How A U.S. Ally Is Engaging In Anti-Christian Lawfare

Australia has positioned itself as a steadfast ally of the United States, and its Prime Minister Anthony Albanese fancies himself a personal friend of President Donald Trump.

So why is Albanese’s left-wing government conducting a witch hunt back home against Christian supporters of their political opponents?

Albanese’s Labor Party has been hounding members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC) — a small but mainstream fellowship with 55,000 members worldwide, including 7,000 in North America — over their political activity during Australia’s 2025 national elections. 

His Labor Party is weaponizing a post-election committee to target the Church, claiming that some of its members’ support of Labor’s opponents in 2025 equates to a grand conspiracy on the part of the Church itself.

The committee has called members of Plymouth Brethren Christian Church to appear more than twice as often as officials from the Australian Electoral Commission, the organization that runs the entire election. The committee has now gone as far as to threaten to subpoena PBCC leadership, including the church’s senior leader, Mr. Bruce Hales.

According to one conservative Australian Member of Parliament, this is simply a “hyper-partisan witch-hunt” against a Christian church.

With Democrats potentially poised to make significant gains in November’s midterm elections, America cannot afford to allow its purported allies to establish a precedent of anti-Christian lawfare by trampling upon the religious liberty that transcends all nations and peoples.

According to PBCC’s testimony, Mr. Hales, an unpaid member of the church, had nothing to do with the election. Based on all available evidence, he did not campaign, donate, or volunteer for a single candidate; he did not ask, counsel, or direct his flock to do a single thing in the election. So what reason would Albanese have to drag him before a committee?

In the words of Mr. Hales, “There has been considerable misinformation spread by the press, but I am completely confident that truth will prevail and God’s rights in upholding government will be upheld.” I pray, on behalf of the Church the world over, that he is right!

But in the meantime, this harassment campaign plays out against a global backdrop of surging anti-Christian bigotry. One in seven Christians faces discrimination because of their faith. Christians were targeted by governments and individuals in 165 of 198 countries in 2023, more than any other religious group.

President Trump, who recently nominated Cissie Graham Lynch, Reverend Franklin Graham’s daughter, as the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, has vowed to stamp this out, telling the United Nations that, “Christians are being persecuted all over the world,” and calling “the violent persecution of Christians” a “barbaric evil” earlier this year.

But despite President Trump’s stance, the forces behind this vicious Australian campaign can be found on American soil. If the Democrats take back the House or Senate in November, they will hold the reins of the same kind of committees and political weaponry being raised against Australia’s Christians.

Threats to liberty know no borders, and Albanese’s anti-Christian leftists have ambitions beyond their shores. At the United Nations General Assembly in September, Albanese launched Australia’s campaign for a seat on the U.N.’s Security Council in 2029 — the same U.N. whose Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

Albanese and his liberals, it appears, want to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with America as leaders of the free world, a world increasingly beset by anti-Christian animus that they themselves are fueling.

As Christians, we must not look away from the plight of our fellow faithful, especially not in a moment as critical and precarious as the one we face today. As Plymouth Brethren’s spokesperson Lloyd Grimshaw said in his opening statement to the Committee, “If religious discrimination such as what we witnessed in the 2025 election is allowed to start with my Church, it certainly won’t end with my Church.”

As American Christians, we need to take heed of this cautionary tale from the other side of the world.

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Lucas Miles is Vice President of Faith for Turning Point USA.

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