Religion & Society

While hung parliaments are a relatively common occurrence in some countries, there have only been two in Britain since World War Two: those that followed the elections of February 1974 and May 2010. It is curious that Australia should also produce a hung parliament within 4 months of Britain, the first at the national level since the elections of 1940. Australia’s August election campaign has been described as “boring” by many commentators, but in terms of faith matters it produced some colourful and controversial statements. Until June 2010 everybody expected the governing Australian Labor Party to be led into these elections by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a practicing Anglican. He was expected to do battle with the Liberal-National coalition parties led by Tony Abbott, a practicing Catholic. The discourse surrounding their rivalry only rarely had sectarian overtones; it was more commonly pointed out in media comment that both leaders were Christians, rather than being cast in terms of...

A leading UK evangelical, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, considered challenges facing the church from radical Islam and militant secularism during his recent visit to Melbourne. The visit, sponsored by Family Voice Australia, included three public lectures attended by hundreds of Christians from various denominations. “My father left Islam to become a Christian in our native Pakistan,” he explained. “As I grew up, I had very good relations with Muslim children at school. But over the last 30 years the harmony between Muslims and non-Muslims in Pakistan has been poisoned by the resurgence of radical Islam.” He was appointed Bishop of Raiwind in West Punjab in 1984. “Especially noteworthy for me was that Raiwind was the headquarters of Tablighi Jama’at. At that time they drew 800,000 Muslim missionaries to their annual gathering there. Today it is even more.” With death threats in an increasingly Islamized Pakistan under President Zia ul-Haq, Bishop Nazir-Ali moved to Britain in 1986 on the ...