to Kyoto and tax cuts.

The only consolation prize for Tim Costello and his left-wing religious confreres is that they have become the undisputed media darlings. So much so that even sensible columnists such as Michael Duffy are horrified when Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen dares to talk about Jesus - something on which a preacher may be expected to have some expertise - in this year's Boyer Lectures on ABC radio.


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