Stan Grant and Greg Sheridan sat down to discuss “How Christians Can Succeed Today,” Sheridan’s new book, in the Art Deco Splendour of the lounge at Mosman’s Hayden Orpheum theatre. The event drew representatives of what Sheridan jokingly called the “three denominations”: Scott Morrison from the Libs, Bob Carr from Labor and John Anderson from the Nats, which is worth mentioning to say the book looks to be one that gains attention. John Dickson, academic and also an author, was there, acknowledged as a source for the book’s dive into ancient history..
Grant and Sheridan both claimed that being platformed together could ruin each of their reputations. Like the book itself, their conversation took us back to the lives of the early Christians – not the very earliest who had the advantage of knowing Jesus, but those, like us, living in the world without him physically present.
” One of the things you hear, and I think this was also a challenge for the Roman Empire, is that the Christians were seen as a few people who had conquered death in terms of the fear of death,” Grant commented early in the discussion. “Polycarp is fascinating because, of course, when he’s arrested, when they come to his own to take him, to execute him, he welcomes them in and provides refreshments for them. Talk about this idea that was so challenging, and where did this come from, Greg, this absolute faith that this world was not the end and this life was not the end?
Sheridan: “Well, that is really a wonderful difference between the pagan view and the Christian view. And I write a good part of a chapter on this difference in the view of death. Ultimately, all the great pagan philosophers are pessimistic about death. Some of them believe in a kind of a half-life after life, but most of them believe that in the end, life is futile and it just ends at death. There’s nothing more. So it offers nothing.
“And the pagan gods were selfish gods. They weren’t interested in humanity, and they had no ethical system. They just wanted sacrifice to be paid for them, and therefore they might favour Rome. Christians, as you say, had conquered death because their rabbi, Jesus, had risen from the grave and had conquered death. And all Christians had the promise of eternal life. And it is striking how many Christians had psychological self-possession as they were taken to death. Now you read the Christian accounts of Christians being brave and stoic and kindly in death.
“And there are many transcripts of trials, Polycarp course, as you’re saying, many others who were put on trial, and they’re very gracious to their accusers. And in the trial of Cyprian, the Roman officials say, just denounce Jesus and you can go free. And Cyprian says, I’ve lived all these years as a servant of Jesus. Why would I denounce it? Never done anything wrong to me. I’m not going to denounce him now. And Paul, too, in his last letters from prison, clearly has psychological self-possession.”
Explaining the link between these early Christians and our modern situation – in effect explaining the title of the book being launched, “How Christians can succeed today: Reclaiming the genius of the early church,” Sheridan honours Paul and Augustine.
“This book of mine concentrates on the Christians just after the apostles because they in a sense they are moderns. They’re like us. The people who had Jesus standing beside them; I think even a coward like me might pretend to be brave for a minute. If Jesus were standing right next to me, I could draw on his strength. But when Jesus is not there physically, that’s the circumstance of modern people, and the early Christians are like the moderns in that sense. So they found that Christ was reality in their life. Their relationship with Christ was very relational. Paul is a modern because he’s there without having known Christ on earth…”
“The two great conversions in a sense in early human history are Paul and Augustine. I think the two conversions which had the greatest consequence for human history, I mean, it’s a paradox worth noting that everyone who lives in Western society today lives in a society essentially created in North Africa. Augustine, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, they gave us Western Christianity; and they were all North Africans. So we live in a North African culture, but [UK philosopher] Roger Scruton, in a very fine book, [Beauty] argues that the greatest evidence of God is the long human experience of God. And I know you’ve written about this Stan, and I’ll ask you about this in a second. Aboriginal Australians were they knew God before Europeans came here.”
Much later, Grant says, as Jum Naden, a cousin of Grant, is mentioned as one of the contemporary Christians interviewed for the book: “Pope Benedict, I think, really summed us up for me. He talked about Aboriginal faith, referring to indigenous faith around the world, but he said he called them, expectant religions, Aboriginal spirituality. He said they wait for the line of Christ. And then he said something which was just astonishing. He said, and Christ waits for them. And that fulfilment in my faith as a Wiradjuri person negates all those people who say, ‘how can you be Christian and Aboriginal? God didn’t arrive on the first place.’”
The conversation had drifted back to Tertullian, unable not to mention his self castration. But it gets back on track, and back to the apostle to the Gentiles.
Grant: “Paul was magnificent. This is not a document he created. He translated the true meaning of Jesus in my view, in his universes, and that very famous statement, there is neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free male and female, but you are all one in Christ Jesus. And that is an extraordinary move and we’re here in the room because of that. It washes up on my shores and leads me, my family and my people, The majority of Aboriginal people are Christians in the fastest growing Catholic demographic in Australia.”
Sheridan sees Paul as a figure for today.
“So Jesus has a long private conversation with Nicodemus who is a person of some means and he reveals to him the truth as well. Now, the conversion of the intellectuals is quite fascinating, and it’s sort of happening again today. I mean, we, Niall Ferguson and David Brooks, and there’s a whole swarm of intellectuals taking up Christianity right now. It’s like the 1930s, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene and everybody. Paul, of course, was a pivotal figure here because he was the first city cosmopolitan intellectual who was a Christian.”
In case this sounds like a conversation about males, here is Sheridan on Lydia, describing Paul venturing down to the riverside in Philippi, Western Türkiye, where he met her.
“And he goes to a place that is not exactly a synagogue, but people go there who are praying. There are only women there. There are no men. Always very, very clear. There are many more women than men in the early Christian movement. Women are absolutely pivotal all through the gospel story itself. First person to hear of Jesus, a woman, the first person to proclaim Jesus, a woman, the first person to hear Jesus proclaimed is a woman, the first person to see the risen Jesus, a woman. It’s not the best for blokes, but there it is, and only women are there, and he converts Lydia. Lydia is on fire with Paul’s messaging, and Lydia is a merchant; she’s a seller of cloth, and she brings her household to be converted. Now it’s her household. So if she’s the head of the household, it probably was an all-female household, and she founds with Paul, the first Christian Church in Europe, and the whole of Europe is in Lydia’s debt, and Paul remains devoted to her and to that church forever after.”
And towards the end of the conversation, the discussion is about contemporary Christians, who take up the second half of the book, reclaimers perhaps of the genius of the early church, the book’s title would suggest. And following on from Lydia, the novelist Marilynne Robinson is the topic – possibly picked out because the Grant Sheridan conversation is at a book launch.
Grant: “We are almost out of time, and we could talk all night. But I do want to finish on a reflection about culture and how faith enters culture. And you talk about various writing, we have swapped stories and books of our favourite writers who were informed by faith, but Marilynne Robinson and her book, particularly her book Gilead, which was so countercultural, astonishing in a world where novels are so often loud, political, arch, that she spoke about something so softly and something so tender. Talk about Gilead, Marilyn Robinson and just a reflection on how faith can find a foothold through culture and speak to people.”
Sheridan: “Well, interviewing Marilynne Robinson was really one of the great experiences of my life. The great Christian novels of the 19th century were Russian Orthodox – Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, the great Christian novels of the 20th century, predominantly Catholic, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and others, but the greatest Christian novelist of the 21st century by a million miles, Marilynne Robinson.
“The novel Gilead is the reflection in the year of 1956 of the 77-year-old congregationalist minister who’s led a completely uneventful life. He married when young and his wife died almost straight away. Then he married when he was 70. He’s got a 7-year-old son, and he’s got a bad heart condition, and he knows he is about to die. And he writes a letter about his life to his son. Now you could not imagine anything less dramatic, and yet it won the Pulitzer Prize. It’s an enthralling, it’s a wonderful novel. Barack Obama was campaigning in Iowa. He picked it up off the bookshelf, just as a bit of local stuff to read and he fell completely under its spell, fell in love with the pastor John Ames as did. I challenge anyone to read it. I didn’t want it to end because I didn’t want the conversation with John Ames to end.”
How Christians can Succeed Today: Reclaiming the genius of the early church
by Greg Sheridan, Allen and Unwin 2025 $34.99