Totheextentthataroleisawardedtorationalcustom,adifferentlightshines
on the significance of Australian exceptionalism. Economic–environmental
explanations, by emphasizing adaptation to enduring physical realties, tend
to be optimistic. By contrast, cultural–historical explanations—by invoking
the non-rationality of origins—tend to be pessimistic. Rational custom, by
acknowledgingtheburntbridgesofhumanexistence,tendstoanacquiescence
without approval, and awaits the twist of chance.
3.8 The Law and the Word
The concept of rational custom provides a rational, if cheerless, explanation of
the tendency of Australia to endure with the‘same old, same old’. But an
entirely contrary foundation of this endurance may be advanced.
The various ways in which human beings respond to the other-worldly may
be organized around the antithesis between the nomistic and the antinomian.
This distinction is essentially between obedience and disobedience, and is
captured in many familiar contrasts: the pharisaical versus the prophetical;
‘superstition’versus‘enthusiasm’; mystique versus charisma; the Law and the
Word.
Australia very much takes its religion in thefirst style. From these deserts,
have any prophets come? Its culture positively suffocates the antinomian
impulse. Thus the desiccation of nineteenth-century Methodism amidst the
‘connexional principle’. Thus the fact that no religion, it has been observed,
has ever been founded in Australia; the possibility appears to wither at the
point of germination. Alfred Deakin, in retreat after loss of office in 1904,
became fervently engaged with Islam (Gabay 1992). His cherished son-in-law
entreated him to leave politics and lead a new church. Deakin wavered. And
returned to politics to pass the Excise Tariff Act.^48
Australia makes an obvious contrast to the USA, where the antinomian has
had a more vigorous life—the latter a country born in the failure of mystique
of monarchy; a country of revolutions, wars, revivals, and crazes. Character-
istically, it was from the west coast of the USA there arrived in Australia
revolutionary and (literally) incendiary socialism in the form of‘Wobbly
propheticism’(Winters 1985, p. 126), to confront the bureaucracies of the
unions and the Labor Party. From these examples it is evident that the nomistic
and the antinomian are more than just responses to the other-worldly, and
may have relevance for the questions of this book. The relevance would be
(^48) Surveys have indicated that Australians commonly nominate Ned Kelly as their national hero,
an undoubtedly charismaticfigure (McIntyre 1992). But does the selection of Kelly indicate the
strength of the charismatic in Australian life, or its degeneracy?
Theories of Australian Exceptionalism