Tapu Misa: Economic hardship society's true evil

I had occasion recently to dine with a group of what we have come to know these days as fundamentalist Christians. And very nice people they were, too. They were earnest and sincere, their eyes shining with the kind of light that comes from doing good deeds for one's neighbours.

I was having a nice time until one of them spoke about her determination to rid the nation of the dark and evil shadow that threatened our children and the fabric of our society.

No, it wasn't poverty or child abuse or pokie-machines. It was the Civil Union Act, introduced by this anti-family Government of childless feminists and gay activists who have been plotting the demise of the family as we know it. This proved to be something of a conversation killer.

I have nothing against people with strong views, but I have learned from years of engaging with seemingly reasonable yet, for example, racist people, not to waste my breath in the face of such absolute moral certainty.

I can't work out what is so moral about denying a section of society the kind of basic rights the rest of us enjoy, or how traditional family values can possibly be threatened by affording homosexuals the opportunity to live with dignity, but I would no more have argued with the immovable convictions of this believer than with white supremacists, who know in their hearts that God made white people to rule over others.

Of course, I can understand the fact that many people find homosexuality unnatural but claiming a higher morality to back up our squeamishness and homophobic instincts has always seemed to me a little too convenient.

It is also entirely predictable, especially when it comes from the newest, most stylishly attired bishop in the country, Brian Tamaki, and even the new Pope, who wants Kiwi voters this election to "recover a vision of the mutual relationship between civil law and a moral law".

Should we be surprised? At the risk of being accused (again) of being the begetter of "modern day witchcraft" and "evil ideologies" by the newly crowned Bishop Tamaki, I'd have to say the churches don't exactly have an unblemished record when it comes to human rights.

Tamaki, who is about to embark on a "Nation Under Siege" tour, is right about one thing though - religion has been in retreat, and we are probably paying the consequences of that now.

Its absence, even disparagement, in public discourse has fuelled the anxiety that we are becoming a godless and immoral nation. We have been overweeningly good at respecting the beliefs of almost every religion but Christianity, despite the fact that two million New Zealanders profess themselves to be Christian.

The fact that Seatoun Primary School got so worked up over those lunchtime Bible classes is a case in point. Where was the harm in a group of kids voluntarily learning a few Bible stories?

Nightly Bible readings were a feature of our family life, so I was happy to sign a permission slip when my kids' primary school offered the opportunity for Bible classes, run by volunteers. I saw it as an important part of their education.

Even setting aside the fact that the Bible (especially the King James version) is great literature, not to mention the source of so many of our cultural references, the growing prominence of religion in public life would suggest that there is a case to be made for more education about comparative religion, not less.

In the United States, which some have described as the most religious Western nation and the most religiously illiterate, some commentators have suggested the religious ignorance of so many Americans is leaving the field wide open to extremists.

A 1997 poll showed that only 1 in 3 Americans knows that the Sermon on the Mount was delivered by Jesus, and as many as 12 per cent thought Noah's wife was Joan of Arc.

Which might explain the renewed intensity with which the so-called culture wars are being waged, particularly since George W's re-election. Bush's popularity might be waning but the conservative religious agenda is not (even though only 22 per cent of those who voted did so on "moral values").

So far, the skirmishes have been about gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, the teaching of evolution versus "intelligent design" in the classrooms, and the presence in government grounds and buildings of the Ten Commandments monuments, which were constructed around the US as part of a publicity gimmick for the 1965 Cecil B. DeMille blockbuster, The Ten Commandments.

No one in the US is underestimating the strength of the religious right. In March, the Washington Post reported on the growing number of pharmacists who refuse, on religious grounds, to fill prescriptions for birth control or morning-after pills.

That same month, the New York Times reported that some Imax theatres were refusing to show documentaries like Galapagos or Volcanoes of the Deep Sea in case references to Darwin and the Big Bang theory turned off audiences who want faith-based science over empiricism.

Then there was the Denver jury, whose members declared that they would used the Bible to guide them in their decision to sentence a man to death, no doubt taking to heart the Old Testament's "an eye for an eye". Their verdict was overturned by a higher court, which decreed that the use of the Bible constituted an improper outside influence.

Thankfully, we're far more liberal in Godzone. The opinion polls had a majority of New Zealanders supporting civil unions, despite what the Pope and the Bishop say.

Destiny Church might draw most of its support from a largely conservative base, which includes the more religiously minded Pacific Islanders, but I think most of us would see their policies as departing from the more inclusive and compassionate society that we would prefer to live in.

Most would see far more threat to the family unit coming from the evils of economic hardship, adultery, alcohol, disconnected communities, and both parents having to work increasingly longer hours, than a few gay couples wanting to settle down together in unholy matrimony.

Still, I can't help agreeing with the Episcopalian minister and former Republican senator, Paul C. Danforth, when he urges moderate Christians to step up to the plate and engage in the moral values conversation. So far they have been deafeningly silent.

"As a senator," Danforth wrote in the New York Times, "I worried every day about the size of the deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around."