Flicking through the daily papers over a bowl of cereal is my usual morning routine. One recent morning I nearly choked on the cereal as I read in the Daily Telegraph of the Prime Minister’s morning routine, which apparently involves starting each day by reading from a prayer book.
Now, just as I wouldn’t like someone telling me which cereal I should eat in the morning, I am not about to dictate to the Prime Minister how he should start the day. However, I do question why these details end up in the newspaper on my kitchen table.
Don’t get me wrong, religion and faith are important. Members of Parliament, like all Australians, are influenced by a wide variety of personal principles and beliefs. Australians, mostly, cast their vote for a particular person or party based on policies or ideologies that are informed by the values or beliefs of those people or parties.
But a fine line exists between one’s beliefs or values and one’s religious faith. For politicians in the US it is a line frequently crossed, with public utterings of faith a regular part of political life. By contrast Australia has, largely, avoided such a public blurring of religion and politics.
There are rare occasions where it comes to the fore. Some of the most passionate speeches delivered in Parliament are those on conscience debates, like euthanasia or RU486, as politicians unconstrained by party discipline reveal their private faith or morally based reasons for arriving at a certain position.
A declaration of faith in a conscience debate is quite reasonable, but my suspicion is aroused when a politician appears to talk about their faith for largely promotional reasons, totally unrelated to the issues of the day. What is their motive? What do they hope to achieve? Is this some act of image control?
I was initially willing to give Mr Rudd the benefit of the doubt when images of his Sunday morning visit to church regularly appeared on that night’s news services. I even shrugged off those occasions where the visit morphed into a doorstop, complete with crucifix or steeple in the background. Perhaps this was akin to the regular filming of John Howard’s morning walks by the members of the fourth estate.
But a pattern now seems to have emerged for our Prime Minister who, before his all-too-brief stint as an “economic conservative”, was so fond of proclaiming himself an “old fashioned Christian socialist”.
Mr Rudd’s latest public confessional about his preferred prayer book leads me to fear his media minders are pushing his faith to influence his public image.
Do they think the public will ignore the mounting reports of his inappropriate outbursts at waitresses or staff simply because he reads a prayer each morning? Or that his open faith will somehow put his honesty beyond question? Or simply that the images will help Labor appeal to a different voting bloc?
Maybe those clever media spinners who now run our federal government see the religious aspect of the Rudd persona to be just as important as the ocker speaking cobber they constructed to invade our television sets recently. Could they really be striving for a biblical quote for one focus group, but a fair shake of the sauce bottle for another?
Religion, of many different types, plays an important part in the lives of many Australians. Just like everyone else Mr Rudd is entitled to practice his faith as devoutly as he wishes. And he has my utmost respect for doing so. But, whether by his own volition or that of his minders, overtly using faith to soften or influence his image degrades the very faith he seeks to highlight.
The next time I sit down to my cereal and Mr Rudd opens up his prayer book he would be well advised to recall the warning from Matthew 6:1 to “beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them”. Amen to that.
Simon Birmingham is a Liberal Senator for South Australia.
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