The history of this ancient continent has always been multicultural, and the Christian scriptures offer no support for the exclusionary monoculture now being promoted from the political right.
The strident calls for a “monoculture” issued recently by Pauline Hanson and Tony Abbott are but another variant of an increasing call from the right for Australia to return to being a Judeo-Christian state, the implied assumption being that Australia ever was. Such calls represent a yearning to return to an idealised Anglosphere (the Irish somehow oddly fitting in), marked by English-speaking people, the Christian religion (with a smattering of Jewishness), and of course, white. This ignores the fact that Australia was never a monoculture.
I am sufficiently old to remember the strict tribal division between the Anglo-Protestant non-Labor voting establishment and the Irish-Catholic non-establishment, who voted Labor, before the intrusion of the DLP into that neat duopoly. The tribes were fierce and the territory of each stoutly defended, from sport (think of Bradman and O’Reilly) to departments in the Public Service (most clearly seen in the alternation of Mason, then Catholic, as NSW Police Commissioner).
That battle between the tribes reached its height in the conscription battles of the First World War, where “Irish Catholics”, led by Melbourne’s Archbishop Mannix, were viewed as traitorous for their opposition to conscription. So deep was the division the Labor Party had to wait until the late 1960s to have its first non-Catholic leader: Gough Whitlam. The Liberal Party waited even longer for its first Catholic leader, the NSW Premier, Nick Greiner.
It all seems so distantly quaint now. Monochrome though it may have been, monocultural it certainly was not. Of course, ignored in all that sectarianism were the repressed hundreds of cultures, long present in the land’s First Nation’s peoples.
Following the Second World War, under the “populate or perish” creed, the gates opened, first to British migrants, succeeded by those near enough to being as good as Brits, the Dutch and “Balts”, followed then by Italians, Greeks and Lebanese, each somewhat further from the ideal Brit. Still white though, or sufficiently near. Despite the almost monochrome colour (enforced by legislation and dictation test), a multi-culture had well and truly emerged. We know the rest. With the abolition of the “White Australia” policy, a massive influx of people from around the world followed.
Australia has always been marked by different cultures, right through its history, both before European invasion and since. So Tony, Pauline, your idealised monoculture Australia has never existed. And clearly, despite your fervent wishing, it never will.
A quick stroll through Cabramatta or Dandenong confirms the inanity of any vision of a return to a monocultural society. To believe we will is to be “pissing into the wind.”
Returning to the assumption that Judeo-Christian values can justify any such monoculture: there may well be a cultural Christianity, which often lends support to the idea, but that cultural Christianity is a long way removed from any message of Jesus.
The writers of the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) understood that clearly. To the question as to whether the message of Jesus could be contained in the old category of religion, marked by ethnicity and tradition, their answer was unequivocally no. The “new wine couldn’t be contained in the old wine skins”. In saying so, they faced strong opposition from those holding that the message of Jesus should be so contained.
It would be fair to say that the core issue debated in the Christian Scriptures is the question of race and ethnicity, inclusion or exclusion. That the church came to embrace (sometimes problematically) people of every background demonstrates its resolution.
Thus, the Christian Scriptures, which bound the church together, were written in koine (common) Greek, the lingua franca of the period. This was a sign of its inclusive nature.
The season of Pentecost, in which we now are, celebrates the multicultural birth of the church. The reading informing that celebration is from Acts 2. It recounts how the apostles, when the Holy Spirit fell upon them, were empowered to speak all the languages of their surrounding cultures: “Parthians, and Medes and Elamites and of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia (Acts 2:9-11)”. One need not get caught up in whether such could occur; the meaning of the story is the point. The conclusion clearly is that the message of Christ cannot be constrained by cultural or ethnic bounds.
The Acts’ story connects to the Genesis story (Genesis 11) around which it is clearly constructed in opposition. In the Genesis story a monoculture, by building a mighty edifice, believes it can lift itself to heaven by its own effort. That effort fails.
So will all other efforts aiming to create a monocultural edifice. This ought to be cause for celebration, not reactive fear.
John Queripel is a Newcastle-based historian, theologian, social commentator and published author of four books. His latest book, ‘In Wisdom and in Passion: Comparing and Contrasting Buddha and Christ’. His examination of the Easter events, ‘On the Third Day: Re-looking at the Resurrection’ has just been re-printed. His blog may be found at www.johnqueripelblog.com.Substack / https://johnqueripel.substack.com’