{"id":776968,"date":"2026-07-03T18:28:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T18:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776968\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T18:28:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T18:28:21","slug":"one-nation-is-campaigning-directly-to-christians-but-will-party-policies-rub-against-worshippers-conscience-one-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776968\/","title":{"rendered":"One Nation is campaigning directly to Christians. But will party policies rub against worshippers\u2019 conscience? | One Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

When One Nation recruit Barnaby Joyce addressed anti-abortion campaigners<\/a> at a Sydney rally in early June, the former deputy prime minister told the audience he could see \u201cabout 1,500 people who can hand out how to vote cards\u201d.<\/p>\n

Christian leaders spoke at the rally. The Lord\u2019s Prayer was recited. Many there were active churchgoers.<\/p>\n

As Pauline Hanson\u2019s popularity surges, her party has extended its hand to Australia\u2019s Christian community, an elusive group of voters who can swing behind a party in the right conditions.<\/p>\n

Will Australian Christians take up Joyce\u2019s instruction and support One Nation<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"\u2018I\u2019m\u2018I\u2019m seeing what I saw in the US\u2019: hundreds attend anti-abortion rally in Sydney \u2013 video\u2018Reason to pause\u2019<\/p>\n

Christianity is the largest religion in Australia, with about 44% of the population identifying as Christian. Anglicanism and Catholicism are the two largest affiliations.<\/p>\n

About one in five Australians regularly attend church, according to the National Church Life Survey (NCLS).<\/p>\n

While voting patterns of churchgoers historically favour the Coalition, Christians are known to abruptly shift their vote based on wide-ranging policy issues affecting everything from abortion, marriage and religious schools to social services, immigration, climate and refugees.<\/p>\n

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Kevin Rudd drew many conservative voters to Labor in 2007 by being a practising Christian who argued that a faithful ethos must care for the marginalised.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Scott Morrison won many Christian votes for the conservative side, helping him claim the \u201cmiracle\u201d election result in a year when religious freedom policies were hotly debated.<\/p>\n

One Nation\u2019s strong rhetoric against abortion<\/a> may entice some Christians into the party fold, but believers may not like everything they hear given Hanson\u2019s wider platform is constructed around her long-held, anti-immigration position.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe anti-immigration, anti-refugee stance of One Nation will be a stumbling block to people whose faith calls them to welcome the stranger and to view all people as precious because they\u2019re made in the image of God,\u201d the executive director of the Centre for Public Christianity, Simon Smart, says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose Christians who are drawn to the rhetoric of Pauline Hanson may have good reason to pause and reconsider.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PaulinePauline Hanson says Australia must be \u2018monocultural\u2019 in Press Club address \u2013 video<\/p>\n

One of the problems for One Nation in winning the religious vote is that a sizeable number of Christian migrant families attend church services conducted in their mother tongue, which will rub against Hanson\u2019s quest for a \u201cmonocultural\u201d Australia.<\/p>\n

She has warned against a \u201cgrowing language problem which is a function of immigration\u201d.<\/p>\n

Smart says talk of monoculture may rub against the Christian conscience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Christian vision is of communion and community between people of every tribe, nation and tongue; there\u2019s a richness in the diversity of humanity that doesn\u2019t seem to sit well with that monoculture idea,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In Australia, the proportion of church attenders born overseas has risen to more than one in three, according to the NCLS. About a quarter of churchgoers speak a language other than English at home.<\/p>\n

Bible belt<\/p>\n

Hanson is recording far higher net approval ratings<\/a> than the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, or the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, with her party now drawing aspirational supporters away from the Coalition and Labor.<\/p>\n

Among Christians, One Nation threatens to take the Coalition\u2019s evangelicals and Labor\u2019s traditional working-class Catholics.<\/p>\n

Academics have mixed views on whether the Christian vote is influential enough to sway elections, given the diversity of views held by those in the pews.<\/p>\n

John Black, a former Labor senator and founder of demographic profiling company Australian Development Strategies, says if Australia does have a Bible belt, it is located on the suburban peripheries of major cities, which are densely populated areas often in marginal seats.<\/p>\n

He says while \u201cmortgage belt\u201d issues provide the foundation of political support in those seats, religious voters can influence a tight vote if Christians are convinced to vote as a bloc.<\/p>\n

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Pauline Hanson and fellow senators Malcolm Roberts, Sean Bell, Tyron Whitten and the member for Farrer, David Farley. Photograph: Lukas Coch\/AAP<\/p>\n

Part of Rudd\u2019s appeal to Christians in 2007 was that he could articulate his faith and even reference the teachings of German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer.<\/p>\n

Several prominent Coalition politicians have also expressed their Christian faith earnestly, which is a draw for churchgoers.<\/p>\n

John Warhurst, emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University, says One Nation doesn\u2019t have an obvious Christian voice who can appeal to the broader churchgoing population.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf One Nation is to have an impact among Christians, it would have to be through their policy program, and the general vibe that they\u2019re representing believers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not impossible \u2013 Donald Trump does well among certain Christian groups and it\u2019s not because of his persona.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s enough for One Nation too.<\/p>\n

\u2018Judeo-Christian\u2019 values<\/p>\n

One Nation\u2019s vision for Australia includes returning it to what Hanson describes as its \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d values, amid broad warnings that the western way of life is under siege from \u201cthose coming into this country and bringing with them the troubles they have left behind\u201d.<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s platform also includes a policy of refusing entry to migrants from nations known to foster ideas that are \u201cincompatible with Australian values\u201d. Hanson has questioned the existence of \u201cgood Muslims\u201d; a remark she was censured for in the Senate.<\/p>\n

In explicitly excluding other religions from its vision of Australia, One Nation appeals directly to that radical minority and could entice more moderate Christian voters to adopt her extreme views.<\/p>\n

Mobilisation strategist at Christian humanitarian agency Act for Peace, Jarrod McKenna, says politicians rarely use the term \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d to mean anything that Jesus actually taught.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are never using it to refer to love of neighbour and very rarely refer to welcoming the stranger,\u201d says McKenna, who is also a pastor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything, the stranger is used as a scapegoat.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no coincidence that the rise of One Nation has come during a period of relentless housing and cost of living pressures, leaving many Australians searching for political answers outside mainstream parties.<\/p>\n

Hanson concentrated her address at the National Press Club last month on attributing the housing crisis to demand caused by immigration, without noting the contribution of decades of chronic undersupply and investor-centric tax settings.<\/p>\n

McKenna says the antidote to divisive rhetoric is to prioritise kindness and practical values like a \u201cfair go\u201d by addressing policy settings in the economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of a fair go, being kind and staying down to earth is a pretty good Aussie paraphrase of the biblical principle to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll that One Nation\u2019s scapegoating does is cause us to bleed the best of who we are rather than actually address the problems.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When One Nation recruit Barnaby Joyce addressed anti-abortion campaigners at a Sydney rally in early June, the former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-776968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}