On Aug 19, 8:39Â pm, "bigflet...@
gmail.com"
gmail.com>
wrote:> On Aug 20, 2:34Â am, turtoni
fastmail.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>> "Rudd and his family attend the Anglican church of St John the Baptist
>> in Bulimba in his electorate. Although raised a Roman Catholic, Rudd
>> began attending Anglican services in the 1980s with his wife. Like
>> John Howard, Rudd has addressed congregations of the Hillsong Church.
>
>> Rudd is the mainstay of the parliamentary prayer group in Parliament
>> House, Canberra. He is vocal about his Christianity and has given a
>> number of prominent interviews to the Australian religious press on
>> the topic. Rudd has defended church representatives engaging with
>> policy debates, particularly with respect to WorkChoices legislation,
>> climate change, global poverty, therapeutic cloning and asylum
>> seekers. In an essay in The Monthly, Rudd writes:
>
>> A Christian perspective on contemporary policy debates may not
>> prevail. It must nonetheless be argued. And once heard, it must be
>> weighed, together with other arguments from different philosophical
>> traditions, in a fully contestable secular polity. A Christian
>> perspective, informed by a social gospel or Christian socialist
>> tradition, should not be rejected contemptuously by secular
>> politicians as if these views are an unwelcome intrusion into the
>> political sphere. If the churches are barred from participating in the
>> great debates about the values that ultimately underpin our society,
>> our economy and our polity, then we have reached a very strange place
>> indeed.
>
>> He cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a personal inspiration in this regard.
>
>> In late January 2007, Tony Abbott - a former seminarian and federal
>> minister for health under the coalition government - criticised Rudd's
>> use of Christianity in Australian politics,[ contrasting Rudd's public
>> appeal to Christian values with his voting record on issues such as
>> the introduction of the abortion-inducing drug RU486.
>
>> Rudd is opposed to same-sex marriage:
>
>> I have a pretty basic view on this, as reflected in the position
>> adopted by our party, and that is, that marriage is between a man and
>> a woman"
>
>
> And Bob Hawke, the most popular PM? (same party as Rudd to our US
> readers). He was a professed atheist and had a known history of
> alchohol abuse.
> His father was a clergyman, which is one of the reasons he took the
> atheistic perspective no doubt.
>
> It couldnt happen in the US (although he was very popular in the US,
> particularly with Reagan).
>
> BOfL
