With presidential and congressional elections completed in the United States in early November, and an Australian federal election just one month earlier, it is timely to reflect on the participation of a Christian voice in the political processes.

A striking feature of both elections is the conservative voting pattern of the majority of Christians in general and of Seventh-day Adventists in particular.

The Australian election featured a relatively new political force, the Family First Party, which secured one seat in the Federal Senate. Founded by a former Assemblies of God pastor, it has drawn considerable support from the charismatic churches even as it protests that it is not a church-based political party, but one rather concerned with promoting family-friendly policies.

Religion in Australian politics is not new, although it has never had the popular profile and power of religion in the United States. The Roman Catholic Church has had a long association with the center-left Australian Labor Party, but during the Cold War it fell out with the socialist wing of the party, helping to form the break-away Democratic Labor Party, which kept the center-right Liberals in power for another seventeen years.

As an Adventist growing up in Australia, I repeatedly heard political commentary from church figures. The Labor Party, with its socialist, trade union, and Catholic connections, was clearly of the devil, and the election victories of Gough Whitlam in 1972 and of former trade union boss Bob Hawke in 1983 were greeted with alarm by many Adventists around me. Indeed, like the election of the Roman Catholic President John Kennedy in 1960, some hailed these electoral outcomes as signs of the end of the world.

However, I would like to challenge the automatic association of Christianity with the Right of politics. Is not Christianity a revolutionary force? Aren’t revolutions traditionally associated with the Left? Perhaps our conservative voting patterns are indicators that Christianity has moved from a force for change into a force for the status quo. Change has become the badge of secular forces such as green groups and social liberals, which are often portrayed as pursuing policies antithetical to Christian values.

In contrast, Christian political groups and individuals seem to me often to pursue a fairly narrow agenda, usually associated with preserving some form of outward sexual morality. The typical Christian political platform is more noted for policies banning abortion, and fighting legal and social equality for gays than for any thing else.

I am not interested in debating the worthiness of such issues from a Christian perspective. Rather I wish to compare their weightiness with other matters that I feel also ought to occupy our attention and passion. The Old Testament prophets were insistent on a recurrent theme: that of justice for the poor, the widow and orphan and the alien. Where does that appear on our Christian political manifestoes? Or is it quietly overlooked because it would disrupt our complacent middle-class prosperity? In that case, we have an urgent need to reread the prophets.

Take for example Isaiah 58. Many of us are familiar with the last two verses, which were much quoted in our childhood, whenever we threatened to actually have fun on the Sabbath. However, the chapter as a whole is a condemnation of religious worship that ignores the physical and material wellbeing of those around us. True Sabbath keeping, according to this chapter, involves practical Godliness, of the kind that could find partial fulfilment in compassionate political policies.

Instead, many of us have voted for parties that promise economic prosperity at the expense of conscience. The recent Australian election was marred by both major political parties attempting to buy our votes with bigger tax cuts, especially for middle Australia, those who by definition are already fairly well off. Granted, I can always find a use for more money. But should my vote be directed to the party that offers the most financial reward? Or are there larger principles at stake?

Sure, from a purely pragmatic point of view, these kinds of economic policies lead to stability and prosperity, ideally allowing us to give more of our greater wealth to the needy. Still, I hear the voice of Jesus in the Gospels insisting on a different focus, one that pays attention to the poor here and now.

The trouble is, we often have no one we can actually vote for: the center-left and the center-right have startlingly similar economic policies, designed to please the voter with personal prosperity. There is little political mileage in philanthropy. It sounds nice if I am to receive it, but if the politician is asking for me to give it, well…!

So to be Christian in our politics, we may end up not supporting either side of the major political parties. Rather, we may have to create a powerful public voice demanding that we address the needs of the poor, the underprivileged, and the (often locked up) alien in our land. We should ask not so much where our politicians stand on the issues of abortion and gay rights, but what their policies are on the weightier matters of the law. It is time to abandon the politics of personal prosperity and resume Christianity’s radical stand against materialism, complacency, oppression, and greed.

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