Yes the Christian vote is quite complex.

But Wisdom barely enters the picture in what Mark and the Centre for Public Christianity are advocating as religion.

They are appealing to their mommy-daddy tribal deity to look after them.

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-religion.aspx

Plus the religion that they advocate is a entirely one-dimensional as this reference points out

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/gnosticon/universal-scientism.aspx

The Centre for Public Christianity uses a lot of resources promoting the "historical Jesus", and the primacy of "Gods" word as written in the Bible.

This essay gives a completely different Understanding of the origins of the Bible and Christianity altogether. The Bible was essentially a political document put together by the church "fathers" to consolidate their power and privileges. It has been used thus ever since---ask all the inevitable countless millions of victms.

http://www.beezone.com/up/forgottenesotericismjesus.html

Plus this essay describes what is necessary for the world-wide transformation of human culture.

http://www.beezone.com/up/necessityforglobalunity.html

There seems to be something of a disconnect here.

The entire article could have been written without using the word "Christian" at all

"...the difficulty of applying one’s values to any political platform... many debates are not over the theoretical issue of values but the practical issue of which policy will best reflect those values... election campaigns appear to bring out the worst in all of us... voting should move beyond slogans to real debate and consideration of issues... election policies are only one part of government."

A form of verbal conjuring trick. Look, over here, nothing up my sleeve...

There is absolutely no doubt that different policy statements are made in order to schmooze different groups of the population, Christians most definitely included. This is the pre-election equivalent of identifying the right kind of bright shiny objects to attract the attention of a magpie.

Writing an article that says "don't worry, we Christians aren't so gullible as to fall for that trick", simply tells us how gullible Christians think we are.

Thanks to Mark Stephens for a thoughtful and reflective article.

He echoes many of the sentiments expressed by John Dickson in his recent article in the SMH- another good one.

Trave - I agree. Thank you Mark for a modest and thoughtful account of how Christians engage with the political process. God doesn’t hand out “how to vote” cards, and we should be wary of any religious organisation that purports to do so on His behalf. There is also a very real danger that we as Christians conflate our political and religious values and assume divine endorsement of our political predispositions – as your examples of free markets and unions illustrate well.

That said, I am concerned at a tendency in both the church and secular society to try to separate religious and secular values and diminish the legitimacy of faith as a basis for social action. By all means, let’s separate the state and religions and ensure we have no established religion. But faith is (among other things) a call to act in the world, and in the small-“p” sense Christians must always be to some degree political

I've been a Christian almost all my life, and I think the prejudice against, and stereotypes of Christians need be subjected to scrutiny.

I urge people in this thread who want to propagate Christian stereotypes here to check my articles at On Line Opinion and see if 'the stereotype fits'.

Religion has historically been abused by some of the most powerful as a pretext to develop cultural and political power bases, and to instigate fear and hatred in fueling power struggles - in their most extreme form wars.

But this has nothing to do with the message of Jesus. And even then there are churches who themselves need rescuing from literalism - when Christ would have us look deeper.

But all in all, I think those who heed Christ's message are peacemakers; are careful about judging others; believe in charity and compassion. There are even resonances with the work of Karl Marx - No Kidding - and if you don't believe me check the URL below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_communism

sincerely,

Tristan

The Politics does become complicated in a world of compromise. What so many Christians are blind to is the pathetically flawed faith of the secularist. This includes unscientific faith in evolution as a fact. The end result is foolish people who don't believe they will one day be held accountable for their greed, immorality, baby killing, homosexuality and general ignorance of evil. The self righteous often embrace the environmental religion which again uses pseudo science to promote its validity. Thankfully their are one or two pollies still willing to call evil evil even if it costs them votes.