Flat White
David Ould
3 November 2025
7:55 AM
3 November 2025
7:55 AM
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?
Rev. Dr. Michael Jensen’s recent piece Strangers together: Immigration and the Christian imagination on the ABC Ethics and Religion site is one attempt to provide an answer. Michael sets out a Christian view of welcoming the stranger noting carefully at the beginning that this is really a conversation about who we think we are and, crucially, whether the stranger can become part of us – or will who we imagine that we are cease to be? It’s exactly the right question to ask but his answer is missing a key ingredient.
As I read carefully through Jensen’s piece, I couldn’t help note that something was lacking; a confidence to assert and (dare I say it) proselytise for the goodness of what has been created here in Australia. There is much of what Michael writes that I wholeheartedly agree with. The difference in my own position is one of small degrees – the application and outworking of some of his observations – but like all small variances there can be a massive difference at the end of the path. As Michael notes towards the end of his piece, we are heirs, not architects, of grace. Yet we have had the privilege of taking part in building its legacy even as we receive its gifts and I fear that in Michael’s piece there is an underselling of what has been constructed using that architecture and a consequent lessening of the impetus to preserve it. And preserving it is what this debate is all about.
Reading the Story in Detail
Jensen’s account of the Biblical meta-narrative – Creation, Fall, and then a dispersal of the nations – is exactly the right place to start. He is also correct to locate Israel’s welcome of the stranger as the first model we have of acceptance in the face of immigration. But he has passed over one important aspect of the Hebrews’ acceptance of the sojourner and stranger.
We might call it theo-cultural assimilation.
Yes, the Torah insisted on a generous hospitality but at the same time it was always clear who was inside the camp and who was not. For the stranger to belong they had to become part of the religious life of Israel. If they want to celebrate the Passover, writes Moses, they should do it properly. The repeated phrase ‘there shall be one law for you for the native and for the stranger who sojourns amongst you’ rings out loud throughout all these many instructions. Ruth’s story (that Jensen rightly notes is a paradigm of such inclusion into the life of Israel) proclaims this boldly as Ruth declares ‘your people shall be my people and your God my God’ (Ruth 1:16). She then becomes a very important Jewish character in a very Jewish story, even if she never lost her Moabite accent. The foreigner was truly a test of Israel’s faithfulness; not just in welcoming them but in incorporating them fully into what was only ever presented as the better way to live together.
The Old Testament is full of warnings to not allow the foreign visitor to pull Israel away from her holy vocation of being a particular chosen nation with the consequent duty of proclaiming God’s goodness to the rest of the world (Exo. 19:5-6), the same goodness that was lived out in every aspect of their common life.
The Shift to the Secular?
Of course, Israel was a theocracy at a particular moment in time with the clock inevitably counting down to something else. That something else came with the arrival of Jesus. Now, the New Testament declares, Christians are to live out spiritual realities that the physical story of ancient Israel always pointed to. Again, I have no disagreement with Jensen’s argument at this point. We stand facing the same direction in so much. The church itself lives out the fulfilment of the model we see in BC Israel and promised more starkly through the prophets: Gentiles streaming into Israel, longing to be part of what God has done here. But the Israel in view is no longer a strip of land in the Middle East; it is the fulfilment of the promise that that land represented. It is a gathering of people from all over the world drawn together by a gospel that is, as the Apostle Paul puts it, ‘first to the Jews and also to the Greek’ (Rom. 1:16). The same gathering is seen in the visionary language of Revelation as the Apostle John’s breath is taken away by ‘a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages’ ( Rev. 7:9) even as they still constitute twelve tribes (Rev. 7:4-8).
This is the eschatological arc of history that the Scriptures reveal to us. A single humanity that half develops, half fractures, into distinct people groups and nations that are finally wonderfully brought together again not by a One World Government but under the uniting headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is what Jensen rightly labels ‘reconciled diversity’. It is a profound view of the future that breaks into the present. The end of all things being lived out in the now.
One of the great joys of pastoral ministry is being involved in churches where this future reality is experienced in the present. Our congregations in the heart of Western Sydney are made up of people from so many of those nations, tribes, and peoples and languages. Yet in their diversity there is a remarkable unity around a common way of living together. Just as there was unity in ancient Israel, even if the marker of that unity is now not outward adherence to the Mosaic law but a living trust in Jesus.
A New Relationship with the State
All of the above is why I am not persuaded by the various attempts to put forward a vision for something known as Christian Nationalism. In its simplest form, Christian Nationalism is a worldview that contends for nation states that have both Christian and ethnic coherence. God formed us into different nations, they argue, and so different nations we should be with the distinct ethnic boundaries that God has set in place. If God has made those nations, is it not also right to rule them under Christian governance? It would be wrong to dismiss the appeal of such a venture, yet ultimately it jars with the Biblical trajectory that we have just looked at. If this is a distinctively Christian Nationalism then where is the Christian worldview that sees the division of the peoples of the world as something that will be overcome in Christ? What Christ joins together, Christian Nationalism appears to keep asunder.
This is not the only reason to look elsewhere for a new way of doing things. The New Testament’s view of the relationship between the believer and the state is very different to what came before, even as it shows us the fulfilment of it.
The theocracy has served its purpose, now the Christian must navigate life under a paganocracy.
Jesus famously told his followers to render to Caesar what was Caesar’s. Both Paul and Peter urged the church to submit to the pagan rulers (Rom. 13:1, 1Pet. 2:13 etc.). There is quite obviously no assumption that God’s people will have political control over God’s world. On the contrary, Christians often found themselves at the bottom of the ladder, despised by the culture around them and persecuted by the governing authorities. This, the early church took for granted, was normal. ‘Don’t be surprised by these trials, as though something strange was happening to you,’ was what Peter wrote to those first suffering Christians (1Pet. 4:12).
And then something remarkable happened. As Christianity spread rapidly, not by force but by simple persuasion of message and life, it began to strongly influence the very same governments that had previously sought to stamp it out. Consuls, Prefects, and even Caesars were converted and Rome became a Christian Empire. As the good news about Jesus spread even further afield the same thing happened. All across Europe pagan lands became Christian. As Jensen so clearly relates, this change brought with it a whole new way of viewing the person. Now, rather than seeing people as victims of fate or acting out a role in life they could not escape from (particularly if they were born into poverty or slavery), my neighbour was suddenly someone made in the image of God with all the rights and freedoms to be protected that such a status naturally confers. Christendom had arrived.
Naming the Problem. Loudly
It’s hard to underestimate quite how profoundly this has shaped how we understand ourselves in Australia today. You can’t oversell this enough as a concept that needs to be grasped.
Tom Holland’s Dominion is as good an attempt as any to describe the saturation of our Western value system with Christian thinking. Jensen describes them as ‘moral commitments’. He, of course, is not denying their benefit but in a piece seeking to grapple with the vexed question of how levels of immigration shape our common self-understanding as a nation I would hope to see not just a description but unfettered praise!
The Christian cannot be passively academic about the rich benefits that Christian thought has brought to Australia. Equality and tolerance are not virtues to be defined but lauded with every breath. Jensen notes that our modern liberalism takes them for granted; he is right to note that the ‘fading of the Christian imagination’ is taking place ‘among the host culture, rather than the arrival of migrants’ and yet he overlooks how the arrival of those migrants also contributes to this loss. Whether the original dye fades or the mix is diluted, the effect is the same. Both are problems, even if the former has led to naivety about the latter. The fabric becomes faded and generic and loses the very thing that made it so attractive in the first place.
This is the fundamental question facing Australia. If it really is the ‘fading of the Christian imagination’ (and I agree that it is) then any contribution to that fading must be addressed, no matter how difficult the conversation will be. But this can only be done if one is convinced in the first place that the thing that is fading is worth preserving. Our liberal society no longer knows who it is, even if it is still much influenced. You don’t have to be a true believer in Jesus to have your thoughts shaped by him. It’s just the water that we’ve been swimming in even if we don’t realise we’re wet. So surely those who recognise the issue must speak loudly and clearly in its defence, not simply describe what is happening as though they were a passive observer.
You know who isn’t passive or blind about this? It’s those who have the wisdom to seek to migrate to our country.
Why do they do so?
For some, of course, it is to flee danger. But for most it is the quite obvious benefits that may be accrued from living in a country shaped by the Christian imagination (and we should include the benefit of asylum amongst them). The pragmatic choice to move one’s whole life across the world argues for the goodness of that Christian influence far more than the most erudite article can. It’s just better here and so people come here and the reason is Christianity’s philosophical legacy. Why can’t we simply say it that clearly?
The Paradox of Diversity
Jensen is again right to note that Australia has managed immigration well. I suspect that the reason for that is that historically we have not reached the sort of numbers that other Western nations are now grappling with. We’re earlier in the script.
The Christian meta-story which we have recounted is one of beautiful multi-ethnicity. But it’s not multicultural, to the extent that it holds out a better culture for every one of us. ‘Our people will be your people’ it offers, yet also ‘and our God will be your God’ and so we are no longer strangers. Christian diversity is the bringing together of the strange many into cohesion. The original dye is protected because it is worth protecting; without it the fabric is no longer what it was.
The reality we must face is that some people groups are, because of the way their own fabrics are dyed and woven, more likely to wish to be conformed in this way than others. This is only to be expected. Just like their hosts before them, they may arrive on these shores with fervent belief or could just be swimming sanguinely in the water that their neighbours have coloured. Either way they are shaped by those beliefs, just as we have been by ours.
Some even come from belief systems that are inherently non-compliant and seek to assert themselves over others. Islam is the obvious example. It has it’s own political eschatology but one that is very unlike the Christian model.
Where the Christian is called to submit to the state, Islam calls ultimately for submission of all to an Islamic state; a Caliphate.
It is inherently non-cohesive.
Of course, not every person that comes from other belief systems are ardent devotees. Yet it is still the water that so many unknowingly swim in, even as they cross the seas for something better with a genuine desire to contribute. Therefore, no matter what religio-philosophical background somebody comes from the solution for Australia is not simply Jensen’s shared ‘covenant of civic responsibility’ with its shared moral commitments. Not because these are not good things, but because experience shows us that even if someone says they subscribe to them, they may yet be heavily influenced by other factors. We cannot simply take people at their word when so many of us (no matter what culture we’re from) are so unaware of where our own moral language comes from. This is a hard truth but it must be acknowledged.
Confidently Moving Forward
I am grateful for Michael Jensen’s stimulating piece even as I contend that it falls short. He has had the courage to touch upon difficult subjects and that is always to be commended. He has shown us what is best and most precious in Western society, our Christian heritage that has shaped who we are today with the virtues that we both agree on.
What is lacking is a necessarily courageous defence of that heritage and the accompanying bravery to think through its consequences. Diversity itself is not the goal that the Christian way of thinking models for us. It’s a cohesion of diverse people, conforming themselves to certain truths and realities. It has necessary boundaries and limits for the sake of those who belong to it. To confidently speak up for the goodness of such a society also requires one to confidently speak up for the appropriate maintenance of those boundaries and limits.
So, what does the Australia of my own imagination look like?
I see it every Sunday as young and old from so many nations and tribes, peoples and languages, gather together to confidently speak and sing about the goodness of Jesus himself.
The white Anglo-Celtic Australia of the past is gone even as it represented so many good things about Western civilisation. That ship has sailed and I don’t mourn its departure.
The new Australia that our white Anglo-Celtic forefathers made so attractive to the rest of the world – that new Australia needs to grasp once again what it is that has made it still one of the best places in the world to live. It’s the good news about Jesus that has been shaping countries for almost two thousand years. It doesn’t demand that you are a whole-hearted believer, just that you recognise it for what it is.
If we do, perhaps we’ll all of us (no matter where we originally came from) have a little more confidence to speak of its goodness and then the courage to work together to protect it for the sake of our multi-ethnic Australia – the very thing that the same Christian gospel has produced.
Rev David Ould is Senior Associate Minister at St John’s Anglican Cathedral Parramatta, the longest continual site of Christian worship in all Australia and one of the two original Anglican parishes of the Colony. He writes about religion and current affairs on his website davidould.net
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