The writer is in Australia
OBSERVERS of political developments in Britain and Australia are currently seeing much overlap.
In both countries, there is a deeply unpopular political class, as represented by the two legacy branches of the UniParty, growing recognition by the punters of the system failure shared by both polities, shared first order problems like mass immigration, Muslim power plays that are getting way out of control, rampant authoritarianism, procedural politics and technocracy in London and Canberra, online tyranny, woke sneering at the populace, and economic stagnation driven by an ideological/religious commitment to climate catastrophism.
And, despite massively unfit-for-purpose electoral systems in each country, the insurgent parties are smashing through the glass ceilings. At least in the polls. It is a great start.
Recent events in each country suggest game-changing breakthroughs. The UK local council elections may well have marked the end of a premiership, though Shameless Starmer is fighting on. In Great Yarmouth, Restore Britain emerged triumphant and hopeful, while Reform UK continues its plunder on the UniParty system.
Australia’s Farrer by-election smashed the Liberals and Nationals and did not deliver comfort for the greenie candidate. One Nation has emerged from grievance status to a serious party. According to a recent poll, One Nation now leads Labor. The Liberal led Coalition is way back in the weeds.
This is huge. A potential electoral revolution is now suddenly in play.
But there is a seeming difference between Australia and the UK. There is an increasing focus within the British insurgency that is Christian, or Christian adjacent. More and more pundits, whether or not they are practising Christians, are emphasising the Christian bit of the existential threat to ‘the West’. There are echoes in Australia, but they are, again, subdued.
Take the former Anglican clergyman and now baptised Catholic Gavin Ashenden as one British example. This former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II is a vocal critic of mass immigration and current border policies. He argues that unchecked immigration threatens British cultural identity, deepens societal fragmentation, and is driven by liberal governing classes aiming to fundamentally alter traditional Western societies. His regular contributions can be found here.
Then there is Bishop Ceirion Dewar, a missionary bishop in the breakaway Confessing Anglican Church (CAC). The ‘confessing’ name intentionally echoes the historic Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church) led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1930s Germany, which resisted state-imposed ideology and theological compromise. He has used his voice to great effect, pitting Christian values against the globalist, Muslim-embracing establishment. Including the King himself. He even led a UTK (Unite the Kingdom) rally in prayer.
Rita Panahi of Sky News Australia has noticed the ‘Christian symbolism’ that is apparent across the British protest movement.
Britain is exhorted by the insurgency movement to remain, or become again, one nation under God. To be precise, the Christian God. The insurgency is seen broadly as a moral fight, a battle for the soul of the country.
Of course, Gavin Ashenden doesn’t speak for the Church’s hierarchy in Britain or in Rome. The woke C of E leadership has made its (entirely to be expected) views on the Unite the Kingdom movement quite clear.
The Church of England (C of E) actively rejects the political ‘Unite the Kingdom’ movement led by Tommy Robinson. Rather than endorsing it, senior C of E bishops rushed instead to the newspapers to denounce it.
Their letter to the Times criticised the co-opting of Christian symbols such as the cross ‘to promote nationalist agendas, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and division’.
The mainstream churches are clearly against what they term ‘religious nationalism’, defined as ‘far-right and populist groups increasingly adopting militant Christian rhetoric to fuel anti-immigration and anti-Islamic sentiments’.
Ashenden and Dewar however, neither of whom are minor players, are willing to lend their loud Christian voices to the insurgency cause, and to do it persistently and fearlessly. To lay out their views and to back them up with reasoned, Christian, arguments.
In Australia, there is far less Christian symbolism. And there is, if anything, even more pointed official Church condemnation.
Just take one example: the treatment by a key organ of the Catholic Church of a series of March for Australia rallies, their organisers, speakers and attendees, who dared to align themselves with the kinds of immigration policies advocated by One Nation.
The March for Australia folks decided to push back against the direction of ideological travel approved by the establishment, and focus on Australian identity and mass migration. For this, they were smeared by Sydney’s Catholic Church masthead, The Catholic Weekly, in the name of warm and fuzzy multiculturalism. Two CW journalists, in particular, took aim at March for Australia. Monica Doumit wrote:
‘I have to say, the March for Australia protests that occurred across the country at the end of last month made me uncomfortable on many levels. As the daughter and granddaughter of migrants who came to Australia in the 1940s and 1950s, whose family has thrived by being welcomed into the greatest country in the world, I am uncomfortable at the suggestion that this opportunity should be denied others.
‘I am also uncomfortable because my Middle Eastern cultural heritage would not be included in the “Anglo-European” ideal advocated by some speakers at the rallies. According to these people, despite being born here, my family would still be viewed in some corners as being Australians only through the benevolent concession of those who represent “true” Australian culture and our welcome contingent on our assimilation into this group.’
As one of the speakers at the Sydney rally said: ‘NSW was not for sale to the highest bidder – but was set aside for sons and daughters of Britannia, the nation-forming people of this land, and other Europeans who assimilated into our number.’
Another CW journalist, Daniel Ang, went further:
‘The recent “March for Australia” campaign, drawing heavily from ideological currents in the United States and uniting a patchwork of disparate causes, has once again brought immigration to the forefront of public contention. Debates over migration levels, anxieties around demographic change, and thinly veiled fears of “white replacement” have revealed an undercurrent of racial resentment – one that not only circulates in broader Australian society but is increasingly evident within some quarters of the Catholic Church.’
And on he goes. Ang isn’t just a random journalist venting. He is the Director of the Sydney Archdiocese’s Centre for Evangelisation. Presumably speaking with the approval of the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher. Christians down under are concerned about the destruction of their national identity and culture. And many see our identity as largely formed by our British heritage, what with its rule of law, its democratic institutions, its parliamentary traditions, its industrial revolution, its Enlightenment and its Christian mission, derived from England, Scotland and Ireland.
Good Lord! That we should want to preserve this in the face of daily attacks on it, many of which are sanctioned by a political class with which the Church hierarchy seems comfortable.
Ang’s article was written pre-Bondi, when the fruits of our open borders, Islam-welcoming policies came home to roost.
With the massive recent growth in polled support for the views of March for Australia participants, with its probable near-total overlap with stated One Nation voters, the CW journalists’ views excoriating March for Australia as extremist and unAustralian look a little out-of-date.
As yet we have no Gavin Ashenden or Bishop Dewar down under. The traditionalist Catholic influencer (and covid hero), Monica Smit, is one of the few examples of an Australian Christian commentator comfortable siding with One Nation and its priorities. Dave Pellowe, founder of the Evangelical Church and State movement, an Australian Christian conservative commentator and political educator who has notably interviewed Pauline Hanson and invited her to speak at Church and State conferences, might be another.
Another is the indefatigable, irrepressible George Christensen. A serious Christian and a patriot. A member of One Nation. A prominent voice with many tens of thousands of online followers. But they are outliers. And George Pell is gone, alas. So do we yet have One Nation under God? Well, Pauline Hanson isn’t a Christian but her voting record suggests broad sympathy, as do her recent statements about Australia being a Christian country.
As in the UK, official Australian Christianity might be backing the wrong horse.
Insurgency against the state imposition of migration is rising right across the West, as a result of, though not solely, their open borders regimes.
If current policies are allowed to continue, we might well become one nation under Allah. With Sharia law baked in.
What will our churches and their spokesmen say then? Will church hierarchies in both Britain and Australia look back on the current period in which they have been siding with mainstream politics and woke outcomes, and cringe?
Will they continue to prioritise being nice to everyone and maintaining head-in-the-sand political correctness over confronting what sharp minds and observant (in both senses of the word) Christians are seeing right before their eyes: an existential threat to our tolerant, Christian way of life.
