Pentecostal PM walks the talk on his Christian duty

I am not a fan of the Pentecostals, but there is a plausible reason for Scott Morrison’s ‘God’s work’ remark that has been widely misunderstood.

Scott Morrison with his wife Jenny worship on Easter Sunday at the Horizon Church in Sutherland. Picture: Gary Ramage

There was a joke in my family that I was more pre-Council of Trent than post-Vatican II. You don’t have to be a Catholic to get it but it helps. Hence, I am not a fan of the Pentecostals — unlike Scott Morrison. Their overly emotional style of worship whipped up by frantically fervent preaching just isn’t my style. I belong to an older tradition, shared by several former prime ministers and, we are told, the US President.

Lately Morrison has been criticised for remarks he has made about the relationship of his faith to his view of modern, impersonal culture and even his prime ministership. That he believes social media could be a tool of the devil is no surprise. Anyone looking at social media lately can see that.

Even Sacha Baron Cohen made the pertinent remark: “Imagine what Goebbels could have done with Facebook!”

What really seems to irk the inhabitants of left-wing echo chambers such as Crikey and Guardian Australia is that Morrison does not divorce his concept of the prime ministership from his faith in God. He speaks openly of doing “God’s work”. Now some people may regard this as an awful lot of presumption. Doing God’s work is a pretty big call, but on a more terrestrial level it is a worry to those who are not religious that the Prime Minister might base his political decisions solely on the teachings of his religion.

That is one interpretation of Morrison’s remarks. However, the other, more plausible interpretation is simply that Morrison sees the prime ministership as more than a job. It is his vocation.

All Christians, no matter what tradition they belong to, have one overwhelming duty: to know, love and serve God — and as Prime Minister Morrison has to do that as much as he would if he were still in marketing.

However, how far does this influence policy? Most Australians, judging by the comments and responses to his remarks, have no problem with someone who is a good person and a believing Christian as prime minister.

But being a secular country, Australians may be more sceptical of someone who tries to impose their views, even subtly, on the rest of society. Tony Abbott, as health minister and prime minister, constantly was accused of this in relation to abortion even though he didn’t, nor could he, do anything about it.

His opposition to abortion and gay marriage just gave the anti-Abbott brigade ammunition to attack him on everything from his attitude to women to being homophobic because he was against gay marriage, even though the postal vote was his idea.

However, as for imposing his Christian views, Morrison has done the opposite. He also was against gay marriage but, unlike Abbott, he would not campaign against it. He voted against it but he actually used his religion to find an excuse to withdraw publicly from opposing it. He claimed that it would be an imposition of his religious views to campaign against it.

For Morrison putting his lack of activism against the legalising gay marriage down to his religion was a clever move that kept him in with the libertarian wing of the party. Unlike others who could not support it because of their conscientious objection, he could say it was a private religious matter. Naturally, the left hasn’t criticised him for that manoeuvre.

As for Anthony Albanese’s criticism of Morrison’s statements as possibly breaching the church-state divide, that is hyperbolic nonsense. The division of church and state refers to the imposition of religion on the state.

By criticising Morrison in this way, Albanese has exposed the aridly secularist credo of the left which, rather than pluralism, wants to expunge religion from the public square, although it is the primary impetus for most people the world over.

What is more, Morrison’s Pentecostal brand is the fastest growing type of religion in Australia and in the world. To the dismay of conservatives, it even has crept into the Catholic liturgy.

The ploy of, on the one hand, publishing your religious affiliation and, on the other, withdrawing from publicly supporting something that is fundamentally anathema is a clever one, and almost all politicians have to do something like this to pursue and stay in office At least Morrison has not supported something his conscience will not allow him to support. Many politicians in the quest to get high office and stay there will sell out fundamental tenets of their religion.

One who has managed to “gain the world” but may find in the not-too-distant future that it wasn’t worth it is Joe Biden, who has been photographed going to mass and meeting the Pope.

Biden has managed to wriggle out of publicly supporting abortion and actually pledging to expand it by claiming that he cannot impose his religious views on the rest of society. He has been taken to task on this by the church in the US and once has been denied communion.

He cannot parade his religion on the one hand and ignore a fundamental tenet of church doctrine by actively promoting an immoral act on the other. It would be a different situation if he had not pledged to expand federal laws and funding for abortion. In that case the passive do-nothing approach of Morrison and Abbott would be understandable. But Biden threw in his lot with the increasingly green-left Democrats and is determined to pursue that agenda despite his rosary rattling.

In that light, Pentecostal Morrison doesn’t come off too badly.