Losing Our Religion

Invoking a higher being to rain fire on swathes of humanity is no longer the done thing,

- Paul Thomas

Australian rugby star Israel Folau has received plenty of advice, much of it laced with biting criticism, since telling one of his 337,000 Instagram followers that God’s plan for gays is “HELL – unless they repent of their sins and turn to God”.

Here’s my two cents’ worth: the next person who gets the urge to activate caps lock and inform a section of the community they’re damned for eternity should bear in mind that in this part of the world the culture war is over and your side lost.

There are swathes of America where what Folau said would be regarded as a statement of the obvious. When former judge Roy Moore suffered a shock – and very narrow – loss in Alabama’s special Senate election late last year, what sank him was a history of preying on teenage girls; his views on homosexuality – that it’s akin to having sex with a cow and should be criminalised – caused barely a ripple of controversy.

Christian media mogul and one-time presidential candidate Pat Robertson warned that “acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and possibly a meteor”.

His fellow televangelist and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell reckoned Aids was “not just God’s punishment for homosexuality; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuality”.

We can dismiss the US’s multimillionaire men of the cloth as hate-mongering spiritual-snake-oil salesmen, but they have huge followings: according to a 2005 survey, 45% of Americans watch Christian TV monthly. They also speak for a movement that’s significantly responsible for the Republican Party’s rightward, populist lurch and its current stranglehold on power at both federal and state levels.