A Palestinian Christian Response to Australia’s Cohesion Debate

Across Australia and around the world, social cohesion feels increasingly fragile. Public debate is more polarised, communities are more divided, and the language of unity is often used as a call for others to stay quiet. At Common Grace, we believe this moment calls not for silence, but for deeper truth and courage. In this blog, our friend John Na’em Snobar, Director of Advocacy at Palestinian Christians in Australia, draws on Scripture, lived experience, and years in diplomacy to reflect on Australia’s cohesion debate. We are grateful for John's voice in this space and his invitation to imagine social cohesion that is shaped not by silence, but by justice, lament and shared humanity.

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As Director of Advocacy at Palestinian Christians in Australia, and as a former Australian diplomat, I have learned that the language a nation chooses reveals the posture of its heart.

Scripture tells us, “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). In contemporary Australia, few phrases are spoken more frequently — or more reverently — than “social cohesion.” It is presented as a civic virtue, almost a moral good. Yet I have watched it drift from a promise of belonging into a mechanism of restraint.

When I served Australia overseas, I spoke proudly of our pluralism. We described ourselves as a nation where many cultures, faiths, and histories could flourish together. In biblical terms, it felt like an echo of Paul’s vision in Galatians 3:28 — many identities, yet one body politic. Social cohesion, then, meant weaving difference into strength.

Today, in conversations about Palestine, the term is too often used differently.

When Palestinian Australians gather in prayer, hold vigils for those killed, or advocate for a ceasefire and the protection of civilians, the language of “social cohesion” frequently follows. Peaceful protest is cautioned against. Public lament is portrayed as inflammatory. The underlying message is clear: your grief must be carefully calibrated so as not to disturb the national equilibrium.

Yet the Christian tradition does not treat lament as a threat. The Psalms are filled with cries of anguish that are anything but quiet. “How long, O Lord?” is not a destabilising question; it is an act of faith. The prophets, too, were rarely congratulated for preserving social comfort. Isaiah and Amos disrupted false peace precisely because justice was absent. As Amos declares, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). That is not a call to silence; it is a call to moral courage.

Palestinian Christians know something about holding faith and suffering together. We are heirs to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Our advocacy is not animated by hostility, but by the conviction that every human being bears the image of God. When we speak about the safety of civilians, the sanctity of life, and the application of international law, we do so not as outsiders agitating against Australia, but as citizens seeking coherence between our nation’s values, actions, and its rhetoric.

From my years in diplomacy, I understand the desire for stability. Governments are wary of fracture. But Scripture distinguishes between peace and mere quiet. Jeremiah warned against those who say “all is well’ when all is not well (Jeremiah 6:14). Cohesion built on suppressed voices is not peace; it is fragility.

True social cohesion resembles Paul’s metaphor of the body in 1 Corinthians 12. “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.” The body does not preserve unity by silencing the injured limb. It draws attention to it. It tends to it. It acknowledges pain as part of shared life. In that sense, when Palestinian Australians speak about the suffering of their families, they are not undermining cohesion; they are inviting the nation into deeper solidarity.

In my current role, I hear daily from church leaders and community members who want nothing more than to contribute faithfully to Australia’s common good. They do not seek division. They seek integrity — a society confident enough to allow moral disagreement without casting minorities as liabilities.

If “social cohesion” is to reflect a Christian moral imagination, it must be anchored in truth and justice, not in the management of dissent. It must protect the space for conscience, for lament, and for prophetic witness.

These reflections were explored further in a recent conversation I recorded with the Anglican Church of Australia’s On The Way Podcast, produced by St John's Cathedral — where we discussed how authentic cohesion, grounded in the Gospel, calls us not to silence suffering, but to stand together in truth.