The Spectator Australia have published a piece I wrote on one of the top issues being discussed in Australia at the moment.
Strangers No More – Christianity and Immigration
How are we going to have a good conversation about immigration that makes sense of our distinct Australian history?
The past few months have seen something of a groundswell of real concern that Australia might soon be reaching a tipping point that we can’t return from. I’m originally from the UK with family roots in Central Europe. It’s not hard to see the trajectory that Australia is on when almost exactly the same script is being played out for us on the other side of the world – they’re just a few scenes further into the play.
How can it be that the same Western Europe that gave birth to modern Australia is now seemingly abandoning all those things that made it so great in the first place?
Even more interestingly for me as an Anglican minister, how have we ended up drifting so far from our culturally Christian roots? Can those same foundations help us now as we seek an answer to the vexed question of immigration?
I do wonder David, what was so wrong with the Anglo-Celtic culture that created the Australia that so many other cultures have been allowed to flock to….that required it to be replaced?
It seems that all over the West…and yes that does mean predominantly white, there is an unholy hurry, not by consent of any electorate, to change the traditional demographic of the country, to a multicultural one, as soon as possible.
What drives this desire?
hi Alan. I don’t think there was (or is) anything so wrong with it. My argument is, however, that it was the gospel that shaped it into something that made Australia attractive to others (as I point out in my piece).
The desire is driven by a number of things, not least by a cultural gospel generosity. We sing “For those who’ve come across the seas, We’ve boundless plains to share” – that didn’t come from nowhere; it’s a gospel imperative to give and care for others.
What we’ve failed to discern in the West (as I also argue in my piece) is that we’ve lost sight corporately of the distinctives that made us who we are and so we no longer know what boundaries to place on that invitation.
Thanks David, I would agree.
We seem to have replaced traditional, Christian values here in the UK with a push by governments to adopt ‘’British values’’, which appear to be indistinguishable from any other liberal democracy you care to name.
In the cohesive and homogenous culture present prior to the 1950’s, where there was, not coincidentally, a much higher church attendance at our ‘’national’ church, no one would have thought to ask or been required to adopt ‘’British values’’, as we all instinctively knew what they were, even if they could not be named.
However, due to the massive changes of for example, more immigration in the last 30 years, than in the last thousand, coupled with significant attacks on all religions by liberal secularism, that distinctiveness you speak of is fast disappearing and people are beginning to notice and not in a good way.
Conversely, those lost Christian values that underpin our culture, now falling away due to secularism and perhaps other competing religious values, where even our King has now declared himself ‘’defender of faith’’, rather than ‘’the faith’’, are being replaced by the pseudo-Christian values of ‘’woke’’ and the general requirement to ‘’be kind’’ and ‘’tolerant’’…but only for causes that the majority find problematic and woe betide that same majority if they do not agree to go along.
I don’t doubt Australia is on the same path, but Britain I think is the canary in the coal mine that Australia should be mindful of.
Many thanks