The Australia of the early 21st Century is a society that is laden with moral and ethical language, to the point where there is hardly a political, sporting, or community experience that does not have moral champions suggesting ways in which our society should proceed to a desirable future outcome.
Green groups have given climate discussions a moral framework of hurt, pain and damage inflicted on Mother Nature. The Australian Football League is challenging racism amongst those who attend their matches, and groups as diverse as Essendon Football club, the Catholic Church and the Australian Defence Force are upbraided for failing to care properly for those for whom it is thought they are responsible. Football coaches, priests and generals along with politicians are diminished in community eyes as leaders with moral failings and tendencies to hide or cover up their alleged self-serving ways.
It is not difficult to see that perceptions of moral failure and alleged self-indulgent leadership, has created a society distrustful of any authority and ready to complain of victimhood at the earliest opportunity. The resulting number of Australians who are suffering drug-related illness, psychological traumas, unfair dismissals, divorce, child abuse or betrayal and rejection of any sort must now be in the millions.
Concurrent with this moral surge has been a collapse of the traditional moral guardians of society — Australian churches. Whilst Roman Catholics are holding their own, mostly through immigration, the other mainstream churches are at virtual collapse. The Anglican Church itself notes that up to one-third of its dioceses face bankruptcy.
Whilst financial strife is unsettling, there has been virtually no analysis as to how such circumstances have arisen. Increasingly, Protestant churches are panic stricken into mindless support for any issue that will be seen to garner community support. A desperate need for financial security rules all. We have witnessed these churches support David Hicks (an Australian captured fighting for the Taliban), criticise the actions of the Australian Border Security and cast coal mines as the new evil. Church attendance continues to wither.
These churches lack a central narrative as to who they are and what they stand for. If they stand for anything, it will only be the latest left leaning popular cause, which will be packaged in language eliciting guilt, shame and disgust at the actions of government or society as a whole.
Suggesting that Jesus Christ may be relevant to modern Australia cannot be considered. Many of these Christians are ashamed of their church and their nation. A vision of church corruption and a society that oppresses minorities, destroys freedom and suffocates the individual, sees these churches repudiate their own traditions.
These churches recognise that Western civilisation was developed by the church, but they see both Western civilisation and church tradition as oppressive of women, minorities and individual rights. In their view everything good and proper in human society has been opposed or ignored in the name of Jesus. Currently, there seems to be no alternative to endless shame, dishonour and victimhood and no hope of resurrection in these churches, so perhaps a gratuitous suicide is the correct outcome.
Fortunately, such a brutal view of the faith contains little truth. The Church has left an indelible and good imprint on Western civilisation. Western law is largely the gift of Church canon law. Intellectual inquiry, sponsored by Church universities, triggered the scientific revolution and the idea of helping the poor without thought of reciprocity is a fundamental Christian idea. This is the continued narrative of the Churches that still have Jesus Christ at the centre.
The Church is the builder of Western civilisation and, despite the obstacles confronting societies like Australia, still insist that self-hate, victimhood and shame in our society are attitudes that build nothing and invite deserved decay.
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