Official prayer in parliaments and other places of government – a sleeper issue that divides Christians -has caused a minor ruckus in the sedate city of Adelaide. The ornate Adelaide Town Hall had been the unlikely setting for a defeat in a culture war over public prayers for conservative Christians – which raises the question of whether it was a stoush they expected to win. Or was rallying the troops the point?
Christians are split between those who really like official prayers like the Lord’s Prayer in the federal parliament and those who think that having unbelievers say Christian prayers devalues them. In the first group is Adelaide’s South Ward councillor Henry Davis, who protested the decision to stop having the CEO of Adelaide Council read their prayer at the start of the council meeting. Instead, the prayer would be printed in the agenda. Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith invited councillors to “read the prayer as printed or reflect in a manner appropriate to their beliefs on these issues”. We draw in the Indaily website’s accounts of what happened next.
Davis disagreed with the change, so read the prayer aloud at the June meeting.
“Almighty God, we ask your blessing upon the works of the City of Adelaide; direct and prosper its deliberations to the advancement of your glory and the true welfare of the people of this City. Amen”.
He received a rebuke from Lord Mayor Lomax-Smith, who craftily changed tactics, next time combining the silent prayer with the council’s moment of reflections for veterans, which kept Davis quiet.
Continuing the cat and mouse game, Davis chose to reread the prayer at the following meeting, backed by a full public gallery that echoed his “amen,” possibly drawn by the Australian Christian Lobby supporting the protest. When Davis was punished by being asked to leave for five minutes. The gallery noisily left, too.
The gallery came back to the next meeting. Still, instead of praying out loud, they got Councillor Davis engaged in a legal argument with the Lord Mayor Lomax, who had adopted yet another tactic – she had changed the prayer to a pledge: “May we in this meeting speak honestly, listen attentively, think clearly and decide wisely for the good governance of the City of Adelaide and the wellbeing of those we serve.”
The new pledge squeaked through with a six to five vote, with Davis silent during prayer so that he could speak in any debate and not be tossed out.
What was the meaning of the stoush? Perhaps Councillor Davis thought he could get a majority. It attracted support from Christians who believe a culture war should be fought. But the result is the community finding out that they are in a minority.
Symbols like official prayers look back to when Christianity was this country’s de facto official religion. Should Christians should campaign to retain them? Will forcing a Christian veneer on social institutions persuade people to take Jesus seriously? Does campaigning for public prayer help?
Zooming out of Adelaide’s to focus on events on the other side of the globe, there was one moment of clarity in last week’s debate between Republican presidential candidates. A lone voice on the stage gave an unexpected answer to whether there should be a Federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks.
South Carolina Senator Nikki Haley scored a point on abortion, cutting through the anodyne pro-life statements made by the others who want/need to win the evangelical vote in Iowa – a rural state that goes first in the primary races that choose the party candidates.
“‘When you’re talking about a federal ban, be honest with the American people,’ she said, arguing that the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate meant that no Democratic or Republican president could set abortion policy,” The New York Times reports.
Haley is right. To win, you need to be able to count.
Moving back to Adelaide, it is hard to imagine that the general public sees official prayers as a critical issue, one that would shift their votes on who to vote for.
A simple protest would have been seen as a win for Councillor Davis. He certainly speaks for a minority in the community, and people will respect that. Instead, escalating a spoken protest into a rowdy demo in the public gallery, with the implied threat of continuing protest, led to the prayer being lost.
Not every Christian supports public prayer by a council or parliament, seeing a coerced unbeliever’s perfunctory prayer (because the Parliamentary Clerk of council CEO is probably not a believer as “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1) or “vain repetitions” (Matt 6:7). But for those who do support official prayers, what happened in Adelaide was a well-meaning defeat.
If you want Christians to be seen as a group that wants to dominate or influence society in more significant measure than their numbers merit, one can see why the prayer demo seemed like a good idea. But the aftermath of the overreach is that Christians are regarded as just another group to ignore. OR in the nuisance category.
The Supreme Court’s Dodds decision overturning Roe v. Wade could turn out to be a pyrric victory. Every time abortion has gone to a state referendum, even in a bunch of conservative-leaning states, the pro-life side has lost.
So, in many US states, there will be much looser abortion laws, with the right to abortion now written into state constitutions. Having strived to overturn Row v. Wade for five decades, conservatives were unprepared for the progressive counter-attack.
It shows that even the most “successful protest” that gets your supporter base outraged turns into a loss if you are not careful.
So why push something you will lose? For the ACL, a protest builds support. And there are campaigns that Christians should be involved in, such as pro-life, not for political advantage, which is what it was used for in the States, but out of principle. But continually taking politically partisan stands in the name of Christ will bring problems.
Picking a culture war may not be the best for evangelism, and that’s the campaign all Christians are engaged in.
In the United States, evangelicalism, and maybe Christianity, has been subsumed into one particular political force. To call yourself “evangelical” does not mean you believe Jesus is divine in that country, with polls showing a third of “evangelicals” do not believe in a Biblical Christ.
It also means that people who don’t vote that way may not see Jesus as worth considering.
Let’s hope those Christians who identify enthusiastically with a political ideology do not keep people out of the kingdom of God in Australia. To become a Christian does not mean you have to sign up to vote right or left.
Image Credit: Ardash Muradian / Wikimedia, Creative Commons License