Thank you for your interest!

Add free and premium widgets by Addwater Agency to your Tumblelog!


To hide the widget button after installing the theme:

  1. Visit your Tumblr blog's customization page (typically found at http://www.tumblr.com/customize).
  2. Click on Appearance.
  3. Click Hide Widget Button.
  4. Click on Save+Close.

For more information visit our How-To's page.

Questions? Visit us at tumblr.addwater.com

[close this window]

POSTINGS


Geeking around on some of the minor Australian political parties’ websites I came across this gem from the Australian Christians party. There are three main problems here: This chart completely ignores the fact that some churchgoing Australians vote Green - especially if they are young. I gave the Greens my first preference in the last federal election and I’m pretty likely to do it again in the next one. Many of my friends did as well. Christian Greens supporters are extremely unlikely to change their support to the Australian Christians because their ideologies are so opposed. I’d wager the same for many Christian Labor supporters too, and there are a lot more of those. The premise behind this party is that Christian Australians are ideologically similar enough that they could vote as a bloc and change the political landscape a la the Religious Right in America. However, Christians in the West are trending away from political homogeneity - the Religious Right is breaking apart. Christian Australians in particular have never been any good at all at backing one party to the exclusion of others. Even with reasonably-political (by Australian standards) and influential churches like Hillsong knocking about, Christians simply don’t vote down religious lines. Political support and ideology varies wildly even within individual congregations, so there’s very little hope of getting an explicitly religious party off the ground. This has been tried before. So, so many times before. Most recently, the Family First Party (founded 2002) has failed to make any real impact on the federal political landscape and is still active as a right-wing, not-quite-explicitly-Christian political party. Australian Christians would have to differentiate itself pretty markedly from Family First if it was hoping for any attention at all. Perhaps if Australian Christians tried for the centrist, Christian Democratic route it might fill some unmet need in the politico-religious landscape, but reading between the lines of what’s posted on their official blog, the Australian Christians party is looking pretty typically right-wing. TL;DR, whoever set up the Australian Christians party has no understanding of Australian politics. What are you doing? What, what, what are you doing?

Geeking around on some of the minor Australian political parties’ websites I came across this gem from the Australian Christians party.

There are three main problems here:

  1. This chart completely ignores the fact that some churchgoing Australians vote Green - especially if they are young. I gave the Greens my first preference in the last federal election and I’m pretty likely to do it again in the next one. Many of my friends did as well. Christian Greens supporters are extremely unlikely to change their support to the Australian Christians because their ideologies are so opposed. I’d wager the same for many Christian Labor supporters too, and there are a lot more of those.
  2. The premise behind this party is that Christian Australians are ideologically similar enough that they could vote as a bloc and change the political landscape a la the Religious Right in America. However, Christians in the West are trending away from political homogeneity - the Religious Right is breaking apart. Christian Australians in particular have never been any good at all at backing one party to the exclusion of others. Even with reasonably-political (by Australian standards) and influential churches like Hillsong knocking about, Christians simply don’t vote down religious lines. Political support and ideology varies wildly even within individual congregations, so there’s very little hope of getting an explicitly religious party off the ground.
  3. This has been tried before. So, so many times before. Most recently, the Family First Party (founded 2002) has failed to make any real impact on the federal political landscape and is still active as a right-wing, not-quite-explicitly-Christian political party. Australian Christians would have to differentiate itself pretty markedly from Family First if it was hoping for any attention at all. Perhaps if Australian Christians tried for the centrist, Christian Democratic route it might fill some unmet need in the politico-religious landscape, but reading between the lines of what’s posted on their official blog, the Australian Christians party is looking pretty typically right-wing.

TL;DR, whoever set up the Australian Christians party has no understanding of Australian politics. What are you doing? What, what, what are you doing?







SEARCH