Religion and politics

Religious and secular institutions, forces and impulses have intersected repeatedly in Australian political life, not always along clear-cut lines. This chapter begins by analysing ways in which settler society sometimes deemed Indigenous peoples too irreligious for full participation in the new (Christian) polity, and at other times found their traditions too religious to be recognised under (secular) Australian law. It then considers how ideas of the Australian nation have assumed, and disputed, religious foundations. Religious institutions and their members have played prominent parts in party politics and in public policy; after considering key examples, the chapter reverses the standard analysis, by considering how politics has shaped religion.