The Lobbyists View: Combatting Aggressive Secularism and Rights-Driven Culture

by Glynis Quinlan
Australian Christian Lobby

“The electorate has had enough of self-opinionated bishops and crazy imams, and many citizens are fed up with the way the main parties bow and scrape to religious groups.”

So writes Ross Fitzgerald recently in The Australian in yet another attack on the rights of Christians to have an influence in the public square. Reading between the lines of the article, it's apparently better for the sex party and secularists to influence the way we are governed!

It's easy to dismiss these articles as simply reflecting the writer's own anti-religious bias, but the concern is that they are part of wider endeavours to sideline Christianity which in recent times have reached alarming levels in Britain.

Over there, several recent cases have given public sector employees good reason to fear for their jobs if they are open about being a Christian.

Last December a British nurse was suspended without pay after asking a patient if she would like prayer - even though the patient did not object. The nurse, Caroline Petrie, was eventually reinstated after receiving support from the Christian Legal Centre and has vowed to continue to provide spiritual support to her patients.

This case is all the more disturbing given the Christian foundations of nursing. As Anglican Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali (now retired) wrote in the UK's Telegraph on 7th February this year: “Of all professions, nursing is one that is firmly rooted in the Christian tradition...Indeed, in the NHS itself spiritual care is widely recognised as part of caring for the whole person.”

In another example, a British woman who has fostered more than 80 children over 10 years has been banned from being a foster carer because a 16-year-old Muslim girl in her charge converted to Christianity and chose to be baptised.

And in yet another recent case, British school receptionist Jennie Cain is being investigated for professional misconduct after simply sending a private email from her personal computer to ten friends asking them to pray for the school. The request followed on from an incident when her five-year-old daughter was scolded by a teacher for talking to a friend about God.

In a recent article in The Australian, author Hal G. P. Colbatch says that in the past 10 years he has collected reports from Britain of “many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.”

Among these he details the situation of a bishop who was warned by the police for not having done enough to "celebrate diversity"; a Christian home for retired clergy and religious workers which lost a grant because it would not reveal how many of the residents were homosexual (somehow it was meant to be wrong that they had never asked this question), and Muslim and Christian parents at a particular school being threatened with prosecution because they objected to their children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has associated some of the concerning British cases with the problems of living in an age of “aggressive secularism” - a point recently reinforced by Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell in a recent speech given at Oxford University in England.

“Some secularists seem to like one way streets. Their intolerance of Christianity seeks to drive it not only from the public square but even from the provision of education, health care, and welfare services to the wider community. Tolerance has come to mean different things for different groups,” he said.

Cardinal Pell said that discrimination laws are being used to redefine marriage and the family. Opposition to same-sex marriage is being seen as a form of homophobia, but 'Christianophobic' blacklisting and intimidation is being passed over in silence.

“How should Christians respond to this growing secular intolerance? Clearly, there is an urgent need to deepen public understanding of the importance and nature of religious freedom,” he said.

Cardinal Pell's advice to Christians is particularly pertinent right now in Australia given the current consultation underway on a charter of rights - which is likely to restrict Christian freedoms - and the current freedom of religion review.

There can be no doubt that the 'aggressive secularism' so evident in Britain has been aided and abetted by their 'human rights' laws.

Writing in The Spectator on 5th March, author and commentator Melanie Phillips makes the situation clear. “One of the things which has hammered Christianity in Britain in recent years is 'human rights' law, which has effectively handed every minority a judicial weapon to upend majority or Christian values,” she states.

“It (human rights doctrine) explicitly detaches itself from specifically Judeo-Christian values by claiming to promote 'universal' values which trump the particular; and by promoting rights in the absence of duties, establishes 'human rights' as a mechanism for delivering the demands of claimant groups, thus promoting the extreme individualism of the 'me society' and the religion of the self.”

It is critical that Australian Christians don't allow our country to go down the same path as Britain but there is every likelihood of this happening unless we resist the current charter of rights push here and ensure we have a voice in the consultation process.

We don't want to see our Christian freedoms undermined by a 'rights driven' culture which stridently upholds particular 'rights' to the detriment of the wider society.

Overseas experience - including that of Britain - shows us that a charter of rights would fail to protect the vulnerable in society but would deliver increased power to minority interest groups to succeed through the courts when they have failed to persuade elected representatives of their case.

A significant concern that has already come to the fore in Australia is whether a charter of rights would rob Christian schools and non-government organisations of the freedom to employ people who support their ethos if judges declare this is incompatible with human rights.

This is not an issue Christians can afford to let slide if we want to combat 'aggressive secularism'. To make a difference please get involved in the charter of rights consultation by writing submissions and taking part in the community roundtables being held throughout Australia in the first half of this year.

For more details about the consultation process, the roundtable meetings, and how to put in a submission please go to the consultation's website at www.humanrightsconsultation.gov.au. Please go to the ACL website at www.acl.org.au for more information about our concerns over the mooted charter of rights.

Glynis Quinlan is the public relations manager for the Australian Christian Lobby and a journalist with Debate magazine.