AP

Review of Silencing of the Lambs: Wokeism and Cancel Culture’s Attack on Christianity in Australia, edited by Greg Bondar, Redland Bay: Connor Court Publishing, 2022

This is a compilation of eleven essays by Protestants, Catholics and a Christian sympathiser. It is helpful to have a book on woke culture and all that underlies that from an Australian perspective. If nothing else, it confirms the arrival of this phenomenon in our nation with real life examples. Cancel Culture is mostly being pursued through social media and corporate cowardice but in in France, Germany and Canada it is being practised by actual government bodies. How far are we away from that? 

Greg Bondar argues that; “Wokeism is a full-on attack on Western civilisation. It aims to rewrite history to confuse and inspire the destruction of the West. Christianity is the antithesis of wokeness, and they are indeed polar opposites. The social justice movement is hijacking the Gospel.” He goes on to say that “political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world” and that “What cancel culture is about is not criticism. It is about punishment.” He describes it as ‘social murder’,

Being rich in quotes and references, Silencing of the Lambs is full of useful information and provides tools and weapons for counter debate. The Foreword by Kevin Andrews MP is brilliant and alone makes it worth getting a hold of this book. 

The essays can be divided roughly into two classes; firstly, how we ought to respond as the persecuted church under attack from dark spiritual powers, and secondly, how we ought to respond to the intellectual failure and anti-biblical nature of today’s woke culture.

Bill Muehlenberg does an excellent job of showing historically how it is nothing new for authoritarian governments “to silence opponents and control society by dominance and intimidation.” “At the end of the day” he says, “cancel culture thrives on timidity.” We need courage to stand up to it.

Peter Barnes reminds us that “What happens in modern law – and in popular perception of it – is that discrimination law has increasingly taken on primary moral characteristics, even an absolutist tone. To discriminate against someone becomes an offence against the first and great – and even only! – commandment.”

Lyle Shelton shows us how to be a strong prophetic voice while Mark Latham exposes the dishonest exploitation of our kids inside in the New South Wales education system – and proposes a solution to restore parents’ rights.

This book will make you think. It will raise your passions and encourage you. It is good to have the subject clarified with the fundamental history of freedom, tolerance, civil rights and the law from the perspective of the Christian worldview. Highlighting what many of us are seeing in front of our very eyes, every day, tells us that we are not going crazy. Our society has moved from a grasp of eternal, objective truth to a flavour of the month morality.

There are a couple of qualms. Judy Russell’s essay seemed off topic and out of place. Also Bernard Gaynor’s contribution begins with “You have probably never thought about this, and you may instinctively disagree” – which helped with what followed.

My favourite quote (and endorsement for the book) is from George Christensen MP, he says, “The prevalence of cancel culture is a sign that we’ve devolved from a Western liberal democracy to a woke mob ‘democracy’ where two Marxist wolves and the conservative lamb vote on what’s for lunch. It’s high time for the lambs to become lions and fight back. Greg Bondar’s book is a great start,”

I would agree.

• Wayne Richards