Britain is now becoming a 'violent society', ex-Australian Deputy Prime Minister warns

The former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia has issued a stark warning to Britain about a "decline" in Western society.

Speaking to GB News from the ARC Conference in London, Jonathan Anderson declared the UK is becoming a "violent society".

Asked whether he believes there is a "decline in support for Christianity" in the West, Mr Anderson argued there is a decline in secular humanism.

He said: "What is in serious decline around the world is secular humanism. Outside of the West, this is an age of great ferment about beliefs.

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"So whether we like it or not, theology and religion are back on the front page because of the clash between radical Islam and traditional West derived or producing beliefs. That's what it is."

Mr Anderson argued that we "need to understand" the differences between religious cultures and theology and politics.

He told GB News: "In the end, we're back in the midst of a theological debate, and we need to understand the differences between the cultures that Christianity has given rise to equality of all the common law, free speech, the separation of faith from the secular versus the idea of Allah, Allah's elect, and the fusion of theology and politics. They're very, very different.

"So we actually have to go and understand these things. Never forget the point Thomas Sowell makes, building a civilisation, that's a painstaking process.

"You've then got to maintain it, then you've got to defend it. You'll do none of that if you don't understand it."

He added: "That which we don't understand, we become neglectful of, then we become suspicious of it, and then we can become hostile to it. We become hostile in many ways to our own values."

Mr Anderson described a "revolution" of belief that people can "be our own tin Gods", and how society must recognise that it is part of a whole.

He said: "There has been a revolution, perhaps, that's best described as the idea that we can all be our own little tin gods. We can all practice total, absolute autonomy over me, my life, my body, everything.

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"The poet who scribed those famous words 'no man is an island, we can't live as islands' - we cannot.

"We're not up to the task of running our own lives, our own way. We didn't come into this world self-sufficient, somebody had to make way for us and make sacrifices for it. When we get old, someone's going to have to do that."

Mr Anderson stressed: "This idea of radical autonomy, we can be God over our own lives, total control over everything, it doesn't work like that.

"We have to find co-operative models. We have to recognise we're part of a whole, at the same time, as we recognise that great concept of the value of individual conscience without taking it to absurd degrees."

The ex-deputy PM warned that there is now an "increase in violence" in the West as a result of societal issues.

He told GB News: "That's all deep and philosophical, but it matters. The forefathers who gave us our democracy spent centuries agonising and shedding blood over sorting these things out.

"We don't want to go back to the violence of days gone by, but you're seeing increasing violence in the West.

"Britain was once one of the safest countries in the world. Only Japan, I think I'm right in saying this, only Japan had lower murder rates than Britain. Britain is now becoming a violent society."

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