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January 22, 2005
The Christian Fundamentalists say that our nation is premised on Judeo-Christianity and that Australia's political system must maintain that heritage. We should not kiss it goodbye or hurl it into the dusbin of history. Judeo-Christianity is the mythos of our society as it provides people with a context that enables them to make sense of our day-to-day lives.
Soon we will begin to hear the line that maintaining the Judeo-Christianity heritage was the intent of the Founding Fathers of the Constitution. Theology underpins the constitution.
This fundamentalist co-mingling of Judeo-Christianity and government--you can see it with biopolitics and the regulation of the body----undermines the liberal wall of separation between state and church.
What then is the agenda of this political movement. A suggestion from the US:
The religious right is fundamentalism's political arm. It seeks objectives that are depicted in fundamentalist literature as being derived from, or consonant with, biblical prescriptions, and prophecies. Statements of these objectives vary considerably, but the principal goals are constant and prominent: a fundamentalist theocracy -- that is, a government operated according to fundamentalist readings of the Bible; an economy of capitalism, more or less unrestrained; a foreign policy based on nationalism and chauvinism reinforced by militarism; a social organization in which women would be subordinate to men and would focus their lives on reproduction; a system of education that would discourage analytical thinking in all realms except the purely technical ones; a system of science that would serve only to support commerce and to generate sophistic demonstrations that facts of nature conform to biblical narratives; and theocratic suppression of cultural, intellectual, ethical, or sexual departures from the prescriptions of biblical authorities.
I find that understanding of the religious right persuasive, even though it is very American orientated. Does fundamentalism have roots in Australia? Is it more than a US import? Should we be concerned about fundamentalism in Australia? How do conservatives understand the relationship between reason and revelation?
I reckon that fundamentalism does have roots in Australia and that we should be concerned about fundamentalism in Australia? Here is an argument.
Fundamentalism is a response to the threat of both the logos of secular modernism and secular modernism. This logos is a scientific approach to knowledge, a rejection of myth-based thinking, an expectation of ongoing technological progress, and an ever-growing capitalist economy. Liberal modernism is constituted by a market-based, capitalist economy that places a high value on individualism, materialism, and pluralism. It assumes the individual's right to choose, whether in the marketplace of goods and services, opinion or religion.
The argument is that mythos is the language of meaning and, if a secular liberal culture in modernity leaves no place for mythos, then we rightly fear a devastating loss of cultural cohesiveness and unity. This reason for the sacralization of life in Australia can be seen in the institution of a biopolitics that seeks to administer and control life and the parallel establishment of a "bioethics" that renders the protection of bare life its privileged object.
Hence the passion-informed religios fundamentalism is more than social conservatives and "power puritans" adopting a faith-based politics of different politicians. The biopolitics of the sanctity of life, which initially appeared to stop euthanasia and stem cell research and to roll back the reproductive rights of womenis broadening out to regulate everyday life (pornography, marriage, homosexuality etc).
It is a form a conservatism, which views society as an organic whole within which individuals have assigned roles and responsibilities. This conservatism s concerned with the "collective moral fabric" and it sees government as having "the right to establish norms for the conduct of social life."
Fundamentalism, which is a puritanical version of conservatism, gives the state and religion a strong role in legislating or dictating matters of morality about desiring bodies. It's biopolitics is a mode of governance, as it holds that individuals cannot be left to go their own way, but need elite guidance and control over issues such as death, sex and violence in the mass media, gambling, drug use, prostitution, etc.
So religion plays a strong role in governance.
The classic instrument of governance is censorship, which is used to set politically legitimate boundaries or limits to individual rights and liberties, and to give Christian churches the prominent role in providing moral direction and regulation of desiring bodies.
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Gary,
who from the Australian religous right has been saying that the nation is premised on on Judeo-Christianity? To me this is the religous right importing the arguments direct from the US without considering that Australia is a far different country.
US style arguments won't work in Australia as we don't have the same entrenched religosity and puritain foundations. While it is worthwhile to be vigilant against fundamentalists of all creeds I just don't see it being of something for concern in Australia at this stage.