John Gore

The Christian Right  -  a grass roots view
My atheist friend, Alan, was chairing our weekly current affairs discussion just after the Howard Government’s election victory. The twenty of us were vigorously discussing the influence of the Christian Right when Alan turned to me and said, Steve, tell us what you told me a few weeks ago about the early leaders of the union movement.

At first I didn’t see any connection with the recent election but I told our group: A hundred years ago William Spence was perhaps Australia’s greatest union organiser and he was also a Methodist lay preacher who often made references to Jesus in his union speeches. The first Labor Premier of NSW, “Honest” Jim McGowen, was Sunday School superintendent in Redfern and very much encouraged in his union activism by his rector, Bertie Boyce.

The discussion moved on until Jane, an agnostic, unexpectedly got a word in. Steve’s right, she said, my grand father was an early union leader in New Zealand and he also was a very devout Christian.
Others nodded in agreement.

I was left wondering why people of no religion seemed to be reassured that evangelicals had once been active in working for social justice. Our group is made up of older folk who are concerned for truth and integrity in government, for justice and compassion towards asylum seekers and for strengthening our community through public education  and public health services. All of these values are Biblical principles. They were the basis for the efforts of the early Christian union leaders. By contrast, most of my church friends base their social ethics on their drive for respectability and on “freedom of choice” for individuals and their families. So Christians today urgently need to rediscover the teaching of the Old Testament on justice and peace and to realise that God created humans to live together in community. Therefore John Gore’s articles in TCF News provide an important contribution.

However, do such debates have any relevance for our schools? In the case of Special Religious Education (SRE) or Scripture, the volunteer SRE teachers depend on the goodwill of the classroom teachers and we are very grateful for the very high level of goodwill that makes SRE possible. It would be a tragedy if this goodwill were to be jeopardised by gung-ho Christian Right spokespeople who
undermined public schools or whose anti-union rhetoric threatens the Teachers Federation.   

Steve Howes

The story so far
The Christian Right has its origins in Fundamentalist Christianity. The media has observed the rise of both fundamentalist Christian churches and evangelical churches and has been unable to distinguish between them. This has resulted in evangelicals being stereotyped as fundamentalist right Christians, a position that not all evangelicals are comfortable with.

“Left” and “right” descriptions are political descriptions. The Christian left is characterized by concerns for peace, justice, equality, human rights and the rejection of excessive wealth. It is often liberal in theology and does not represent an alternative for evangelicals uneasy or unhappy about being labeled with the Christian right.

An evangelical left position might still be considered politically right by most but such a position can be distinguished. In the following table these positions are identified from the first article with the addition of some scriptural references. The text that follows attempts to distinguish the evangelical left position from the evangelical right based on similar or different perspectives of these scriptures.

This analysis is not exhaustive, but indicative, to help readers distinguish different positions. Further study and consideration of these scriptures is recommended.

John Gore