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Australia is experiencing a significant shift in its view of morality. The “gay conversion therapy” laws now Australia-wide are the exemplar of this. Recently, New South Wales passed a law that includes the following:

“You can pray with a person and do all those sorts of things,” the Attorney-General told the committee. “But if you pray in a way that it becomes a… sustained practice directed to a person with a view to changing their sexual orientation or gender, that’s against the law.”

Ms Carter pressed further, asking, “With respect, isn’t prayer commonly about change of all sorts of things?”

Daley clarified that “if you’re sitting down praying to someone to strengthen them and guide them and all those pastoral considerations, that’s fine. But if you’re sitting down to ‘pray the gay away’, that’s not”. [1]

Here, in essence, is the new morality that is now the prevailing narrative in contemporary Australia. This paper first discusses the environment in which this new morality has risen. Second, a definition of the new morality is provided. Third, how Christians are to respond to this.

The fertile soil for a new morality

Professor Mattias Desmet, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Ghent, Belgium, published The Psychology of Totalitarianism in 2022. [2]

He asserts:

There was the emergence of a new totalitarianism, no longer led by flamboyant mob leaders such as Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats.

…

Totalitarianism, has its roots in the insidious psychological process of mass formation. Only a thorough analysis of this process enables us to understand the shocking behaviours of a “totalarized” population, including an exaggerated willingness of individuals to sacrifice their own personal interest out of solidarity with the collective, a profound intolerance of dissident voices, and pronounce susceptibility to pseudo-scientific indoctrination and propaganda. [3]

On the idea of mass formation, he says:

Mass formation is, in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically. [4]

I suggest that this is the background to the popular narrative that is now prevalent in Western liberal democracies. The response to Covid was the epitome of this, but it continues in the so-called progressive agenda now.

In Australia, the prevailing narrative grounded in mechanistic thinking has abandoned God and the ethical code embodied in a Christian worldview. We have embraced a new morality that is subjective and coloured by the totalitarianism of the homosexual agenda. All dissent to this agenda is now criminalised in Australia.

The New Morality

Mattias Desmet highlights the characteristics of the “new morality”. He states:

Since the beginning of the 21st-century, a new morality has risen from the belly of the enlightenment thinking, which in a number of respects is stricter, more vagarious, more irrational, and more hypocritical than the prior religious morality, which the Enlightenment sought to obliterate in order to set people free. With the rise of the woke culture, society fell prey to implicit and explicit rules that made every detail of human interaction more precarious.

…

The new norm has become so stringent that even suggesting that there is a physical difference between a man and a woman can be considered a violation of sexual integrity. [5]

Later, he concludes:

The new morality is also more and more aggressively enforced both by the government and by the population itself. Support for free speech, freedom of the press, artistic freedom, and basic self-determination is decreasing at an alarming rate. [6]

In essence, Desmet sees the new morality not as a mark of progress, but as a mask for conformity. The results are a loss of freedom on many levels and a gagging of genuine dialogue. I see it as a denial of a person’s individual human rights to free choice, free speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association (as happened in the extreme Covid lockdowns). Surely this should concern all lovers of a free democracy and Christians who hold to beliefs contrary to the new morality.

The new morality which rises out of a mechanistic worldview holds to relativism, and either ignores or rejects the Christian worldview that God is and has revealed His will for humankind.

How should Christians respond?

A Christian response to the new morality will affirm without apology that ultimate reality is found in the personal God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. Humankind is made in the image of God, and its ultimate purpose is to have a relationship with God. Morality is God-given and is absolute.

The church today will need to discover the attitude that was displayed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he faced the rising totalitarianism of Nazism.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), a German pastor and theologian, resisted the Nazi regime and was eventually involved in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. [7] He was arrested, imprisoned, and executed in the concentration camp at Flossenburg on 9 April 1945, one of four members of his immediate family to die at the hands of the Nazi regime for their participation in the small Protestant resistance movement.

Bonhoeffer stands as an example of one who stood against a tyrannical regime and promoted the idea of civil disobedience for Christians. Now, I am aware that the regime Bonhoeffer opposed was a personification of evil – a true example of the beast in operation. Some may think that it is inappropriate to use him as an example for a justification of civil disobedience, resistance to the new morality, in contemporary Australia. I think that we can discern some principles for our resistance from his example, and that is what I propose to offer here. [8]

It seems that a watershed in Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the Nazi Regime was in 1934 at the Fanø conference. [9] Fanø is a small island in the North Sea off the coast of Denmark. A diverse group gathered there, and it was here that Bonhoeffer spoke of his support for civil disobedience in the face of Nazi totalitarianism. Later, he would move from civil disobedience to the extreme position of supporting the assassination of Adolf Hitler.

The principles coming out of this conference that we need to note in our current contemporary situation are enshrined in the following words of the resolution from the conference:

The Council declares its conviction that autocratic Church rule, especially when imposed upon the conscience in solemn oath, the use of force, and the suppression of free discussion, are incompatible with the true nature of the Christian Church, and asks in the name of the Gospel for its fellow Christians in the German Church:

“Freedom to preach the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and to live according to His teaching;

“Freedom of the printed word and of Assembly in the service of the Christian Community;

“Freedom of the Church to instruct its youth in the principles of Christianity and immunity from the compulsory imposition of life antagonistic to the Christian religion.” [10]

It is freedom that is the keyword for us now. Our freedom to choose and freedom of conscience are seriously restricted because of the mandatory regulations in relation to “gay conversion”. With the “anti-Gay Conversion Therapy Laws” now legislated in Australian States, our freedom to uphold biblical morality is now restricted.

The powerful legacy of Bonhoeffer was his Christocentric theology and its application to life, so brilliantly expounded in his Cost of Discipleship. [11] The challenge is to live under the Lordship of Christ over all of life. Our obedience is to Him. He demands, and is worthy of, our total obedience. Freedom is found in Him and following Him.

Bonhoeffer’s example inspires us today as we contend for the right of freedom of choice, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. These are violated by the new morality and laws supporting it.

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[1] Kurt Mahlburg, “Confirmed: Government Defines Which Prayers Are Legal Under NSW Conversion Law“, The Daily Declaration, 8 September 2025.

[2] Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism (London, UK: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022).

[3] Ibid., p. 2.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p. 75.

[6] Ibid., pp. 77-8.

[7] An excellent contemporary biography of Bonhoeffer is: Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010).

[8] The writings of Bonhoeffer have been subjected to extensive study and review. He remains a fascinating subject for research. His notable works are: The Cost of Discipleship; Life Together; Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison. I am not pretending to give an in-depth study of Bonhoeffer here in this paper.

[9] See: Civil disobedience and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Fanø address — ERLC.

[10] Cited in: Metaxas, 240.

[11] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM, 1959), pp. 33-84.