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The Australian war correspondent Charles Bean (below, 1879–1968) landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, within hours of the first wave. There he was shot in the leg and mentioned in despatches.

In his 1946 Anzac to Amiens, Bean’s history of Australia in World War One, he described the evacuation of Gallipoli and pondered, thirty years after the event, the spirit of the Anzac soldiers:

By dawn on December 20th ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) had faded into a dim blue line lost amid other hills on the horizon as the ships took their human freight to Imbros, Lemnos and Egypt. But Anzac stood, and still stands, for reckless valour in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship, and endurance that will never own defeat.

Many since have mulled over “the Anzac spirit.” Did Bean get it right? Can it be pinned down?

More recently the WA branch of the Returned and Services League wrote that “the spirit of Anzac” may be seen wherever people gather in times of disaster, “to rescue one another, to ease suffering, to provide food and shelter, to look after one another, and to let the victims of these disasters know they are not alone.”

I propose that the Anzac Spirit embraces three overlapping convictions that all have their roots in the Christian faith:

The strong must protect the weak;

Goodness and truth is worth dying for;

Love is sacrificing oneself for the other.

1. The Strong Must Protect the Weak

The idea that one’s superior strength ought not be wielded to dominate the weak, but to protect them, may have been treasured in pagan homes and hearths but it by no means defined relations between pagan empires, cities, villages, or even neighbours.

The ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans never questioned whether “might is right.” Is it not self-evident that strength is given to conquer, subjugate, enslave, and extract tribute from the weak? The Wisdom of Solomon bitterly exposits this posture:

Let us oppress the righteous poor man;
Let us not spare the widow or regard the grey hairs of the aged.
But let our might be our law of right,
For what is weak proves itself to be useless (2:10–11).

Jesus inverted this power-is-for-self mindset. Although he is the Eternal Son of God invested with universal authority and the might of the Creator to calm the storm and raise the dead, he lays down the prerogatives of infinite power and glory, makes himself a slave, and wields his stupendous strength to serve and save others:

He did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Phil. 2:5–8)

Here is the Christian spirit: using one’s strength not to dominate, but to serve the weak.

I hear the stale retorts: But what about the Crusaders? What about the religious wars? What about the IRA? Indeed, what about them?

Christ never taught Christians to war against one another or anyone, but to bring the Gospel and Christ-like love. It is not Christ’s religion which causes wars, but its absence. Jesus teaches us to wield our strength to protect the weak.

In a radio broadcast on September 27, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain explained why Great Britain and France would not use their strength to protect weakened Czechoslovakia from Hitler’s threats:

How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.

When Chamberlain spoke thus he spoke not as a Christian, but paganly and as an appeaser. Such selfish parochialism jars on the Christian mindset.

The Anzacs, inasmuch as they exercised strength to protect the weak, manifested the spirit of Christ.

2. Goodness and Truth is Worth Dying For

What motivates a person to fight and die for their country? Patriotism? Heroism? The spirit of adventure? Military pay and advancement? Fear of the white feather of cowardice? Wanting to please one’s family; or to displease them?

It is impossible to specify, to say “it is just this that motivated young Anzacs to risk their lives.” We may imagine a swarm of consistent and inconsistent motives within the hearts and minds of each.

But we can say with certainty that Christianity teaches that our earthly life is not the most precious thing. There are good things worth dying for. There are bad things that are not worth living under or with.

Thus the Hebrew midwives risked Pharaoh’s wrath in order to protect the infant boys. Thus the Jewish youths in Babylon chose Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace over apostasy, and Daniel chose Darius’s lions’ den over public prayerlessness.

Jesus taught his disciples that it is better to give up the world’s fame and riches – and even to die – than to deny him:

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (Mat. 16:24–26)

So the Apocalypse commends those martyrs who did not submit to Satan’s lies: “They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Rev. 12:11). This is the Christian spirit: to choose death over the denial of one’s beliefs and ethics.

Winston Churchill spoke out of his deeply felt Christian heritage when he pledged his cabinet to death rather than dishonourable terms with Hitler and enslavement to Nazism. On May 28, 1940, while France collapsed before the Wehrmacht, he said:

I have thought carefully in these last few days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering negotiations with That Man. [But this means] we should become a slave state…. I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.

This was the spirit too of Patrick Henry’s 1775 speech on the eve of the American Revolutionary War:

Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

It is better to die than to be enslaved to a tyrannical regime. It is better to die than to conform to the immoral laws of an earthly power. This conviction is integral to the Anzac spirit.

3. Sacrificing oneself for the good of the other

My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:12–13).

Jesus did exactly what he commanded. He sacrificed himself to false accusation, mockery, death by torture, and burial, for the sake of his people:

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed (Isa. 53:5).

By this, Jesus defined love over and against every dilution, every romantic counterfeit, and every misconception. Love is nothing more nor less than self-sacrifice for the sake of the beloved.

The spirit of loving self-sacrifice is latent in all humanity for all bear the imago dei. Every father and mother will sacrifice their own good for the sake of their children. When they don’t they know that they do wrong.

The reason Jesus commands self-sacrificial love of his disciples is because “our old self was crucified with him” (Rom. 6:6). His death not only sets the supreme example of love, it breaks the power of wicked selfishness within his own, freeing and empowering them to love as he loves. So certain is this that for John self-sacrificial love is the touchstone of true Christian regeneration and discipleship:

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death (1 John 3:14).

Because Australia bears a deeply Christianised culture, this is the facet of the Anzac spirit that we most consistently celebrate: the courageous self-sacrifice of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and nurses for the good of their fellow-Australians.

Red poppies are worn on Anzac and Remembrance Days because they sprung up over the battlefields of France after the fighting ceased. They are a vivid symbol of the soldiers’ blood that was shed in those places, for “the sacred cause for which they laid down their lives.”

I pray that we may deeply recover the true Anzac spirit: that the strong will protect the weak; that we will be willing to die for goodness and truth; and that we will love others by sacrificing ourselves for them.

This Spirit does not come from nowhere. Let us for the sake of our grandchildren pray and work towards a deep resurgence of Christian faith in ourselves, and in our community.

– Campbell Markham