By linking his political commitment with his Christian convictions, Kevin Rudd, the new ALP leader, has certainly stirred up the commentariat. At a time when Labor appears to be drifting in a moral and political vacuum, any attempt to revitalise its ethical foundations is as welcome as it is rare. The message is hardly new. The rise of labour parties in the nineteenth century owed much more to working class Christianity (particularly Methodism and Catholicism) than it ever did to Marxism. Rudd’s declaration would have appeared commonplace to earlier generations, and hardly worthy of comment. That it has provoked a frenzy of comment indicates how secularised the left has become, and how ignorant of its own history.
How far invoking the Gospel will resolve Labor’s moral and political dilemmas is questionable. At the level of fundamental principles, Christian teachings can underpin key values espoused by the left, such as human dignity, economic cooperation and social justice. Secular progressives who placed their faith in historical evolution towards a socialist future, have been demoralised by the recent successes of global capitalism. Today, it is the right, not the left, that seems to have history on its side.
For some, religion offers a valuable, fixed mooring from which to withstand such hostile political currents. But it is by no means essential. After all, any genuine belief in social justice, whether religious or secular, should be sufficient to withstand political setbacks. Moreover, the left’s problems stem less from lack of moral conviction than from uncertainty about how to apply its principles in a global capitalist world. Here, Christianity has little concrete to offer and can, indeed, lead in unhelpful directions.
The socialist and social democratic approach to welfare has always been community-based, linking state welfare to the rights of citizenship. It has its origins in the union movement and friendly societies where enlightened self-interest encouraged people to share their resources for protection against hardship. Even when state support become the norm, targeting specific categories such as the unemployed or disabled, it was on the understanding that anyone might become unemployed or disabled one day, and might therefore be in need a helping hand. Mass hardship and unemployment in times of economic depression, together with shared experience of wartime deprivation, encouraged the view of welfare as mutual support, or institutionalised ‘mateship’.
Social democrats sought to distinguish welfare from charity, as represented by the hated Poor