A look at Aussie Christian Nationalists

Australian Christian nationalists are here, but different from the American variety was one finding of “Christian Nationalism and the Australian Church,” a webinar hosted by the University of Divinity.

The helpful discussion was hosted by Prof Glen O’Brien of Eva Burrows College in the University of Divinity, and organised by Dr Sue Holdsworth, a post-doctoral associate at the College. Holdsworth noted that a book is expected to be published later this year.

An active researcher of the topic, Dr Elenie Poulos, an adjunct fellow at Macquarie University in the School of International Studies, stepped in at short notice as the first plenary speaker.

Associate Professor Robyn Whitaker from Pilgrim Theological College at the University of Divinity was to have spoken on the gendered aspects of Christian Nationalism, and this will be added to the forthcoming book.

Poulos identified the Australian variant of Christian nationalism, using the concept of a “social imaginary,” an idea or ideas of the story of the nation: for Christian nationalists, the idea of Australia as a Christian nation.

“Most of the research, as you probably know, comes from the US and to a lesser extent, the UK and Europe,” Poulos said. “From the research that does exist and my work on the Australian Christian right and Christian populist discourse, I have a strong sense that Australian Christian nationalism is at least a little bit different, but possibly quite different to what we see in the US.”

She points to the work of Associate Professor David Smith from the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre and a co-host of an ABC podcast. “He published an article in 2021, which examined the use of the term Christian nation in public discourse. He looked at a selection of media and articles, speeches by politicians and submissions to public inquiries. What he found was that the use of the term was declining. He also found that the only politician who explicitly referred to Australia as a Christian country was Pauline Hanson. There were no examples of Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison, for example, referring to Australia in that way as a Christian nation.”

Poulos drew on “probably the most influential and often contested definition of Christian nationalism” from Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry’s 2020 book, Taking America Back for God. She saw this as defining the US version.

“They defined it this way. Christian nationalism is a cultural framework, a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems that idealises and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life. The Christianity of Christian nationalism represents something more than religion. It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious.”

Poulo’s list of Australian Christian nationalists included
• Joel Jammal of the licensed branch of Turning Point.
• Former Deputy PM John Anderson, and his podcast
• The Canberra Declaration and its daily declaration website
• Senator Alex Antic (Liberal SA)
• Andrew Hastie MP (Liberal WA
• Lyle Shelton, now running Family First Party, but cited for his work heading up a group opposed to the voice to parliament.
• David Pellowe, who leads “Church and State” conferences.
• Augusto Zimmerman, cited as a law professor at Sheridan College in Perth, but more recently the foundation professor of law at Alphacrucis University College.

Poulos describes her examples as “more subtle, less brash, and certainly less violent than the Christian nationalism of the US. There is no sense in any of what I’ve shared with you today and other pieces of writing and text and speeches … no sense of Christian exceptionalism that comes in. No sustained rhetoric of Australia as a nation chosen by God to save the world.”

Yet the locals share the concern about the future of Western civilisation with the US and UK cohorts.

“The story of this social imaginary is that Australia belongs with white Western Christian civilization… Australia’s values, heritage and identity can only be saved by those who understand the true foundations of Australia’s nationhood. This story, however, relies on a myth about a white Christian Australia. That place never existed. And even though the policy designed to make it real, the white Australia policy failed, the myth remains a powerful force in Australia’s social and political life.”

“Christian nationalism regards acknowledgement of Australia’s brutal colonialist history and the movement for justice and self-determination for the First Nations peoples as divisive and un-Australian and a religious threat to Christianity’s rightful place in our culture and politics. The country’s rapidly growing religious and cultural diversity is experienced as an existential threat to our social cohesion, to our identity as a nation.”

Yet we have a milder version of Christian Nationalist locally. “Australian Christian nationalists are not building a movement for Christian government, or at least not yet,” Poulos concludes. The locals are working at an earlier stage. “They are seeking to set or reset the guardrails and the qualifications for belonging, and Christianity is the only true foundation for those guardrails.”

A taxonomy of Christian nationalism

Dr Mike Bird, the deputy principal at Ridley College in Melbourne, listed six variants of Christian Nationalist, identifying several as having theological roots.

“The title of this paper ‘Caesarizing the Messiah and Messianizing Caesar,’ is intended to capture the two interlocking distortions that lie at the heart of the Christian nationalist ideology,” Bird stated.

“The first distortion involves the transformation of the theory of Jesus. In Christian nationalism, the Prince of Peace is fashioned into a warrior king, a divine champion of national greatness and a heavenly sponsor of a cultural hierarchy.

“The second distortion involves the elevation of a human political figure, typically an authoritarian strong man, to quasi-Messianic status, as though political power exercised with sufficient force and wrapped in sufficient religious paraphernalia could accomplish what only the crucified and resurrected Jesus could.

“These two distortions are not simply political areas, though they are that. They are theological areas of the gravest kind. Errors that I would argue amount to a form of idolatry that the writers of the New Testament would have recognised and condemned.”

Citing US definitions by Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry in The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, Bird pithily summarised Christian nationalism as “the view that Christians must be in charge and the end justifies the means.”

Here is a brief version of Bird’s taxonomy.
• Reformed theonomy. “This is rooted in post-millennial reform theology drawing heavily on the Puritan and Covenantal traditions.” Bird pointed to R.J. Rushdoony and Greg Bahnsen as examples from the 70s and 80s.

• Charismatic dominionists. Bird identified this group as the most common Christian nationalist group in Australia. “This is where you get things like the Seven Mountains mandate going back to the late 1970s that urges Christians to take dominion over several key social institutions, family, education, arts, media, government, religion, and business. Such dominion must be restored before Jesus’ return.”

• Catholic integralism. “This is J.D. Vance, the US Vice President, probably has a dog in this fight. Catholic integralists reject the liberal order inaugurated by the enlightenment and the accommodations of the Second Vatican Council to modernity.”

• The Baptist paradox. “This dream represents a paradoxal inversion of classic Baptist principles, attending to merge evangelical populism with Christian exceptionalism … They deploy the biblical language of liberty and conscience for their brand of Christianity, but ultimately they want Christian control.”

• Christian kinism. Bird described this as “the most racialized form of Christian nationalism … drawing upon Old Testament narratives such as Ezra, Nehemiah, and the post-exilic restoration community as the primary model. To argue that maintaining ethnic boundaries and even ethnic purity preserves the moral and spiritual integrity of God’s people.”

•Christian Caesarism. “For them, the Christian nation is less about authentic faith and more about public order and cultural heritage. They appeal to Christianity symbolic capital in flags in churches, patriotic worship services at the Pentagon, Christian symbols on public buildings, the fusion of national and religious identity, ought to sacralize the nation’s identity and mission in the world. This type of Christian nationalism appears prominently in the populist politics of the present moment in which Christiani functions as a marker of tribal belonging rather than a source of moral transformation.”

Bird’s strongest criticism of Christian nationalism centred on how these movements distort Jesus. “Perhaps the worst element of Christian nationalism is its own portrayal of Jesus. It results in a systematic distortion of the figure of Jesus as he’s presented in the canonical gospels and in the broad Christian tradition. The Jesus who delivered the sermon on the mount who determined a blessedness, not as military prowess or national greatness or cultural dominance, but founded in poverty, mourning, meekness, and hunger for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking and willingness to suffer. That Jesus does not map onto Christian nationalism very well.”

“SIn the end, I would say Christian nationalism serves a God without love who brought men without conscience to a kingdom without justice through the ministrations of a Christ with an AR-15. Apologies to Richard Niebuhr for that analogy.”

Bird’s recommended response? “The response to Christian nationalism from within the Christian tradition must therefore not be merely political but theological, a recovery of the true Jesus.”

Correction: Elenie Poulos’ name.