Lord's Prayer in Parliament

Labor MP Dave Kelly MLA has been publicly campaigning to remove the Lord's Prayer from the opening of WA Parliament – a tradition that dates back to 1558.
He has called it "outdated" and suggested it is incompatible with democratic government. 
Wrong on both counts and more...

Click here to make a Public Submission to the Inquiry into Legislative Assembly Standing Orders.

The Lord's Prayer in Parliament should be retained for the following reasons. 

1. It can not be "outdated" because there is and always will be a historic direct connection between Christianity and the values upon which Australian parliaments were designed in the first place. The Prayer recognises the Christianity behind the preamble to the Australian Constitution which says "humbly relying on the blessings of Almighty God." Australia's founders deliberately identified Christian values as the most conducive to produce a united Federation.
By contrast,  neither atheism, socialism, Islam, Indigenous animism, nor any other worldview has been able to match Christianity in producing the values necessary for Western freedoms and civic order. 

2. It can not be "incompatible with democracy" because of the causal link between Christianity and the values that produced democracy and the parliament itself.
The erosion of these values and freedoms the further we drift from those Christian roots, only confirms this causal link. 
It stands to reason that to fail to maintain that source of values would produce a cut-flowers parliament. 

3. ​If nothing else, the Prayer is an act of humility acknowledging that Parliament needs divine help. A reference point beyond Government is a humble preventative to tyranny. ​

4. The Prayer is not specific to any Christian church institution, thus represents no breach of separation of church and state. 

5. Atheists have nothing to lose by the prayer being said. If they think there is no god, to them it should not matter if the prayer is said or not. And they do not personally have to say it, so there is not breach of conscience.
Are they really so intolerant that they cannot abide the time it takes to say a prayer?

6. ​Christians lose something significant by its removal. ​For Christians, it matters that Parliament seeks God's help. We think God's help matters. James 4:2 warns, "You do not have because you do not ask God." So Christians in Parliament should be allowed, indeed encouraged, to ask God for help. 
Pascal's Wager is informative: if we pray, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. 

7. Christians are still present in Parliament. The presence of other worldviews in Parliament does not negate the presence of Christians. 

8. To argue that The Lord's Prayer is a trigger for abuse survivors must be insulting to Christians (if not also to abuse survivors.) It is to say that any reference to Christianity, even such a noble one as The Lord's Prayer, must be seen through the worst actions ever committed by people who claimed their name. ​This assertion should be rejected for the following reasons:
​- It is an unworkable approach for referencing any worldview. ​What if any reference to Socialism were to be be seen through the worst atrocities ever committed by Socialists such as Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, North Korea's Kim family. Is that the lens through which Labor Socialists expect to be seen? Should we never refer to Socialism lest the reference triggers survivors of Socialism's immeasurable record of abuse? Abuses which it should be said were committed as a feature of socialism at the time, not a bug. It would be impractical to reference any worldview that way, especially in Parliament where members must be free to say what must be said.
​- It is offensive to read any reference to a worldview through the most triggering lens.
​- It must be particularly offensive to the respectable name of Christianity, of which it must be said that any abuses committed in its name were a bug, not a feature.

Perhaps Kelly's move is ill-conceived, he just didn't think it through. If so, no harm, withdraw. 

Otherwise it is a conscious attempt to further obscure and disconnect parliament from its foundational, Christian values... to supplant it... With...? ​Hm. Why might a Labor MP push to further obscure the Christian foundations of Parliament? Do socialists want to base our democracy on socialism, as their Constitution declares? 

Now consider, what does history tell us about the success or otherwise of socialism as a source of democracy, freedoms, or civic order? 

Apprehend these reasons for retaining the Lord's Prayer, and reject the suspect reasoning behind moves to remove it.