Author Description

There is an idea abroad that European Australia, being founded in 1788, is a post-Enlightenment society, and therefore thoroughly secular. Of course the state, being a democracy, is necessarily secular, but the society, from its beginnings, is not. A further extension of this attitude is the commonly-repeated assertion of journalists that some cleric's or other's public pronouncement is an assault on the separation of church and state. It is true that we have no established church or religion, and a no-establishment clause in our constitution. Strong judicial opinion, however, affirms that Australasians do not have a legal doctrine of 'the separation of church and state' and each assertion of this alleged principle is a reflex borrowing from a much trumpeted American doctrine. What is rarely explained nowadays is that the American doctrine was in fact devised by Christians (initially Baptists) in defence of religion. The separation was not to keep religion out of politics, but to safeguard religious worship from both the state and any established church. It is not too surprising, under the barrage of assertion from newly-proselytising fundamentalist atheists, that this doctrine should be stood on its head. In any case, the claim that Australia was settled as a secular society is evidently false. There was strong missionary input into its settlement, the opening of the continent (for whites) took place through explorers who acknowledged being under biblical instruction to seek 'promised lands' (albeit mistakenly groping under false ideas of a terra nullius), the Commonwealth was established under the blessing of 'Almighty God' (an acknowledgement in the Preamble of the Constitution required by many religious people before ratification) and much of the legislation tending towards equality and social welfare was inspired by religious teaching. Many of our institutions are inherited from religious instruction. The tendency to secularise the commemoration of the war dead