Holy rolling
I didn’t know the Australian PM is an evangelical.
Scott Morrison has asked a national conference of Christian churches to help him help Australia, while revealing his belief that he and his wife, Jenny, have been called upon to do God’s work.
In video that has emerged of the prime minister speaking at the Australian Christian Churches conference on the Gold Coast last week, Morrison also revealed that he had sought a sign from God while on the 2019 election campaign trail, and that he had practised the evangelical tradition of the “laying-on of hands” while working in the role of prime minister.
He also describes the misuse of social media as the work of “the evil one”, in reference to the Devil, and called on his fellow believers to pray against its corrosive effect on society.
It’s unnerving, that kind of thing. If you believe in “the Devil” and “God’s work” and “the laying on of hands” then what other magical beliefs do you have? People in government should have real-world beliefs.
The prime minister travelled to the conference from Sydney using his taxpayer-funded aircraft. No video of the address has been promoted on his Facebook or official pages, nor has his office released a copy of his speech, as usually occurs when he is speaking in his official capacity as prime minister.
Oh he kept it kind of secret, did he. Sinister.
The video, which was broadcast by Vineyard Christian church then distributed by the Rationalist Society, gives rare insight into Morrison’s personal religious practice and the beliefs that guide him and the rapidly growing Pentecostal movement in Australia.
Why is the insight rare? Surely it should be public knowledge.
H/t Omar
Wasn’t Australia supposed to get the convicts, and America get the religious people?
America has been exporting its evangelical beliefs for some decades now.
“He also describes the misuse of social media as the work of “the evil one”, in reference to the Devil, and called on his fellow believers to pray against its corrosive effect on society.”
Ok, barring the praying shit I’m not sure I disagree with him. How much social media is a symptom of our civilization’s collective mental illness and how much it’s the cause of it is hard to parse out.
Colin @#1:
As someone observed once, America was founded by the Puritans, and Australia was founded by the convicts. Many of the latter were Irish rebels, and they performed a role analagous to that in America of the the black slaves. It became folklore that every true-blue, dinki-di Aussie had an Irish grandmother. (That is certainly true in my own case.)
Religion lost another round, thanks to its most prominent representative in the founding colony of New South Wales being the (Anglican) Reverend Samuel Marsden, aka ‘the Flogging Parson.’
In other words, one flogging leads to another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Marsden