With the role of faith in the public square regularly under attack, it is vital for leaders— both in office and in the community—to stand up against these attacks and to defend the role of religion and faith in informing values, providing leadership, and inspiring service and care.
For the last few years, members of the governing Labor Party and their crossbench friends in the Greens here in Victoria, have been seeking to remove or substantially amend the Lord’s Prayer as it is read in the Victorian Parliament.
The state’s Attorney-General, Jaclyn Symes, said in May 2021 that Labor would “commit to workshopping a replacement model that is purpose fit for Victoria,” and this commitment was in the election platform Labor took to the most recent election in 2022.
Sensing this shift, grassroots Victorians of faith mobilised, and through organic growth and word of mouth, almost 11,000 signatories made their voices heard in a petition to the Parliament, which I was proud to sponsor in a debate of the Legislative Council.
I am pleased that as a result of this enormous show of support for the retention of the Lord’s Prayer, the government were forced into a stunning backflip and did not seek to oppose the petition or to continue to fight for the removal of the prayer.
During this debate, other members of the council cited the census and other data on the percentage of Victorians who identify as Christian as arguments in favour of throwing this part of our cultural and civic heritage away.
In doing so, my colleagues demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding not only of the history of the Parliament, but also of the role of the Lord’s Prayer itself and what it seeks to instil in those who recite it.
From a historic perspective, the Lord’s Prayer has been recited in the Victorian Parliament since 1857.
Going back further, the very layout of our parliamentary chambers—descended from the so-called “Mother of Parliaments” in Westminster—is still influenced by the layout of St Stephen’s Chapel, where the House of Commons met from 1548.
In the present day, the vestibule of the Victorian Parliament still contains a quotation from Proverbs 11:14 inset in the floor, “Where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of Counsellors there is safety.”
So, faith is deeply rooted in the very essence of parliamentary democracy and its inclusion in civic life is as valuable as the acknowledgment of country which together link two very important facets of our society.
Opponents of the prayer also call for the separation of church and state but again in doing so, they misunderstand that concept.
The separation of church and state, which is wildly misinterpreted in an Australian context, does not mean elected leaders need to abandon their faith at the door.
As representatives we make decisions informed by our values, and those values at times are inseparable from our faith.
The inclusion of the Lord’s Prayer is not exclusionary, as its opponents say. This was demonstrated by the extraordinary issuing of a unifying joint statement by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, The Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, The Hindu Council of Victoria, The Board of Imams Victoria, and the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council.
These faith leaders recognise something which my parliamentary colleagues did not. That the Our Father, at its heart, is a simple prayer of humility, and a call to forgive, and love and serve others before ourselves. To love and serve others before ourselves, which is exactly what elected members of Parliament are here to do.
Leadership starts at the top. And any attempt to remove faith from Parliament—the public square—must be resisted at all costs.
Many members of parliament are more than happy to present for a photo opportunity with faith leaders, cutting ribbons and laying plaques at faith-based schools, and outreach services. But faith groups should and can expect more, and hold their elected representatives accountable.
We see this in the Australian Capital Territory where the Lord’s Prayer was replaced with a silent moment of reflection.
With faith removed from civic discourse, it was all too easy for the ACT Labor Government to compulsorily acquire a Catholic hospital, dismantling crucifixes from walls and uniforms in just a matter of a few weeks—as reported in The Catholic Weekly.
The backdown of the Victorian Labor Government was an important line in the sand, where people of all faiths united and stood firm against these attempts at radical secularisation by stealth. If we don’t push to defend even what some may suggest are small concessions, we have crippled ourselves on the larger issues.
It is also why the Archdiocese of Sydney’s advocacy and pushback in recent years against moves by the NSW government to acquire the operations of cemeteries from faith groups was an important measure.
The recent moves to erase prayer from parliament will by no means be the last time this is attempted—in Victoria and around Australia.
But there is no reason to think that we have no hope of resisting the slow erasure of faith, and defending the enormous contribution that faith-based groups have made to Australian society from the earliest of days.
Our faith and our commitment to public life demands of all of us a constant vigilance against attack, so that this important part of our Australian heritage and legacy lives on and is able to be taken up by our children and by future generations.
Evan Mulholland is the Liberal Member for Northern Metropolitan Region and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Victorian Legislative Council.