Roy,it may have been a slip of the pen...or I should say the keyboard... but when you categorized the "Big Four" political issues you put one issue in the wrong category..."sanctity of life issues" belongs in the human rights category ...there are no human rights without the guarantee of the ability to exercise them...namely the right to be born alive! Believe me Roy,when you have seen the aftermath of abortions as I have during my nursing career, abortion is the number one human rights issue! And it is a political issue...the right to life can only be guaranteed in parliaments by legislators...remember it was in Australia's Federal Parliament that whales were guaranteed protection? Anyone who killed one risked a $100,000 fine! (And they pay doctors to kill human babies!) Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of America's Declaration of Independence, declared the first duty of government was to protect human life. When on 10 October 2008 Victoria's Labor Government legalized abortion up to birth, it failed spectacularly in this first test. Societies of course get the governments they deserve and lack of rigour in debate, such as not putting the right to life firmly in the human rights category as Roy has done...either unintentionally or intentionally... doesn't help in the search for truth and justice. Abortion is not a soft social issue. It is a gross political distortion and denial of fundamental human rights.

I am one who likes to hark back through history, especially concerning Thomas Aquinas.

He not only got Christianity out of the Dark Ages, but also as a philosopher used Hellenistic Reasoning to establish the beginnings of our present university systems in some ways leaving Christianity in imaginative heavens where it probably belongs.

I fitted in - probably -, because I have so much respect for the Sermon on the Mount, a bit similar to Mandela possibly who is said not to be a dinkum Christian.

Cheers, BB, Buntine, WA.

The truth about christianity as a power and control seeking killer meme--as advocated by right wing religionists.

Monotheistic creationist-religion is an exclusively power seeking entity intent upon controlling and managing the entire human world and even all of the conditionally arising world.

The "sacred power" that such monotheistic religion claims it brings (or would extend) into the human world is, it says, the "Creator-God" of the universe---whereas, in fact, the power that such monotheistic religion actually exercises (or would everywhere exercise) is that of the humanly governed political, social, economic, cultural, and altogether, merely exoteric INSTITUTIONALIZATION of the totality of humankind.

The institutionalizing power that such religion exercises (or would everywhere exercise, if allowed to function at will and unimpeded) is of an inherently intolerant nature---because it is possessed by a reductionist, and tribalistic, and exclusively exoteric mentality, that CANNOT except any non-"orthodox", extra-tribal (or even extra-institutional), non-monotheistic, or, otherwise, esoteric exceptions to its "Rule".

Altogether then such monotheistic religion always dramatizes is the persistent will to dominate and assimilate ALL other institutions and traditions, and their various cultural expressions.

The greatest threat to secular democracy are the proto-religious right wing who are too willing to deny women their rights. the bio breakthroughs in science that offer mankind new hope like nothing religions can except for their pernicious and out of date theologies-based blessings and false promises and the fear of going to hell and eternal damnation. Yeah To hell with all that tripe,I say.

America is the worst example followed by all those countries with substantial Muslim populations and their demand for including their sharia law into our judicial systems.

Australia is another developing threat to democratic traditions. Watch it carefully.

socratease

Christianity and politics: a problematic mix? How ridicules. Christianity (along with Judaism and Islam) has always been about politics, not God. The three 'religions' stemming from Abraham have as the base their claim that they are God's lawyers on Earth and they have the divine right to 'rule' according to God's law as they interpret it.
How more political can you get than the claim to the right to rule in God's name? It is the ultimate blasphemy.
Take a look back just a few hundred years to when Christianity had political power. Look what happened before the separation of religion and state in Western countries, and what happens now in Islamic countries where religion and state have not yet been separated.
We have as much to fear from Christian domination in Australian politics as we do from Islam.
They are different branches of the same religion with no fundamental differences in their clams to being God's lawyers on Earth.
If Australia is to have any pretense at being a democracy separation between state and religion must be maintained, with no back-sliding into the intolerance and oppression that characterizes religious states.

Yep, Ho Hum and Socratrese, reckon many academic historians like my aged self could kind of go along with you, sort of believing in a Hope more than in a faith.

Cheers, BB, WA.