The christian right in the United States has created the appearance of a "values" vacuum in democracy and consequently, claim the a need to fill this void with a President that represents values. This viewpoint was seen as important by 22% of Americans questioned in exit polls. Politics as played in the Australian popular media rarely deviates from the American experience, and the Australia conservative commentators have made similar claims for the Australian electorate.

The most extreme of this has been Cardinal George Pell, who attempted to claim for the church, a monopoly on values and morals in a liberal democracy. His warped view of democracy, and the church's paternal authoritarian role in it, is in contradiction to John Dunmore Lang's view of a democratic republic.

Cardinal George Pell

The main thrust of Pell's argument was that liberal democracy and secular democracy are essentially inseparable, and as a consequence - an outside party is necessary to ensure that this vacuum of values, innate to a liberal democracy, had a moral rudder. Pell writes;

This is especially true in the case of secular democracy, which some insist is intended to serve no moral vision at all. But as Pope John Paul argues: "The value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes." Democracy is not a good in itself. Its value is instrumental and depends on the vision it serves.

Pell shows how quickly he swallowed the rhetoric of American politics. Pell assumes that there does exist a moral "vacuum" in liberal democracy, and then by attempting to claim that the church has a monopoly on this internal reflection. That the evaluation of the wider community's values and morals in a democracy would fall to a small group of appointed discriminative males who receive their marching orders from another group of appointees in Rome would be entirely lost on Pell. How illiberal can you get?

Pell further devalues his arguments by focusing on the Christian right's current bogeymen of liberal society;

Does democracy need a burgeoning billion-dollar pornography industry to be truly democratic? Does it need an abortion rate in the tens of millions? Does it need high levels of marriage breakdown, with the growing rates of family dysfunction that come with them? Does democracy need legalised euthanasia, extending to children under the age of 12? Does democracy need assisted reproductive technology (such as IVF) and embryonic stem cell research? Does democracy really need these things?

Rather than focus on wider social values such as equity; Pell focuses instead on pornography, euthanasia and stem cells. Pell's vision of values and morals is far too myopic for an enlightened and progressive society such as Australia. Like many of those in Australia that proclaim themselves as leaders and the voice of the community, their narrative of Australia is far too small for their message to ever be accepted.

Pell also see's Christianity and liberal democracy as oil and water, where never the twain shall meet. To Pell, liberal democracy is unable to intrinsically represent or propagate Christian values. Consequently he, like many others that are unable to come to terms with the reality that their natural law is impotent without human law, instead turn to paternal authoritarianism. Dominated by the rule of the wise. In other words, a ruling elite.

Fortunately the "small Australia" that Pell wants is dwarfed by the "big Australia" that John Dunmore Lang saw over one hundred and fifty years ago, while sailing on the South Pacific seas.

John Dunmore Lang

Lang was a Scottish Presbyterian Minister who grew up in the post-enlightenment world which found its origins in Scotland, before spreading to the world. Lang travelled to Australia in 1823 and became well known for being an outspoken advocate of liberal philosophy, fighting impositions from government on the people. As a minister, newspaper founder and later member of parliament, he constantly fought for the common good against the entrenched interests of the ruling elite and "squatocracy".

His personal philosophy was firmly founded in republicanism. In 1852 he published "Freedom and Independence" while on a sea voyage from New South Wales to England. In the publication he aligned the values and principles of republicanism with the divine will of God;

No wonder that there should be a wide-spread and deep-rooted, although in many instances, I believe, an affected prejudice against republic institutions, among the hangers-on for office both at home and abroad [in the English Westminster system] = among the numerous horde of helpless and hungry expectants of a share in the spoils of the people. But that such a prejudice, whether real or affected, should extend to men professing the Christian religion, and receiving the holy scriptures of both testaments as the word of God, I confess, surpasses my comprehension.

'The Christian religion," says Novalis, an able German writer of the present century [19th], "is at the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of man."

Besides, it is a matter of sacred history that the only form of human government that was ever divinely established upon earth, was the republican - in the wilderness of Sinai - and that God himself interposed, in the person of his own accredited minister, to protest against the commonwealth of Israel, and monarchy established in its stead.

Monarchy doubtless prevailed for a long period in that country, by Divine permission, as many things else do in this lower world, that are certainly not of divine appointment; but republicanism existed from the first by Divine appointment; and it cannot, I submit, be a very bad form of government, which can plead such an authority in its favour ....

Here than are the three grand principles of republican government - universal suffrage, prefect political equity, and popular election - in full operation, under the divine sanction and appointment, in the commonwealth of ancient Israel.

And surely, if the God of heaven deemed it just and necessary to establish such principles of national government for the welfare and advancement of his own chosen people, I appeal, with perfect confidence, to professed Christians of all denominations throughout the United Kingdom, as to whether it can be either wrong or unwarrantable to advocate the establishment of such principles for the government of a community of British origin at the ends of the earth [Australia].

To Lang, the historical record of the Bible shows that the Christian values of equity and the will of the people, were compatible with the divine will. Lang's argument, that there is no divide between liberal democracy and Christianity, is in direct opposition to Pell. To Lang, values and morals through the will of God, are an intrinsic property of the principles and reality of a Republic.

Despite the best efforts of people like Lang, Australia did not incorporate the political innovations of the enlightenment into the state or federal governments. Australia remains a constitutional monarchy without a Bill of Rights. That Pell got published in a major newspaper, shows how far the anti-enlightenment has managed to further its hidden agenda, of paternal authoritarianism.

cam

More Reading on George pell

• George Pell
• John Dunmore Lang
• Christianity and Republicanism
• Contempt of Parliament and George Pell