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Roy Williams on Christianity, neoliberalism and the left

Roy Williams, Graeme Tutt and Andrew West

Roy Williams (l), Rev Graeme Tutt (c) and Andrew West (r) outside Newtown Uniting Church

Australian author Roy Williams had an international bestseller in God, Actually, in which he took the fight to atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins. He spoke to the Religion and Ethics Report about Christianity’s relationship with LGBTIQ people, women and the secular left.

You can behave like a Christian without being a Christian

If you’re worried about injustice, that’s the first step towards faith, because it means you’re not thinking purely about yourself. It also assumes that there’s such a thing as morality, which is a religious concept. The very notion that charity is a good thing is a Christian notion. Charity was very much a creation originally of the Hebrews, but for the purposes of the west, of the early Christians. That’s one of the things that made them stand out from the crowd and got them converts.

Christianity and the secular left agree on a lot

Whatever your worldview—is there a god or isn’t there—there can’t be any more serious question to be answered.

The move away from wowserism has gone far too far. The churches were right to warn about the proliferation of pornography, the proliferation of alcohol consumption, divorce skyrocketing. Increasingly, voices from the secular left, especially the secular feminist left, are actually at one with the churches on a lot of those issues 

Whatever else the people of the committed left believe in, it’s something other than purely themselves. They believe in some form of communitarianism, some form of altruism. It’s not purely about getting ahead, minimising one’s tax, maximising one’s wealth, keeping Australia safe from nasties. The left at least is idealistic. And at [its] core Christianity, any religion, involves a leap of faith.

On taking the role of Christianity for granted

So many of the things we utterly take for granted have historical Christian roots: the scientific method itself is a product of the Christian church; the notion that charity is a good thing rather than a sop to the weak; that work is a good thing, within limits and on certain conditions, rather than leisure—the ancient Greeks and Romans believed leisure was the ultimate pursuit—we now take the work ethic, at least in the west, utterly for granted.

The Christian work ethic has been corrupted

The work ethic has been completely corrupted. Neoliberalism has just skewed it. Work is no longer a calling, a way of worshipping God. The idea of the Reformation was that anyone could serve God, provided you did it in the right spirit and for the right reasons. It wasn't about the making of money.

The idea of ‘lifters and leaners’ is at odds with Christianity

Lifters and leaners: this is very much a Classical notion. If you can’t make it, if you’re too weak, if you’re too pathetic to succeed, then we can’t invest too much of our energy on such people. That’s a Classical Greco-Roman notion rather than a Christian idea.

Schools should be better at teaching religion

Religious knowledge needs to be a subject that is taught. Two generations at least of Australian children have grown up not really knowing the first thing about religion; therefore they’re suckers for fundamentalists of all stripes. Even the church schools, especially the Protestant schools at the upper end of the spectrum are very tokenistic about the religion they teach. Even in Anglican schools, Uniting Church schools, even the Catholic system isn’t what it used to be.

The whole history of our civilisation, whether you like it or not, is based on Christianity. I’m talking about the west and Australia in particular. Even Richard Dawkins made a plea that at the very least knowledge of the Bible is essential to understand literature and culture.

Whatever your worldview—is there a god or isn’t there—there can’t be any more serious question to be answered. The atheists who are passionate about this will at least say it’s a really important question. Shouldn’t all citizens be equipped to answer it in an informed way? Just like you can’t read and write unless you’re taught the basics, you can’t do maths unless you’re taught the basics. Similarly, you can’t do religion unless you’re taught the basics.

The church’s view on sex protects women

The churches might have been fairly accused in generations past of being excessively puritan, but they did have in mind ideals, and still have in mind ideals which are good ideals: monogamy within marriage or a committed relationship; chastity outside marriage; an abhorrence for salaciousness and the commercialisation of sex.

A world without sexual rules would harm women far more than men. The left has a real problem with an anything-goes attitude to sexuality. It’s a dangerous thing, and it’s harmed women much more than men.

The church should welcome LGBTIQ people

The teaching that homosexuality in and of itself is a sinful thing really should be renounced. On a literal reading of some passages, that is a tenable view, but it’s actually a view that’s only stated in a very tiny number of passages compared to the key messages of the Bible. They’re perfectly capable of re-contextualisation. We’re talking here about 2-3 per cent of the Australian population that is closed out from the start.

Australia is descending into nihilism

Nihilism is just a pejorative word for freedom: 'Anything goes that I can get away with.' Tax dodging is a good example where I think nihilism is already the default position for the corporate world. A form of individual nihilism is no sexual rules, it’s whatever pleases me.

It’s also a society, where Australia is in it purely for itself and ignores the world: we only contribute one per cent of carbon emissions, so why should we do anything about it? Foreign aid is another—we’ve got to save money, let’s cut foreign aid—there’s no votes in it, so let’s cut it. That’s nihilism.
