Western exceptionalism

The horrific events on Bondi Beach have, not unexpectedly, raised the issue of Western exceptionalism.

In a recent Substack post, Tony Abbott tells us that not all cultures are equal. Australia is "fairer" and "more generous" than other nations, with the achievements of freedom of speech, equality for women and religious pluralism being preferable to living under Sharia law. Yet the appeal from the former Prime Minister to preserve what has been created fails to acknowledge the bigger picture. These successes, impressive as they are, are not enough to be exceptional.

As author and convert Paul Kingsnorth argued in First Things in 2024, the West, though a religious construction, has never been genuinely Christian, since the teachings of Jesus, if followed, "would make the building of a civilization impossible".

Strip away the miracles, dogma and church pageantry, and the advice was very simple, albeit radical. Love God and your neighbour with all your heart. No conditions. No ifs-or-buts relativism. As Abbott, a conservative Catholic, knows, this test – at once liberating yet terrifying – marked a shift from the retributive, eye-for-an-eye justice of the Old Testament to a new covenant of grace, one that requires a take-it-on-the-chin attitude toward violence and iniquity. If someone does you wrong, turn and offer your other cheek.

More than most, Fyodor Dostoyevsky grasped the cultural and political implications of Jesus' call to put heart before head. About a third into The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan shares with his brother the story of the Grand Inquisitor.

Jesus has reappeared in Seville during the Spanish Inquisition. It's not a second coming. More of an impromptu visit, shortly after a hundred heretics are burned in the town square by the Catholic church. Imprisoned, Jesus is rebuked by an old cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor.

WTF are you doing here again, trying to get in our way? It took us centuries to quell the anguish and dread triggered by your spiritual challenge. How na?ve of you to expect man to match your uncompromising example, that "in place of the old, firm law", he could decide for himself "with a free heart what is good and what is evil, with only your image before him" as a guide. Your story, however inspirational, was never going to be enough. Man is a weak and miserable creature, who, tormented by the unanswerable questions of life, is constantly rebelling against God. Absent a stable conception of what he is to live for man will refuse to live at all. Hence, the masses have happily handed over their conscience to the priesthood in exchange for obeying official ideology and the promise "of at last unifying everyone into an undisputed, general and consensual ant-heap".

The secularization of the West reflects, in part, the belief that the faith shown by Jesus in the individual was not ill-founded, that the Grand Inquisitor would one day be proved wrong when he said "nothing has ever been more unendurable to man and society than freedom".

The real choice for Australia and the West is therefore not between retrograde Islamic law and an enlightened alternative enforced by representative democracy. Nor is it between anarchy and subservience. As Kingsnorth notes, it's either an "empire with a cross painted on it" or "live differently", as Jesus instructed.

Conservatives like Abbott want it both ways. They leverage the hope of Western exceptionalism, the storied belief that countries like Australia will, one day, with bold and visionary leadership, transcend the words and rules of secular society – and the Bible and the Quran – and trust instead in the moral law written upon the human heart. Yet, deep down, like the Grand Inquisitor, they lack faith in man and human nature.

As the New Testament states Jesus did not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it. Following his sacrifice, all we need do to satisfy requirements, writes St Paul in Romans 13:8, is "love one another".

Abbott and others are consistently bewildered by progressive politics, its approach to immigration seen as being about "doubt and guilt" over a "history of slavery, colonialism, and the dispossession of the original inhabitants". While redeeming the past is part of the story, the real issue here is the refusal to acknowledge that what the West has created is worth nothing if we don't take the final, unconditional step.