KEY POINTS:
Unholy rows are breaking out in Australian politics. Two men who want to be the next Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, the new leader of the opposition Labor party and Tony Abbott, a frontbencher in the conservative Government led by the current PM John Howard, are vocal Christians.
Both are Catholic men. Abbott is on the mainstream, conservative side of Catholicism while Rudd is aligned with the church's more socially progressive elements.
And each has taken to invoking their Christian viewpoint to make political points.
Their colleagues, whether non-religious or aligned with Protestant faiths, are getting restless, and other uglier rows about God are blazing away over the political activities of the Exclusive Brethren sect, and government edicts forcing secular public schools to appoint religious counsellors.
The Abbott v Rudd slanging match over God has seen more serves and volleys than the Australian Tennis Open.
From Abbott this: "He chose to say, that from a Christian perspective, the policies of the Howard Government are an abomination.
"Jesus didn't quite say that the best way to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the lonely was to vote Labor, but Rudd would have us believe that this is what he really meant."
But what Rudd has been saying is that Abbott's Catholic conservatism had driven his opposition to embryonic stem cell research and the ready availability of the abortion pill RU-486, even though he, Rudd, has expressed serious reservations about both.
The slanging match extends to the contracts for managing social welfare payments, which the Howard Government awarded to private agencies run by various churches.
That row has been further complicated by the churches objecting to having their agencies instructed by the Government to "crack down" on dole payments and support for families in crisis, including single parents.
In what was generally interpreted as a further move to buy church support for government policies, the Howard Government late last year announced it would require public schools to appoint a religious counsellor at public expense.
Schools are still struggling with the policy because each must select which particular denomination supplies the counsellor. In turn, this is opening up potential acrimony between the various churches, especially in areas where they claim similar proportions of the community.
The move to introduce the voluntary availability of religious advice to public schools has echoes of the sectarian divisions of Australian society and politics up to the 1960s, when sections of the public services were "owned" by Catholics or Protestants and weekly religious instruction by the major faiths was compulsory in junior grades.
The Australian Labor Party, which was nourished in its early years by socially disadvantaged workers of Irish Catholic descent, was split apart by the formation of a conservative Catholic Democratic Labor Party in the 1950s, which faded into obscurity in the early 70s but recently won two upper house seats in the Victorian state elections.
It is this stirring of the ghosts of past sectarianism that is making some of Rudd's non-religiously aligned colleagues privately urge caution in his declarations of faith, while leaking their concerns to the media.
Parallel to these rows is the scandal of the conservative coalition paying for anti-Greens advertisements by the Exclusive Brethren sect during last year's Tasmanian state election.
Australian newspapers have uncovered a pile of invoices proving the ads, which included attacks on sexual minorities and, by inference, gay Greens leader Senator Bob Brown, were paid for by the Australian Liberal Party (which is conservative).
The Greens want a full inquiry into the affair and the conduct of the Exclusive Brethren, which is led by Sydney office supply salesman Bruce Hales and forbids its members voting in elections because the rule of God transcends worldly politics.
The sect came under the spotlight in New Zealand when it was found to have hired private detectives to inquire into the personal life of Prime Minister Helen Clark and given funds to National Party leader, Don Brash, who denied the monetary support.
The Exclusive Brethren forbids its congregation from appointing a woman to a position of authority over men and bans the use of the internet, mobile telephones, television and other media services.
Contact with non-Brethren, persons deemed "worldly", is strictly controlled, although the sect runs profitable businesses and receives Federal Government funding for schools that discourage pupils from advancing to higher education.
Last month, prominent Uniting Church minister and "cult buster" Dr David Millikan called for an inquiry into the activities of the Exclusive Brethren.
