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Being a resilient minority in a hostile culture is a challenge, says Greg Sheridan. But he loves a challenge.
It’s not every day that you find a secular journalist addressing a room full of Catholic media professionals on the topic of God. Yet that’s what Sheridan does.
When he made the resilient minority comment, he was addressing the Australasian Catholic Press Association Conference (APAC) in Melbourne.
A born and bred Catholic, this experienced journalist has been the foreign editor at “The Australian” newspaper for 30 years.
“I’ve never had any trouble with belief. I’ve had the most enormous trouble with living up to the most elementary standards of Christian life. So, naturally, I became a journalist,” he said, to much laughter from a room full of Catholic journalists and communicators.
Sheridan says he enjoys using his privileged position in the media to talk about the “taboo subject” of Christianity.
In his 45 years as a journalist he said he’s seen a profound culture change from being nominally pro-Christian from when he came into the business.
He says society has moved from being nominally pro-Christian to a type of neutrality to being “seriously hostile to the Christian religion now, and especially the Christian churches”. The reality of this hostility is “just overwhelming, unavoidable, incontestable”.
“We’re not persecuted in the way that Christians in Pakistan or China or much of Africa are, but the culture is very hostile to Christianity,” he said.
“Of course journalism is about the search for a good story and you want to search for the truth, and it turns out the biggest truth of all is Christianity and the best story is Christianity.
“[But] if you leave the discussion of ultimate truth, the spiritual life, only to the morally qualified, it tends to be a very small discussion.
“So anyway, I finally jumped in, put my toe in the water… Coming out, so to speak, as a Christian has been nothing but fun.
“I think more Christians should do this, more Christians should own their faith publicly.
“Fellow Christians need their public solidarity, that we don’t get now from the public and media generally. And non-Christians need to be alerted to the truth. They need to have the truth of Christ’s presence announced to them, in the culture.”
Today’s media and culture neglects Christians and portrays them entirely negatively, he says.
“Coming out, so to speak, as a Christian has been nothing but fun. All Christians should own their faith publicly. Fellow Christians need the public solidarity which we don’t get now from the media generally and non-Christians need to be alerted to the truth, and have the truth of Christ’s presence announced to them in the culture.”
The culture journalists are operating in today is becoming post-Christian, Christian and pre-Christian simultaneously, he says.
Sheridan sees hope in millennials.
“Neo-paganism is not good for Christianity. But on the other hand, its adherents are not immune to Christianity the way the baby boomers were.
“. . . They (millennials) know absolutely nothing about it (Christianity). And that means they are able to be approached, and we can sell to them.”
They don’t hate Christianity as the “boring practice of their parents and grandparents”, they’re simply indifferent to it.
As a “bold minority”, Sheridan says minorities have rights and “we should demand our rights, not for ourselves but for the truth.
“It’s a difficult environment but it’s also a fun environment; as my friends in the air force would say, it’s a target-rich environment.”
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