I was brought up as an Anglican, and many of my values stem from that upbringing. It was, at least as I knew it, a gentle religion. We prayed for the poor, we prayed for peace, and we prayed for all of those less fortunate than ourselves. The values it taught me — compassion, empathy, and fairness — were, I now believe, universal ones. They fit neatly into the idea of reciprocal altruism and into our evolved instinct to care for those in our community.
There is an old line that humanism is a Christian heresy. And, if that is so, then mine must be an Anglican one. There was little smiting, no tribalism, no ‘America First’. It was about neighbourliness.
At around seventeen, however, I could no longer believe in God. I moved through agnosticism, then atheism, and finally found a home in humanism. What struck me was how much of what I valued as an Anglican still lived on in humanism: a concern for others, a desire for fairness, a belief in community.
Those values do, in fact, work within communities. They underpin both common law and social trust. They promote harmony and flourishing. But history teaches us something darker about how humans behave between communities.
We have, for as long as we can trace, been a violent species. Tribes, nations, religions — massacring those who are different has been a recurring theme. And, even in our own time, the atrocities are familiar: the Holocaust, Gaza and the West Bank, Somalia, Rwanda. The list is long.
So the question for a humanist is this: if values like fairness and compassion are often claimed but not always honored in practice, how should we live with those whose practices conflict with humanist principles?
This distinction matters. Most people, even those in societies where women are subjugated or homosexuals persecuted, would still say they value fairness, peace, or compassion. The divergence is not always in the values themselves, but in how they are interpreted and translated into practice.
So when we encounter practices like female genital mutilation, arranged cousin marriages, or the criminalisation of homosexuality, the clash is not that these societies reject fairness outright, but that they define fairness differently or allow other considerations to override it. Recognising this gives us a place to start dialogue.
Humanists — and, indeed, most Australians — see such practices as abhorrent, and rightly so. Some are even against the law in our society. While values cannot be imposed by force, harmful practices can be restricted by law within a society and debated across borders without pretending that dialogue will always persuade.
Numbers matter. A small flow of migrants with different practices is usually absorbed into the larger society, adapting over time to its prevailing norms. But when arrivals are many, or when communities become self-contained, the task of integration grows harder.
Laws can and should prohibit harmful practices, but laws alone do not ensure assimilation. People may obey the law outwardly while still holding on to attitudes that resist equality. Some practices may continue privately, shielded from scrutiny. And, of course, there are Australians born here whose outlooks are just as much at odds with liberal democracy as those of any newcomer.
So what does assimilation mean? At its strictest, it implies abandoning one’s heritage and adopting the host culture wholesale. That kind of assimilation is both unrealistic and unjust. A more balanced view is integration: newcomers may retain language, customs, and faith, but they must embrace the core civic values — equality before the law, dignity for all, freedom of belief. Integration, not erasure, is the goal.
Humanism offers a path that distinguishes between people and practices, between race and values.
Here is where things become difficult, and where accusations of racism arise. If I value reciprocal altruism, peace, and fairness, what happens when immigration brings in people whose practices are different? What if integration fails? What if, over time, my commitment to Western liberal values becomes diluted?
It is tempting to frame this as a problem of immigration itself. Yet, the reality is more complex. There are Australians born here — sometimes with deep family roots in this country — whose practices or political commitments I also find hostile to liberal democracy. So, the issue is not immigration as such, but how well society as a whole supports and sustains shared values.
Immigrants, like locals, must know that harmful practices are not tolerated here. Laws must be enforced and clear explanations given for why such practices are banned. But to refuse entire groups on the assumption they cannot integrate would be to slip into racism.
Here humanism provides a compass. Racism is the belief that one race is inherently superior to another. Humanism rejects that. What matters is not the colour of someone’s skin but the practices they follow and the values they uphold.
When I object to practices like FGM, it is not because of the race of the people who practice it, but because of the harm it causes. When I worry about integration, it is not because of ethnicity, but because of whether people will share in the values of equality, dignity, and fairness that hold my society together.
The danger lies in conflating values with race. To say “all Muslims”, or “all Indians”, or “all Africans” is to flatten diverse peoples into a stereotype. That is where cultural critique slips into racism. A humanist must be careful — and precise — in language and thought.
So what should a humanist wish for? To defend values at home: reciprocal altruism, fairness, equality before the law. To resist arrogance abroad: accept that other societies will change in their own ways and times. To draw the line at harm: tolerate cultural difference where it does not damage human dignity, but speak out when it does. To apply principles universally: oppose racism in our own society with the same conviction we oppose harmful practices abroad.
Racism is not inevitable. Nor is cultural arrogance. Humanism offers a path that distinguishes between people and practices, between race and values.
So does this make me a racist? Not if I hold to the distinction. Not if I remember that my objection is to practices that cause harm, not to the people themselves. The challenge — and it is not a small one — is to defend what is good in my own society, while resisting the slide into prejudice against those who are different.
That, perhaps, is the humanist’s guide.
This article has been republished with the permission of the author. It originally appeared on his Substack.
Photo by hey emmby on Unsplash.
