Originally published 19 September 2024.
This month an icon and veteran of New South Wales politics entered his tenth decade, little more than a year after completing a near record parliamentary term. For more than forty-one years, the former Congregational Minister and seasoned “morals crusader”, the Reverend Fred Nile, has been a fixture on the red leather of the NSW Legislative Council.
Widely known for his forthright and fearless stances on contentious moral issues, “Sydney’s Reverend” has courted more than his fair share of media attention and controversy. Whether he was loved or loathed, revered or reviled, it seems that almost everyone of a certain generation in Australia’s oldest city had their opinion on “Rev. Fred” of Macquarie Street.
While conservative Christians have long admired the Congregational pastor-turned-politician for his courage and principle in standing up for traditional Christian moral values, his critics and detractors, both inside and outside the church, have frequently written him off as a “fundamentalist”, a “bigot”, or a “religious right” nutjob. Yet do such labels really do justice to capturing the essence and nuances of this complex public figure who has bestrode Australia’s religious and political worlds for the best part of half-a-century?
The making of a Reformed evangelical and working-class conservative
Along with the Melbourne Catholic activist, B.A. Santamaria (1915–1998), Fred Nile has been one of the most noteworthy religious “movers and shakers” in Australian politics — certainly in the second half of the twentieth century and well into the twenty-first. To better understand his significance, it would be useful to briefly probe his own formative religious and political influences.
Born in Sydney’s Kings Cross in 1934 to a taxi driver and waitress, Nile grew up in a working-class household and converted to evangelical Christianity in his youth. Joining the Revesby Congregational Church, where he married his first wife Elaine, Nile subscribed to a conservative form of Reformed (Calvinist) Protestantism steeped in the English Puritan tradition. Among its distinctive features was an emphasis on preaching the saving gospel of Jesus Christ, the intrinsic goodness of the moral law as distilled in the Ten Commandments, and the understanding that with God as the sovereign ruler of the universe, Christians had a calling to be a transformative influence in the world. In the realm of politics, this meant shaping policy and legislation according to Christian moral principles.
By his own admission, Nile was never a “born politician”, having dedicated much of his life to the Christian ministries of preaching, pastoring and evangelism before his election to parliament at the age of 47. Yet it is hard to escape the reality that a combination of his working-class background and Cold War atmospherics of the 1950s and 60s conditioned his political temperament. In contrast to working-class radicals who gravitated to the political left, Nile’s own working-class upbringing instilled in him a lifelong conservatism that was respectful of tradition, deferential to authority, faith-affirming, loyal to the Crown, patriotic, family oriented, and attuned to the interests of working people.
Unlike the Toryism of the well-to-do, it was a blue-collar conservatism that has found recent favour again in many parts of the Western world. With its focus on buttressing law and order, strengthening families, and supporting small businesses, Nile believed this form of conservatism was best placed to serve the interests of working people. His conservatism was, of course, galvanised by the anti-communist spirit of the Cold War that hardened his opposition to the evils of “godless communism”. In his youth, he warmly admired Prime Minister Robert Menzies and the strong stance he took against the “red peril”.
Indeed, it was in this cosmic battle against communism that his evangelical Christianity and working-class conservatism coalesced. Whether he was preaching from the pulpit at a Christian Endeavour rally or performing drills in his army uniform, Nile saw himself in combat with an existential foe seeking to abolish religion, family, nation and private property. The firebrand evangelical conservative viewed successive radical movements in a similar light — from the 1960s sexual revolution, to the rise of green politics in the 1980s, and then radical Islamism following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. This worldview of a “clash of civilisations” laid the foundation for his ensuing role as a “morals crusader” with the “Festival of Light” Christian lobby group in 1974, and then as a NSW State MP from 1981 to 2023.
Defining achievements in the political and religious realms
Elected to the NSW Legislative Council in September 1981 with 9.1 per cent of the primary vote, the Congregational pastor and newly minted politician made his mark on the political and religious terrain of the state.
A defining feature of Nile’s parliamentary career has surely been its remarkable longevity, serving as a Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) from 19 September 1981 to 25 March 2023. His term of 41.5 years overlapped with those of twelve NSW premiers (from Neville Wran to Dominic Perrottet) and ten Australian prime ministers (from Malcolm Fraser to Anthony Albanese).
To be sure, the longevity of his parliamentary career was helped by a succession of the generous eight-year terms afforded to New South Wales MLCs. Furthermore, as the leader of a small minor party, his incumbency was not subjected to typical challenges faced by longer-serving MPs in the major parties. Yet even so, Nile joined a very select group of parliamentarians who served in an Australian legislature for more than four decades — including among them, Prime Minister W.M. “Billy” Hughes, who sat in the House of Representatives from 1901 to 1951, and former Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock, who served from 1973 to 2016.
In his long public life, Nile could first be credited for helping to revive a tradition of evangelical political engagement in Australia. With roots in the evangelical revival that swept Britain in the eighteenth-century, it was championed by the likes of William Wilberforce (1759–1833) and Lord Shaftesbury (1801–1885). Combining a zeal for proclaiming the Christian gospel with a desire to transform society, evangelicalism could boast a long catalogue of social and moral reforms that included the abolition of slavery, the reform of the factory system, the protection of children from exploitation, the outlawing of animal cruelty, the expansion of education, and the provision of adequate housing and sanitation for Britain’s urban poor.
With Australia inheriting this tradition from Britain, there have been numerous evangelical Protestants that have come before Nile on both sides of Australian politics, particularly in the early years of the Australian Labor Party, yet Nile has been the most overtly evangelical politician of modern times. Citing both Wilberforce and Shaftesbury as his heroes, Nile sought to emulate their dedication to social and moral reform.
Given the sheer distance between early Victorian Britain and modern Australia, the causes for Nile were naturally different yet still animated by the same spiritual and moral impulses. Just as Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and others had sought to protect the vulnerable and help the poor, Nile saw himself as continuing their work by supporting such causes as strengthening the natural family unit to better nurture and protect children, banning child pornography, voting for the passage of Aboriginal land rights legislation in NSW, supporting the admission of refugees from Indochina, banning tobacco advertising, restricting gambling, winning the war on drugs, providing greater disability support, and protecting human life at all stages of development.
In reviving this tradition, Nile more broadly distinguished himself as a lead exponent of a Christian democratic philosophy in Australia. Originating from continental Europe, Christian democracy draws largely from Catholic social teaching, or Neo-Calvinist sources in the case of its Protestant iterations. As such, Christian democracy affirms the natural law as the foundation for an ethical and just society, the subsidiarity principle, the centrality of the family unit, a life-affirming ethic, humane protections for the poor and vulnerable, the provision of a social safety-net, a harmonious industrial relations system, and a civilised capitalism accommodating of both private enterprises and trade unions.
Like B.A. Santamaria, Nile was a consistent champion of Christian democratic ideals, yet from a Reformed Protestant foundation. He drew heavily on a particular form of Christian democracy embodied by Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) of the Netherlands. In the tradition of this Dutch Reformed pastor, academic and one-time prime minister, Nile regarded politics and public life as a domain in which to continue God’s work of “redeeming” human creation. In effect, the aim was to democratically reform civil society according to biblical principles. Just as Kuyper had founded the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party in the late nineteenth-century as a vehicle to further this aim, Nile had founded the Call to Australia Party in the late 1970s, which later became known as the Christian Democratic Party.
Though dedicated to advancing Christian democratic ideals, Nile was no theocrat or Christian reconstructionist. Over the years, many critics both inside and outside the church have accused Nile of ambitions to establish a Christian theocracy in Australia by attempting to “legislate the kingdom of heaven on earth” — a goal seen understandably as naïve at best, and dangerous at worst. Yet this is to both overlook some important nuances in Nile’s Christian democratic philosophy and to underappreciate the value it assigns to the natural law.
Like Kuyper, Nile believed sincerely in the separation of church and state. True to his own tradition of Congregational nonconformism, he favoured a free church within a free state as opposed to an established church of any kind. He also expressly rejected the goal of establishing a theocracy, rightly concluding it would be inappropriate and unworkable for a democracy such as Australia.
In contrast to the thinking of Christian dominionists and reconstructionists — particularly those in the United States such as R.J. Rushdoony (1916–2001) — Nile has had no interest in establishing the covenantal laws of Old Testament Israel in modern Australia. Rather, his objective has always been to work within the democratic framework to bring Christian moral principles to bear on the formation of legislation through the usual cut and thrust of parliamentary debate.
Thus, in bringing Christian ethics to bear on policy and legislation, Nile did not necessarily apply hard and fast rules from the Bible, but rather drew from a Reformed Protestant tradition of the natural law. In common with the Catholic natural law theory of Thomas Aquinas, the Protestant Reformer John Calvin taught that God had instituted a transcendent and universal moral law for the good of all humanity. Calvinist churches such as the Presbyterians and Congregationalists taught that the Ten Commandments were the best summary of the natural law and conscience, and the clearest source of principles for how to love God, neighbour and self.
That said, natural law is not exclusively Christian, or even religious, with Christians, rationalists, and others alike accepting it as the basis of morality and human rights. It is arguable that the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was based largely on natural law precepts affirming the right to life, the primacy of human dignity and freedom, the right to private property, and the family as the natural unit of society. In his speeches on the family and social policy, Nile would occasionally make references to the 1948 UN Declaration. Therefore, by channelling the natural law, Nile saw Christian democratic ideals as not simply advancing the welfare of Christians, but all of the community regardless of faith or creed.
For a Reformed Protestant of the Congregational tradition, Nile’s evangelicalism was broad, non-sectarian and ecumenically minded. The advance of post-war secularisation had convinced Christians that what united them was far greater than that which divided them, and this was true of Nile, just as it had been with world Christian leaders from Pope John Paul II to the Rev. Billy Graham.
While true to the Reformation Christianity of his Congregationalism, Nile was enthusiastic about forging common ground with Catholics and Christians of other traditions in the mission of proclaiming Christ and defending shared moral values. Assisting the Methodist leader Rev. Alan Walker (1911–2003) with his Newness NSW rallies of the early 1970s, Nile reached out to all Christian denominations and remarked in his autobiography how impressed he was with the level of Catholic participation.
Shortly after coming to prominence as the national director of the Festival of Light in 1974, Nile organised a mass rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park featuring the Anglican and Catholic Archbishops of Sydney on a joint platform for the first time. Working closely with the Catholic community, Nile went on to co-ordinate a visit of Mother Teresa to Australia in 1981 and met the pope in both Rome and Sydney, drawing the ire of some of his fellow Protestants. In an age where the embers of sectarianism still smouldered, Nile played a critical part in helping to transcend Australia’s sectarian divide.
Turning to his political philosophy, it could be said that Nile represented a rare breed of purist conservative in Australian politics who stood unambiguously for “faith, flag and family”. Avowed conservatives abound on the centre-right, yet their conservatism is often blended with a free-market liberalism for those inside the Liberal Party, or agrarianism, for those within the National Party fold.
Nile’s conservatism had its own combination with evangelical Christianity, yet it was unmistakably Burkean in a similar vein to that of Menzies. Though both Edmund Burke and Robert Menzies were classical English Whig liberals, they held to traditional precepts which today would be readily classified as “conservative”. In short, they were dedicated to cherishing and then bequeathing to the generations that followed, the received traditions, institutions, values and customs of society.
Like Menzies, Nile was an Australian patriot of the British imperial tradition, as opposed to the radical nationalism of Eureka, Henry Lawson and the early Bulletin magazine. As such, he revered the Crown and the Australian flag, celebrated all of Australia’s historical ties to the United Kingdom, and cherished its British-derived customs and institutions — not least, Westminster parliamentary democracy. During his more than four decades in the Legislative Council, Nile had the upmost respect for the institution of parliament and was known to be a stickler for its age-old conventions and protocols.
The Australian conservatism of Nile was manifest most notably in his robust defence of Australia’s Judeo-Christian inheritance and the traditional family unit, yet also in his advocacy for a close alliance with the United States, strident support for the State of Israel, strong opposition to communism and radical Islamism, as well as the defence of freedom, democracy and human dignity on the international stage.
On the domestic front, Nile favoured a racially inclusive yet integrationist approach to immigration and citizenship, the preservation of a broad Australian middle-class of home owners, support for small family-owned business, and investment in farming, agribusiness and services for rural and regional communities.
On economics, Nile presented as a centrist favouring a middle course between the radically laissez-faire approach of the libertarian right and the heavily interventionist, statist policies of the socialist left. Like Menzies, he supported a moderately regulated, free enterprise capitalism with humane protections in place for workers. Nile’s approach to the Baird government’s sale of polls and wires in NSW was illustrative. While supporting the government’s decision to privatise these utilities in 2017, his negotiations ensured there would be entitlements in place for employees adversely effected by the sale.
Given the depth and breadth of his political philosophy, it was axiomatic for Nile to demonstrate a broad repertoire of policy preoccupations far beyond the “hot-button” moral issues of LGBTIQ law reform, abortion and euthanasia for which he tended to attract the most media attention.
He is on record for contributing frequently to parliamentary speeches and debates across a multitude of policy areas — including law and order, health, education, public transport and infrastructure, housing, Indigenous policy, conservation and the environment, energy and utilities, animal welfare, industrial relations, adoption and child welfare, aged care and youth policy.
Routinely invited to chair parliamentary committees, he put his policy breadth to good use, serving either as the chair or committee member investigating such matters as diverse as the sale of electricity infrastructure, road safety, asbestos insulation, the Health Care Complaints Commission, gambling, tobacco smoking, children and young people, as well as electoral and political party funding. Evidently, Nile’s vocation in politics was not just about defending Christian moral principles, but helping to deliver public policy for the good of all citizens.
Some of the limitations of Nile’s political engagement
Given Nile’s broad vision and demonstrated capacity to legislate across a range of public policy for the common good, it was unfortunate that his own Christian Democratic Party (CDP) perhaps gave the frequent impression that he was preoccupied with serving narrow church-based sectional interests. In a pluralist, secular democracy — albeit one with a rich Judeo-Christian inheritance — running an explicitly Christian political party was always going to be problematic. As well as reinforcing perceptions of seeking to establish a Christian state, it could be seen as sectional, self-serving and incapable of representing all Christians on all issues.
Though many Christians would agree with Nile that Christian values advance the welfare of all people, they would have reservations about a Christian political party. For some in the Christian community, such a party could seem somewhat self-serving, focused on what was really only good for Christians. As people commanded by their Lord to love others different from themselves and seek the good of the city, it would leave a lot of Christians feeling uncomfortable — while for many outside the Christian faith, a Christian political party could lead them to believe it was just there to look after the interests of Christians and really no one else.
The other problem with a Christian political party was that any position it took on a given policy issue could be seen as the position of Christians at large, when in reality, Christians have differing positions on a whole range of policies. From taxation and industrial relations to foreign policy and the environment, Christians, like people of any other faith, will have differing perspectives and policy solutions that cannot easily be represented by a single party position. Even inside Nile’s own party, there was a fallout between its leader and one of his colleagues over industrial relations policy in the 1980s. This just underscored the difficulty for a Christian political party having to speak with one voice on complex issues.
While by no means perfect solutions, Nile could have sidestepped some these problems with a Christian political party by taking one of the following three courses:
he could have run a minor party based on the same Judeo-Christian moral precepts, yet not explicitly Christian in name or orientation, thereby broadening its appeal across a largely secular electorate;
he could have served as an effective Independent like Senator Brian Harradine, who was similarly Christian democratic in political philosophy;
he could have worked within a major party — most plausibly the Liberal Party, given his affinity with much of Menzies’s philosophy — to bring Christian influence into its platform and policies.
Ultimately, however, the CDP would whither on the vine. While achieving some success in mobilising a diverse range of Christians around a set of common objectives, it was long afflicted by an amateurish culture and constant infighting, leading to its eventual disintegration and demise in March 2022. This was unfortunate for public perceptions of Nile, because it contrasted sharply with his reputation inside the parliamentary chamber as a professional parliamentarian respected from all sides, with former Premier Bob Carr once praising him as a “responsible legislator”.
This dysfunction of the CDP was also one of the main reasons for its leader’s failure to install a successor to carry on his legacy. As impressive as his more than four decades of service in NSW politics was by any measure, he could not afford to have overlooked the need for the generational renewal so critical to the survival of any movement. Towards the end of his long career, William Wilberforce was able to groom Thomas Fowell Buxton as his parliamentary successor, adding another generation to the abolitionist cause. To his credit, Nile did attempt to anoint a parliamentary successor shortly after reaching his forty-year milestone, but this was thwarted by internal wrangling from within his own party.
A failure, or a figure vindicated by history?
With Nile’s own political party ending with a whimper, and many of his hard-fought moral crusades lost, with abortion and euthanasia now legalised, it would be easy to conclude that his long parliamentary career was a failure. Yet in recent years, the shifting Zeitgeist on multiple fronts has proven that many of his causes were ahead of their time and have been vindicated by the course of history.
In the early 1980s, he had supported Aboriginal land rights legislation some years before it entered the popular discourse. Even with his campaigns against pornography, prostitution, gambling and excessive alcohol consumption in the 1970s and 80s, where he was routinely pilloried as a “wowser”, the public has come to better appreciate the harm in these activities with greater awareness about the high costs of sexual exploitation and addiction.
Nile’s example also proved that politics can never operate in a moral vacuum. Despite our morally relativistic age, more of our leaders are talking about the need for “moral clarity” on issues such as the Israel-Hamas conflict and race relations. This suggests a growing public hunger for decision making and public policy to be informed by clear moral principles. Whether one agreed with Nile or not on a given issue, there was no denying that his positions were guided by a clear moral compass. He was the conviction politician par excellence.
A Christian voice of courage and integrity
For all the unease and occasional embarrassment he brought to some of his fellow Christians, the veteran morals crusader was a voice of courage. When too many Christians were either ambivalent or afraid to broach the contentious moral issues, Nile could be counted to tackle them head-on, even if his strategy or methods were not always the most adroit. In the tradition of the early Christians, he spoke with fearlessness for “he was unashamed of the gospel” (Romans 1:16) and its inescapable moral implications.
Importantly for contemporary evangelical Christians, Nile revived a proud tradition of public Christian engagement aimed at ameliorating society, while leaving its ultimate perfection to the future work of Christ. Following the examples of Wilberforce and Shaftesbury, as well as the teachings of evangelicals such as John Stott, he never left his Christianity at the front door but unashamedly channelled it to influence public policy and debate in parliament.
Much of this confidence was borne of an abiding theological conviction that the moral teachings of a loving, just and sovereign God were for the good of all people created in God’s own image with His law in their hearts (Psalm 40:8). As such, they would advance the common good, providing they were not imposed on an unwilling majority by force, but brought to bear through the democratic, parliamentary processes.
The Reverend Fred Nile was, to be sure, often a controversial figure who courted public ridicule, and he was certainly not without flaws. But he was also an Australian Christian leader of immense moral courage, integrity, conviction and substance. For half a century, his contribution to faith and politics was pronounced, and at the age of 90, his legacy and achievements are worthy of appreciation.
Originally published on ABC Religion & Ethics.
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