Stewarding the Symbol: The Christian Heritage of Australia’s Flag in an Age of Forgetting

As the AMWU calls for the Union Jack to be removed as a “symbol of oppression,” Australia faces a deeper question: can the failures of the past be confronted without erasing the Christian inheritance woven into our national story?

The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union has called for the Union Jack to be removed from the Australian national flag.

In its 2026 Union Blueprint for Action, the AMWU argues that Australia must “abolish the symbols of oppression,” declaring that the Union Jack and what it describes as offensive colonial statues “must be removed from public life.”

The timing is pointed. The Australian Labor Party is gathering in Adelaide for its National Conference. For Christians who take seriously the call to be salt and light in the public square, this moment invites more than a partisan reaction. It raises deeper questions about memory, repentance, belonging, inheritance and responsibility.

What does it mean to receive a national symbol from those who came before us?

Must an inherited symbol be declared innocent of every historical wrong before it can be preserved? Or is it possible to acknowledge the failures of the past while still recognising that the inheritance itself contains things worthy of gratitude, protection and faithful stewardship?

Earlier this year, I examined the history of Australia’s flag, the meanings contained within its design and the legal process required to replace it. That discussion was primarily historical and constitutional.

The AMWU’s intervention raises a different question:

How should Christians respond when an inherited national symbol, one containing unmistakable traces of the Christian civilisation from which modern Australia emerged, is publicly reduced to a symbol of oppression?

A Question of Stewardship

I do not write to idolise an earthly banner, my ultimate allegiance is to Christ and His Kingdom, not to cloth, colour, nation or empire. Christian allegiance does not require unquestioning loyalty to the nation. It calls me instead to exercise faithful responsibility within the place and community God has given me.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” — Matthew 6:33

The Apostle Paul reminds believers that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). No flag can save us. No constitution can establish the Kingdom of God. No nation, however blessed, stands beyond divine judgment.

Yet heavenly citizenship does not relieve us of earthly responsibility. Scripture repeatedly calls God’s people to remember, to honour what is honourable, to teach the next generation and to remain faithful with what has been entrusted to them.

“Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.” — 1 Corinthians 4:2

An inheritance is not something I receive because every part of it is faultless. It is something placed into my care: to understand honestly, repair where necessary, preserve where valuable and pass it on more wisely than I received it. That is the spirit in which Christians should approach Australia’s flag.

The Crosses on the Flag

At the heart of the Australian flag lies the Union Jack.

Officially, its presence acknowledges Australia’s history of British settlement. It is therefore both a political and constitutional emblem and a representation of the historical world from which the Commonwealth of Australia emerged.

But the Union Jack is also composed of three historic Christian cross traditions: the red cross associated with St George and England, the white diagonal cross associated with St Andrew and Scotland, and the red diagonal cross associated with St Patrick and Ireland.

The flag was not designed as a Christian creed, and it should not be treated as though it were. Nevertheless, its heraldry carries an unmistakable Christian inheritance. These emblems reach into the Christian memory of the British Isles, to apostolic witness, martyrdom and missionary faith. They remind us that the civilisation from which Australia inherited its language, legal traditions and political institutions was profoundly shaped by Christianity, even when its governments and people failed to live according to Christian truth.

Alongside the Union Jack stands the Southern Cross, the constellation that locates Australia unmistakably beneath the southern skies. First Nations peoples have maintained ancient and sophisticated relationships with the heavens long before and since British settlement. Later European navigators also looked to the southern stars for direction and orientation. On the national flag, the constellation represents both place and belonging: this land beneath these skies.

For Christians, the heavens may also call to mind the order of creation and humanity’s need for orientation beyond itself.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.” — Psalm 19:1

Taken together, these symbols do not tell the whole Australian story. No flag can. But they remind us that Australia did not emerge from a vacuum. It inherited a particular history, formed through the meeting of ancient First Nations cultures, British settlement, Christian civilisation, constitutional development, migration and the gradual emergence of a distinct Australian identity.

More Than Oppression

Australians do not all read the Union Jack in the same way.

For many, it represents continuity, sacrifice, constitutional inheritance, family history and the service of generations who lived and died beneath it. For others, it evokes colonial power, the injustices that followed, and exclusion. Those differences should not be dismissed.

Before any of what follows, one truth must be named first: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, settlers and missionaries alike bear the image of God. Governments, churches and institutions must therefore be judged by how they treated people made in that image. No person should be reduced to a single act, an institutional category or one side of this history.

No honest Christian account of Australian history can ignore the injustices Aboriginal peoples suffered as settlement advanced, the frontier violence, the separation of families or the many occasions on which settlers and governments failed to love their neighbours as themselves.

Truth-telling matters. Repentance matters. The fruits of repentance matter.

“Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance.” — Luke 3:8

Nor should Christians romanticise the conduct of churches and missions.

Some missionaries sought to proclaim the gospel, provide care, learn languages and defend Aboriginal people against mistreatment. Others became entangled in paternalism, cultural suppression and systems that exercised destructive control over Indigenous lives. The history differs across regions, denominations and individual missions, but much of it is painful and should be faced without evasion.

Christian stewardship requires us to tell both truths. But acknowledging that the Union Jack was carried in circumstances of injustice does not mean injustice exhausts its meaning.

The AMWU’s formulation moves beyond acknowledging that colonial oppression occurred. It treats the existing symbol itself as an unacceptable public reminder that must be stripped away. That is a far more sweeping claim.

A national inheritance cannot be judged fairly by isolating its sins from every other part of its history. The British and Christian inheritance within Australia also carried ideas of conscience, charity, ordered liberty, accountable government and the moral limitation of earthly power.

Those principles were never applied perfectly. At times, they were betrayed grievously. But their betrayal does not make them unreal. Indeed, the preamble to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 records that the people of the federating colonies agreed to unite while “humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God.”

This did not establish Australia as a theocracy or formally confessional Christian state. But it does invite the observation that reference to God was consciously present at Federation and formed part of the language through which the new Commonwealth understood itself. To reduce this inheritance to oppression alone is therefore not fuller history, instead It is another form of forgetting.

The Cross Judges Every Nation

This distinction is essential: The Cross does not sanctify empire. It judges empire.

Christians should never use Christian symbols to baptise conquest, excuse injustice or pretend that a nation becomes righteous merely because crosses appear upon its banners. The Cross stands in judgment over every nation and every exercise of power, including empires and governments that displayed Christian symbols while acting contrary to Christ.

But that is also why the Christian inheritance should not be discarded as though it offers nothing beyond the wrongs committed beneath it. The Cross provides part of the moral language through which oppression itself can be named. It tells the ruler that he is not God, the powerful that they will give an account, and the nation that its treatment of the weak matters before a justice higher than political convenience.

It declares that human dignity is not granted by government and cannot rightly be withdrawn by government. The failure of Christians to live consistently with those truths is reason for repentance and reform, not for pretending the truths never existed.

Responsibility Without Inherited Guilt

The language of inheritance must also be used carefully.

I inherit the consequences of history. I inherit institutions, relationships, unresolved wounds and responsibilities toward one another. I am accountable for how I tell the story and how I act in the present.

But people do not inherit personal guilt simply by being born into a particular ancestry, nor personal innocence because their ancestors suffered. Christian moral responsibility is personal and real. Each generation is accountable for what it faithfully does with the circumstances and inheritance placed in its hands.

That means Australians today should seek truth, justice and genuine reconciliation where harm continues. It does not mean dividing the living into permanent categories of inherited guilt and inherited moral authority.

A shared future cannot be built by assigning present Australians fixed moral status according to ancestry. It must be built through equal dignity, mutual responsibility, truth and a willingness to belong to one another.

Stewardship, Not Nostalgia

Defending Australia’s flag need not be an exercise in nostalgia.

Nostalgia can romanticise the past, filtering out its injustices while remembering only what comforts us. Christian stewardship asks something more demanding. It calls for gratitude without idolatry.

I may be thankful for inherited institutions, relative freedom, stable government and the sacrifices of those who came before me without placing ultimate faith in the nation. It calls for truth without historical reductionism.

I can acknowledge the injustices that followed, and institutional failure, without accepting that oppression is the only legitimate lens through which the past may be understood. It calls for repentance without cultural self-erasure.

Repentance seeks truth, repair and reconciliation. It does not require a people to despise every part of their inheritance or remove every symbol touched by human sin. And it calls for preservation without pretending the past was perfect.

I can preserve a symbol because of what it continues to represent while teaching the next generation to understand both its achievements and its failures. Our children, foster children, grandchildren and those coming after us deserve the full story, the light as well as the shadows.

They deserve to understand that history is rarely divided neatly between innocent people and guilty symbols. It is a record of fallen human beings capable of courage and cruelty, service and selfishness, faithfulness and betrayal.

Teach only pride, and the result is mythology, teach only shame, and the result is alienation, a mature nation must be capable of holding grief and gratitude together.

It should be able to look upon its flag with grief for the injustices committed beneath it, and gratitude for the sacrifices, institutions, freedoms and common life it has also come to represent. One truth need not cancel the other.

Symbols as Civic Anchors

National symbols also perform a quiet civic function.

They give people of different ancestries, convictions and family histories something they may still recognise together. They do not eliminate disagreement or require everyone to tell precisely the same version of history. But they provide a common point of reference within which disagreement can occur without dissolving shared belonging. This matters in a diverse nation.

A flag cannot force people to love one another. Nor can it resolve every historical grievance. But it can serve as a visible reminder that, despite real differences, Australians share a political home and a responsibility for its future.

When every inherited symbol is divided into the categories of oppressor and oppressed, belonging itself begins to fragment. Citizens cease to encounter one another primarily as fellow Australians and increasingly meet as representatives of competing historical identities.

A shared symbol does not need to be purified of every historical complexity before it can retain civic value. If that becomes the standard, eventually nothing inherited remains capable of holding a people together.

This reflects a principle I explored in Australia Day, Belonging and the Future We Choose : a national community must be capable of acknowledging grief without making grief the only permissible foundation of public identity.

Belonging cannot remain permanently conditional upon agreement with one account of the past. It must be offered as a shared responsibility in the present.

When Every Inheritance Becomes Suspect

The campaign against the Union Jack belongs to a broader cultural habit in which inherited meanings are increasingly judged through a single framework of power and oppression.

Within that framework, continuity itself can begin to appear morally suspect. Preservation becomes confused with endorsement of every wrong committed in the past. Symbols are no longer interpreted across generations but placed in the dock and required to prove their innocence.

Yet no enduring national symbol could survive such a test, every nation, movement and institution has been touched by human sin. The Christian answer is neither denial nor destruction, it is discernment.

The question is what a symbol has meant, what it means now, what truths it carries, what failures have accompanied it, and whether its continuing presence serves the common good.

The question is not whether the Australian flag emerged from a morally perfect history, it didn’t, the question is whether Australians should allow one interpretation of that history to extinguish every other meaning the flag carries.

The Symbol Belongs to the People

There is also a democratic principle at stake.

Australia’s flag does not belong to the AMWU, the Labor Party, the Coalition, a media organisation or any cultural institution. It belongs to the Australian people collectively.

As I explained in my earlier article, changing the flag does not require a constitutional referendum because the flag is not entrenched in the Constitution. However, section 3 of the Flags Act 1953 presently provides that the existing national flag may cease to be the flag only if electors are offered a choice between it and one or more alternatives and choose a replacement.

That requirement reflects an important principle: a national symbol should not be changed through elite decree or the gradual institutional delegitimising of the existing flag. Any change should follow honest national deliberation and the informed consent of Australians.

Those who wish to propose a new flag are entitled to make their case. But those who value the existing flag are equally entitled to defend it without being told that they are celebrating oppression. A national symbol can remain genuinely national only while citizens are free to debate its meaning.

Unity created through persuasion and consent is stronger than a manufactured consensus produced by institutional pressure or by portraying disagreement as moral failure. The answer to contested history is persuasion, not erasure.

Christ Remains the Centre

None of this means our hope rests in flags, monarchies, political parties or constitutions, because all are temporal. Our confidence is in the One whose Kingdom cannot be shaken.

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.” — Hebrews 12:28

Yet precisely because Christ is Lord of all, Christians have reason to engage questions of national memory with clarity, courage and charity.

I can honour the continuing dignity, cultures and contributions of First Nations peoples, I can seek reconciliation grounded in truth, I can confess the failures of churches, governments and settlers, I can affirm that every Australian belongs equally within our shared civic life, and I can still refuse the claim that the Christian and constitutional heritage within Australia’s flag amounts to nothing more than oppression.

Faithful stewardship does not demand that I be ashamed of the past or captive to it. It asks us to receive our inheritance honestly, judge it rightly, repair what has been broken, preserve what remains good and pass it on with wisdom.

The Australian flag is not the Cross of Christ. But within it remain the traces of a civilisation that understood, however inconsistently, that nations and rulers are not ultimate, that authority answers to something higher, and that human life possesses a dignity political power did not create.

It also remains a civic anchor under which Australians of many backgrounds have served, sacrificed, mourned, celebrated and built a common life. In an age increasingly tempted to forget, those meanings are worth remembering.

They are worth holding together, and they are worth stewarding.

Thank you for reading.

God bless.

Mark