Tony the Abbott and 300 A.D. – The Glory Days of Christianity!

Rossleigh

9 years ago

Yep, well, most of you are probably aware Tony Abbott is staying in Parliament to help his electorate get better transport links to the rest of Sydney. This surely means he wants several freeways built, because I remember how as Prime Minister he told us that public transport wasn’t the domain of the Federal Government.

But several of the reports seem to take it as a given that he’s re-elected. While he holds the seat by a comfortable margin, the idea that the electorate is electing a Prime Minister usually gives the candidate a boost, while the idea of supporting a loser whose own party turned against him doesn’t give the candidate the same leg up. Yes, he should win, but stranger things have happened.

Anyway, he’s staying and, at great personal sacrifice. As Greg Sheridan wrote:

“It is extraordinarily difficult to be an attentive husband and father with weeks away in Canberra, and more weeks away interstate and overseas in the constant travel of political leadership.”

And yet, after all this sacrifice, we hear that he intends to travel overseas to address the ADF. No, not the Australian Defence Force. The Alliance Defending Freedom.

They launched in 1994 and they tell us:

“With that launch, the Christian community gained growing awareness that the threats to its freedom were multiplying. The legal system, which was built on a moral and Christian foundation, had been steadily moving against religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family. And very few Christians were showing up in court to put up a fight.”

Now by religious freedom, it’s very clear from their website that doesn’t include the freedom to practise religions apart from the one they’ve picked. So, for example, if your religious beliefs allow homosexuals to practise until they’re perfect, then that’s just a sign that yours is not a real religion and you might as well be one of those Islamic people who want to impose Sharia law. (Of course, it’s always intrigued me why the extreme religious right is so against Sharia law. From what they tell us about it, they agree with most of it!)

Anyway, their basic idea is to help the poor, oppressed American Christians people use the law to protect their religious freedoms. Of course, when I say “poor”, I don’t mean in the financial sense because, as we all know, the Lord helps those who help themselves…

And as an introduction to their reading guide for anyone undertaking their 9-week course they tell us that it’s not compulsory to agree with everything on the reading list, concluding with:

“Rather, Alliance Defending Freedom seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries.”

Well, during the third century, Christians were persecuted and executed by the Romans, so I can see why they saw the need to be pretty robust. However, during the fourth century it became the state sanctioned religion of the Romans, so these were better days when you could start to concentrate on what really mattered – building large, expensive churches and telling the poor that if they didn’t revolt against the Romans, then they’d be rewarded when they died.

But the ADF are best known for their fights against the way Obamacare was destroying their freedoms, trying to stop Planned Parenthood from eating children, ensuring that everyone has the religious freedom to stop anybody else doing anything else that doesn’t comply with what they say.

Anyway, Mr Abbott is off to address them and it seems the topic of his address is a secret, but I have it on good authority that our Tony is tossing up between the following:

“How sport enabled me to channel my energy and stop all those dark desires”
“How having a woman in charge wrecks a country.”
“How Satan uses a universal health scheme to spread evil.”
“Good marriages are made in heaven and good wives never speak to the media unless they’re told to say something nice about their husband.”

Of course, as Mr Abbott sets off, one of his cheer squad, Eric Abetz, tells us that he wasn’t going to be bound on the result of any plebiscite on same sex marriage. Of course, while Abetz’s only area of expertise for “Mastermind” may be “Opinions I have Held”, this does seem rather extraordinary if you trace the recent conservative stances on same sex marriage in Australia.

“We promised we wouldn’t do it, so how can we break an election promise that we actually meant?”
“We acknowledge there’s a push for same sex marriage, but we think that’s a noisy minority.”
“We acknowledge that the minority are causing divisions within our party, so we think that any decision should be delayed until after the next election.”
“We think that it’s an issue that’s too important to be decided by politicians, so we agree that a plebiscite is the only way to go because the people need to be part of the decision on this, so until then, forget it.”
And now, Abetz, “We think that we should have a plebiscite, but if the people get it wrong, then we, the politicians, know best and I think we can still vote against it.”

Ok, just because it seems appropriate, I’m going leave you with this – you’ll need to watch to the end to see why: