Australia Never Abolished Blasphemy Laws — It Just Found a New God

Even secular thinkers admit that everyone worships something. If that’s true of individuals, it’s also true of legal systems — and Australia is no exception.

Did you know that Australia used to have blasphemy laws?

These laws weren’t harsh — we’re not talking about floggings or public execution. In fact, prosecutions under the old blasphemy laws were very rare. But they provided a guardrail. They reflected the assumption that Christianity occupied a protected place in the legal order.

And that makes sense. At Federation in 1901, Christians made up 96% of the population. But that number has declined markedly in the years since.

In 1961, Christians were still 88% of the population. By 1991, that figure was 74%. By 2016, it was 52%. At the last census, it was under 44%.

The de-Christianising of the West has very deep roots that actually go back centuries — a theme I cover at length in my book Cross and Culture. By way of a snapshot, the 1960s counterculture and sexual revolution explain a lot of the shift.

Personal pleasure slowly became part of Australia’s new creed. Abortion and the pill enabled sex to become a childless transaction. IVF made it possible to create kids without a guaranteed mother and father — so what a family looked like was limited only by the imagination.

Practices the Bible always called sinful were normalised: sex outside of marriage, no-fault divorce, homosexuality, transgenderism.

The sexual revolution continues today. The idea that children are sexual beings is now being widely promoted through child “gender medicine”, Drag Queen Story Hour, and conversion practices bans.

The Cost of the Sexual Revolution

The sexual revolution promised pleasure, freedom and liberation. But those promises came at a cost: our culture’s Christian foundations.

As the Christian worldview has receded, so have many of its moral assumptions — like the sanctity of life, the belief that a person’s conscience is sacred, and the belief that churches should be free of government interference.

The most obvious change for Christians was that their beliefs have been pushed to the margins. Christianity went from being the founding worldview of Australian civilisation to just one voice among many — and, ultimately, a voice that is harmful and needs to be silenced.

You don’t transform an entire civilisation without the legal system also undergoing radical changes.

This is where Australia’s blasphemy laws come in.

I began by noting that Australia used to have blasphemy laws. Over the decades, these laws were quietly repealed or rendered dormant across Australia.

But the picture is a little more complex.

Rightly understood, Australia still has a blasphemy law architecture that goes by a new name — namely, our vilification and anti-discrimination framework.

These laws have striking parallels to Australia’s old blasphemy laws, with the exception that they serve a new god and are more readily enforced than the old ones.

The logic has been inverted. Where blasphemy laws once protected Christian expression, vilification and anti-discrimination laws are often turned against Christian expression.

Australia’s New God

Which worldview do these laws now protect? You guessed it: the worldview of the sexual revolution. The post-Christian creed of personal pleasure.

In the Australian Christian Freedom Index, you’ll read dozens of cases of Australian Christians who’ve experienced this new blasphemy architecture firsthand.

As the celebrated — and avowedly non-religious — novelist David Foster Wallace once observed, “There is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”

This, I submit, is as true of the legal system as it is of the individual.

Slowly but surely, the worldview informing Australia’s legal system has been replaced. Christianity has been pushed to the margins and Australia’s legal system has a new god — the god of self.

C.S. Lewis rightly observed: “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”

If you want to see how Australia’s new god is shaping our country, look no further than the Australian Christian Freedom Index. And after you’ve read it, be sure to pass it on to any Christian leaders you know — and maybe even send your state and federal members a physical copy.

Commentary on What People Are Saying Online

The topic of Australia’s “new blasphemy laws” is generating significant discussion in Christian and conservative circles. Many readers agree that vilification and anti-discrimination laws are being used to suppress traditional Christian beliefs, particularly on marriage, gender, and sexuality. Commenters often describe this as the replacement of Christian values with a new progressive ideology that functions like a state religion.

There is concern about the increasing legal pressure on Christians, with calls for greater awareness, legal defence funds, and political action to protect religious freedom. Some express frustration that mainstream media and politicians are complicit in this shift. Overall, the conversation reflects growing alarm about the erosion of free speech and religious liberty in Australia.

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