As I’ve explored in a series of Insight posts, an increasing number of thoughtful atheists are concluding that, in abandoning Christianity, the West has lost something vital. Unfortunately, a great many atheists are not so thoughtful. Instead, they’re parroting the adolescent bile of New Atheism and attacking Christianity wherever they find it in public life.
Nowhere more so than in Australia’s home of bourgeois, bien pensant leftism, Victoria.
The Lord’s Prayer has been a regular fixture in the Victorian Parliament since the early part of last century[…]
This week, changes to the 103-year-old tradition in Victoria are being put forward. Reason Party upper house MP Fiona Patten will push for a debate and a vote on a motion to scrap the prayer and instead have the President of the Legislative Council open the day by instructing MPs “to stand in silence and pray or reflect on their responsibilities to the people of Victoria”
So, instead of the beautiful words of the Lord’s Prayer, we end up with empty, modernist fluff. Two thousand years of practical wisdom enjoining us to reflect on what C S Lewis called one of the most difficult challenges egocentric humans can face – to beg forgiveness for our sins “as we forgive those who sin against us” – is cast aside in favour of metaphysical fairy-floss.
I could think of few better proofs that the soul, for want of a better word, of the West has shrivelled. The metaphysical hole left by the expunging of Christianity has been filled with a toxic stew of mushy ethical relativism and divisive identity politics.
Ms Patten, an atheist, has argued since 2019 that reciting the prayer makes Parliament seem like a “Christian’s club”, which she says is inappropriate for a secular institution. She says there are more than 100 religious affiliations in Australia and a parliament designed to represent a multicultural, multi-faith society should not be so closely tied to one religious viewpoint.
Her proposed moment of silence could be used in prayer, meditation, mindfulness or even a simple reflection on what the MP hopes to achieve in Parliament that day.
As has too-steadily been allowed to happen, the foundations of Australia’s cultural identity are being white-anted by what Camille Paglia calls “shockingly narrow views of human existence” and “Inflammatory and divisive identity politics”.
Unsurprisingly, there is firm opposition from religious groups. The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli and Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier told the Herald Sun that the prayer was a longstanding tradition that reminds politicians they are accountable to the people and a higher authority.
Other conservative commentators point to Australia’s “Judaeo-Christian tradition” and the continuing primacy of the Christian faith in society. Kevin Donnelly, a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, argues Christianity is the dominant religion in Australia, with 12 million people and “86 per cent of religious Australians identifying a Christians”. He further argues that since 2016 Victoria’s Parliament has had a weekly Welcome to Country ceremony, and that it would be unfair to keep this tradition while removing the Lord’s Prayer.
Like it or not, Australia is a nation founded on the Judaeo-Christian tradition – no “quote marks” necessary. Despite the rapid erosion of explicit Christian identity, under resolute attack by the left, a majority of Australians still openly identify as Christian. Of those Australians who profess a religious faith, nearly all are Christian.
Even what are now ostensibly secular norms are founded in Christianity: from the sanctity of life and the sovereignty of the individual, to the untouchable public holidays: Christmas, Easter, even Anzac Day.
This is why our parliament recites the Lord’s Prayer.
It has been recited at the start of each sitting day since 1918. The prayer, which begins with the line, “Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name,” is considered central to the Christian faith and is said across most Christian denominations with some small variations in wording.
The prayer opens the sitting day in Federal Parliament, and most of the state and territory parliaments across Australia have a requirement to read a prayer at the start of proceedings, the majority of them reading the Lord’s Prayer.
The Age
This attention-seeking fluff also begs the question: just who is driving this?
Naturally, it’s all cloaked in self-righteous blither about multiculturalism and “inclusiveness”, but have any other mainstream religious groups actually expressed dissatisfaction with this Australian tradition? Or are porch atheists merely presuming, as usual, to speak for them?
After all, it is they who have chosen to join Australia and its Judaeo-Christian culture.
The only culture, it seems, which has no place in a “multicultural” utopia.
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