There are grave dangers for religion in becoming an extension of the government power structure, writes Padraic P. McGuinness.
To the surprise of many, the early days in office of US President George W. Bush are proving indeed to be a honeymoon. This has been assisted by the shabby behaviour of the Clintons and their White House staffers as they departed - the pardons given to supporters and the expensive gifts they have accepted in the past year have not helped the reputation of either Clinton. Even the strong bias of the East Coast press, and like-thinking foreigners in the Washington press corps, against the Republicans has been temporarily shaken.
These days to get a reasonably good overview and objective analysis of US politics you have to go to the Internet although Fox News on cable has emerged as a useful source. The namby-pamby Democratic bias of CNN is now balanced by a gutsy and unashamed Republican bias on Fox. Would that we had news coverage of this quality and range on Australian TV.
It is also surprising that one of the main issues to have emerged early in the Bush II presidency is the role of religion in American civil society.
We are already familiar with the notion that churches and religious organisations could play a greater role in supplementing the governmental welfare system in Australia, thanks largely to the advocacy of this approach by the Howard Government, especially the new Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott.
Just as in Australia, in the US there has been an outcry from the determined secularists who not only insist on separation of church and State authority, but also seem to be determined to oust the churches from any public role or assistance.
The US debate should be instructive for us, for it is drawing attention to the dangers for the churches and other non-Christian religious groups of taking from Caesar that which has already been rendered to him willy-nilly by taxpayers.
The constitutional position of religion in the US is rather different from that in Australia, despite the fact that our Constitution drew on its in this respect.
The First Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits the Congress from making a "law respecting an establishment of religion", as well as other matters. Section 116 of our Constitution uses a lot more words, and says, "The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth".
The actual position of religion is, however, quite different in the two countries. Originally, the US Supreme Court took the commonsense approach, which was also that intended by the framers of the Constitution, that this meant simply that no religion was to be privileged over any other, including non-religion. This is the approach still adhered to by the High Court of Australia (despite its fit of adventurism under Chief Justice Mason).
Thus no-one found it remarkable that at the recent commencement of the Federal Parliament the leaders of both major parties attended a Christian church service (what will happen when we get a Jewish or Muslim party leader?), or that prayers are said in Parliament. Only a few old atheists (the kind who treat the non-existent God as a personal enemy) still complain about funding of schools which profess a religious denomination.
The attempt to remove all vestiges of religion from American State schools and public life has had plenty of absurdities, and indeed has become a new kind of religious intolerance. This has also spilled over to Australia, and manifests itself in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and its ilk. The secular religion of human rights has become the established religion in both countries.
The battle of the constitutional lawyers and the lobby groups in the US will end up in the US Supreme Court, and it is quite possible that there will be a reinterpretation of the meaning of "establishment of religion". It will be another great, and heated, fight with the court playing its adopted role as one of the central political institutions in the US.
But the strongest arguments against the Bush initiative will not be legal. They involve the dangers for genuine religion in becoming in any sense an agency for government.
It is the same subordination to funding which has damaged our universities so extensively. The Establishment of the Church of England clearly did enormous long-term harm to that institution - indeed, as was so wittily put in an episode of Yes, Prime Minister, it even deprived many of its adherents of any necessity to believe in God.
The same was true of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is clearly reverting once again to its preferred role as state church and part of the governmental power structure.
The main Christian denominations in Australia are already so dependent on government funding that they are part of the power structure, and have increasingly substituted politics for genuine religion.
There are grave dangers for religion in this. As that early monarchist remarked, "My kingdom is not of this world."
It may be that Howard and Abbott will do a degree of harm to religion in Australia which they do not intend by their sincere attempts to reform a rotten and malfunctioning welfare system.
And perhaps the churches had better look out, too. After all, in Canada the Anglican Church has been sent into virtual bankruptcy by accepting government contracts to run special schools for indigenous children. This is the result of a legal system which retrospectively finds guilty those who acted in the manner of their own day.
There is a film at present being made about a man who sues God - such is the arrogance of our courts these days that they well might be imagined putting on trial God, as well as those who think of themselves as His servants.