ABSTRACT
Australia, with the ascent of Scott Morrison to the highest office after a Liberal Party spill in 2018, has its first ever Pentecostal prime minister, and he was duly returned in the election in 2019. In conjunction with this, parliament has also remained relatively religious, with significant Christian minorities found in both major parties. These developments cut against the fact that Australia is becoming increasingly non-religious with a rise in the number of “religious nones.” To understand how we arrived at this disjuncture, we chart this development. We begin with the Howard era and how he instrumentalised religion across a range of key issues like euthanasia and LGBTQI rights, and how Labor, in seeking to counteract the perceived advantage, normalised the outward religiosity of politicians like Tony Abbott and Morrison, and the place of religion in political discourse. Alongside this, we will also unpack the rise in rhetoric around Australia’s Judeo-Christian heritage and how this, since the advent of 9/11 in 2001, has seen the Muslim diaspora community ensnared in an imagined “clash of civilisations” and sacrificed for political point scoring in the name of national security.
I have always believed in miracles. I’m standing with the three biggest miracles in my life here tonight – and tonight we’ve been delivered another one…God bless Australia!
Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia, 2019