By ABC's Annabel Crabb
Photo: In 2003 Kevin Rudddescribed himself as an "old-fashioned Christian socialist". (AAP: Lukas Coch)
Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott have both brought religion into politics before. But if this election campaign has shown us anything, it's that when politics and religion find themselves at odds in the breast of a politician, politics wins, writes Annabel Crabb.
On paper, this should be the most theologically-charged campaign in Australian history.
In the red corner: Kevin Rudd, a man who in China worked as a lay preacher, who actively invoked God for Labor six years ago in a most memorable way, who stages press conferences outside his church and who - he told the author Roy Williams last year - has recently taken up the study of Greek in order to improve his understanding of St Luke's Gospel.
In the blue corner: Tony Abbott. Barely anyone in Australia would have to be reminded that Mr Abbott, a Rhodes scholar, travelled home from Oxford with God's call ringing in his ears.
He is the only candidate for the prime ministership to have trained as a priest. He is the only candidate as far as I know to have had, at any stage of his career, a celibacy consultant. (I met her once, at the launch of Mr Abbott's book Battlelines. She is a lovely woman who, quite sensibly, has since taken a different career direction.)
He found the seminary frustrating, and not just for obvious reasons; towards the end of his time there, during an exercise in which the trainee priests were given a lump of plasticine and urged to express their feelings about their mission, Abbott fashioned his into a jet plane. He wanted to get out, and he did, but he retains strong links to the Catholic church.
Both men have brought religion into politics before.
Kevin Rudd, who in 2003 described himself as an "old-fashioned Christian socialist", made it his business to reclaim God for Labor well before the party elected him leader. He wrote a lengthy essay for the Monthly on religion and politics. He convened a club of Christian MPs and senators within the Labor Party, and they met weekly. He campaigned strongly on two touchstones of faith for young Christians; saving the environment, and ending world poverty.
But if this election campaign has shown us anything, it's that when politics and religion find themselves at odds in the breast of a politician, politics wins.
The younger, theologically ardent Kevin Rudd was certain of his ground when he wrote, in his Monthly essay, that John Howard's treatment of asylum seekers was unChristian.
"The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear," he wrote.
"That is why the Government's proposal to excise the Australian mainland from the entire Australian immigration zone and to rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches".
Today, Kevin Rudd takes to the electorate a policy on asylum seekers that reproduces and expands upon Howard's migration zone excision and Pacific Solution. It took a while, but politics won in the end.
Rudd the essayist put the case for 1.4 billion of the world's poor, arguing that the obligation to them was not being fulfilled by Australia, where "lip-service, not moral leadership, is the order of the day." As prime minister, Mr Rudd set ambitious new targets for foreign aid in his first term but those commitments have been postponed and - in that charming new budgetary term - "reprofiled" in light of the nation's corroding economic position.
YouTube: Rudd launches passionate gay marriage defence
During Monday's appearance on Q&A, the Prime Minister was challenged by a pastor in the audience, who asked him about his conversion to the cause of same-sex marriage.
"Jesus said a man should leave his father and mother and be married... Kevin, if you call yourself a Christian, why don't you believe the words of Jesus in the Bible?" asked the pastor.
"Well, mate, if I was going to have that view, the Bible also says that slavery is a natural condition," replied the Prime Minister with some asperity.
The crowd cheered, and the exchange - which was welcomed by many supporters as a flash of genuine passion and prime ministerial advocacy in a campaign which has suffered from a lack of both - swiftly "went viral", as such things tend to do.
The message for the church? Apart from "Don't get between the PM and a sympathetic audience"?
Don't rely on politicians. It hardly ever works out when push comes to shove.
Even Ronald Reagan, who is still generally fancied in the United States to be history's pinup candidate of the "Moral Majority", was something of a disappointment in office. After having cultivated the evangelical Right for years and promised the reinstatement of school prayers, opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and immediate attention to the recriminalisation of abortion, Reagan's churchly ardour dimmed once he took office in 1980 and his first appointment to the Supreme Court - to howls of betrayal from the religious groups on whose votes he won office - was the relatively moderate Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981.
That Tony Abbott would use the prime ministership as an extension of his faith is hoped by some and feared by others.
He, too, used the mid-2000s to reflect upon faith and politics, though perhaps as a result of John Howard's experiences he avoided the temptation to use, like Mr Rudd, the parable of the Good Samaritan as a ready reckoner for national policy on asylum seekers.
"Love is a fine guide for individuals, but folly for governments," he explained in a 2004 speech, The Ethical Responsibilities Of A Christian Politician.
The most-cited parts of that speech are the parts to do with abortion.
"Even those who think that abortion is a woman's right should be troubled by the fact that 100,000 Australian women choose to destroy their unborn babies every year," said Mr Abbott, then minister for health.
Photo: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is the only candidate for the prime ministership to have trained as a priest. (AAP: Alan Porritt)
Many have since pointed out that the legal status of abortion in Australia is a matter for each state's criminal code, not for a federal government.
But in the last month, a very clear opportunity has arisen for an incoming Abbott government to make a very big difference to the availability of abortion in Australia.
One of Julia Gillard's last acts in government was to list the abortion drug RU486 on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The listing became active on the first day of August, meaning that the Federal Government now subsidises chemical abortion.
But when Leigh Sales asked Mr Abbott during her 7.30 interview with him on Monday whether he would act to alter those arrangements in any way, he gave her an instantaneous and unequivocal "No."
"The deal is done," he said.
In tonight's Kitchen Cabinet interview, to be aired at 8.00pm on ABC1, the Opposition Leader gives his strongest warning to date that Christians should not expect too much from him, including on abortion.
"You've got to accept that there are all sorts of private views which can be passionately held but in a pluralist democracy such as ours the idea that you could somehow make those private views mandatory is bizarre, just bizarre," he says.
"I think it is essential that someone of faith understand that while faith is a splendid thing in private life it can often be quite a misleading guide in public life."
"Render unto God the things that are God's, and unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," was Jesus' infuriatingly multi-layered response, when asked in the Bible about how the faithful should apportion their loyalties between church and state.
And that seems like a good rule of thumb, as long as you remember that in politics, Caesar will usually be ahead in the queue.
Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer. View her full profile here.
