Religion and elections. Why is it that politicians want to be photographed leaving a church holding a Bible before an election?

By Craig Manners
17th June 2016

"Religion does inform the values of the current leaders" (ABC). Both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are publically professing to be "Christians." Why, and why now?

The ABC are delving into the religious beliefs of the two men vying for voter trust on July 2nd 2016 to be elected Australia's Prime Minister. It is interesting that those who seek high office often try to convince voters they have a religious, mostly Christian, faith. Why? In our increasingly secular, even anti-God and especially anti-Christian society, where rainbow coloured "secular humanism" has become the new mainstream religion (and one, which like Islam takes no prisoners and allows no opposition), why is it that politicians clamber over each other to claim they are Christians? Why not Humanists or Atheists?

I think the answer is, in part, that voters understand that if someone knows God is watching them, that they submit to a higher, truly virtuous authority, they tend to have more integrity, behave better, are more trustworthy, more likely to tell the truth, to be honest, protect children, build a better society etc. At least that is the hope. This is part of what is commonly known as having the "fear of God."

Politicians themselves know that they will be more trusted by voters if they can convince the voters they have this "fear of God." But if they are not genuine in this, if they are just hoodwinking those they seek to "serve", does that not reveal something to voters which should also inform their voting on July 2nd? So a politician's religious profession of faith prior to an election should be something open to scrutiny, because it reveals what voters need to know about their integrity and character.

From the ABC: "Now, neither Malcolm Turnbull nor Bill Shorten speak much about their religion – in contrast to Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, who led their parties to the 2013 election. But religion does inform the values of the current leaders. Over the next two weeks, we’ll look at the faith lives of the men vying to be prime minister after July 2nd. Our guide is writer Roy Williams. His most recent book is Post God Nation and he’s also the author of In God They Trust: The Religious Beliefs of Australia’s Prime Ministers."

​It is a fascinating fact that in most Western nations during elections, many candidates will inevitably manipulate the media to have a photograph taken of them leaving a Christian church holding a Bible. Then there will be the quick interview where the candidate publicly professes faith in something which sounds religious, like "I have always been a man of faith." But faith in what? Some even go as far as to say "I am a Christian," like Obama did, but whose eight years of action brought that profession of faith into question.

​Bill Shorten would have the voters believe he is from a devout Jesuit Christian background and is now an Anglican Christian. It took Malcolm Turnbull just a few days after the coup last year to visit a Catholic church and publicly declare he is a Catholic Christian.

​Christian's are followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has made it clear (1) to His followers that marriage is between a man and a woman, has always been so and will always be so. He teaches that human sexuality is between a man and a woman and that any other form of sexual activity is not in the best interests of individuals nor society, especially not its young.

Yet like Obama, both Shorten and Turnbull are quite happy to pretend they know better than Christ and go against Christian teachings, which effectively says "man+man=sin not marriage," and pro-actively assist in the undermining of marriage, something which has the potential to force the State into an antagonistic confrontation with the millions of followers of Jesus, the Church.

If marriage is changed, the law will suddenly teach, promote and protect a human behavior which the Church says is unnatural and shameful and which should be restrained. Bill or Malcolm would then be PM of a nation which, in unleashing such a cultural time-bomb, would likely soon be re-directing its resources toward outlawing the Church as a "hate group" and it's Bible as "hate literature" and labelling the founder of Christianity to be a "hater," a "bigot" and a "dinosaur" with "no place in modern Australia."

​Australian Christians could suddenly find themselves unable to freely carry out Jesus' Great Commission, in our once young and free nation, without being threatened with fines and/or imprisonment for "hate speech."

​Will Bill maintain his affiliation to the Anglican Church, or will Malcolm maintain his membership of the Catholic Church if the mainstream media and the machinery of the rainbow movement declare their church to be a "hate group" because it and/or their Founder is against same-sex marriage and behavior?

​That is certainly a legitimate question for two men who would profess faith so as to win the trust of voters, but who both support something which has the potential to unleash a tsunami of cultural destruction and persecution against Christians and push the Church underground. Both Shorten and Turnbull are actively undermining traditional marriage and lifestyle, in the process discouraging it to Australia's youth. They are promoting something which their professed religious leader, Jesus Christ, lovingly says will bring harm to people, something which is detrimental to human flourishing and wellbeing.

Mr. Turnbull, the Pope is the head of the Catholic church, to which you now publicly professes membership. Here are a few quotes from a Pope regarding this cultural time-bomb:

Same-sex "marriages" are nothing like marriage, they are really just "expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man...from here it becomes all the more clear how contrary it is to human love."

There is "no basis for any comparison, however remote, between homosexual unions and God's design for marriage and the family." Pope Benedict XVI

Even leaving Jesus out of the picture, will you side with your Pope or the radical left if you are elected? It would seem you cannot have it both ways.

(1) ​Jesus made it clear what marriage is: “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6).