Correcting the Record: Church position on voting

In the lead up to the Australian Election on 5 May 2025, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church was subject to significant levels of political commentary and media scrutiny, owing to some of our members choosing to volunteer in the election campaign. This criticism was unfounded. 

These volunteer activities were not organised by the church.

The decision of Church members to support various candidates from a range of political parties was a matter for those individuals.

Further, our church does not campaign for, nor support, nor donate to any political parties and has not organised or coordinated any volunteer efforts of any type in any location.

And finally, the political views of individual members do not represent the church’s view.

That said, there is a line of questioning which we do accept as fair. The question has been put to the church as to how members can participate in the political process, when our website says “generally, church members do not vote.”

While this has always been about personal beliefs, traditionally most of us have not voted. Most of our members exercised their right on religious grounds to abstain from voting, while only a few exercised their democratic right to vote in elections.

Over time, more of our members have apparently chosen to vote and even volunteer for political parties. It is important that this democratic right be respected, while the right of those to abstain on religious grounds remains protected.

We have updated our website to reflect contemporary practice, while reaffirming that for people who believe they should abstain, the exemption from voting needs to remain.

To conclude, we note that in his victory speech, our Prime Minister, Mr Albanese went out of his way to make the point that “no matter how you worship…we are all Australians.” We acknowledge that this was a gracious, fair and admirable position for him to take.

Our past statements on this matter have been archived but can be read here:

Statement on Australian Federal Election campaign

Response to unfortunate comments from the Australian Prime Minister

Support for church families following Prime Minister’s comments at their school this afternoon