One Nation leader Pauline Hanson argues Australia is “predominately a Judeo-Christian society” and should live under “one cultural umbrella”.

The term “Judeo-Christian” is shorthand, here, for a set of values that privilege Western culture. As a term, it explicitly excludes other world religions, such as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

But this term is, in fact, a relatively recent invention that glosses over Christianity’s role in historically persecuting Jewish people. For several millennia, many Christians have seen themselves as the “chosen people”, setting themselves in opposition to the Jewish faith.

Given there is no such thing as “Judeo-Christian values”, we might do well to abandon the term.

Where did it come from?

Virtually unknown before the second world war, the term Judeo-Christian emerged in the United States in the late 1930s and 1940s as a way of combating the growth of antisemitism there.

In the aftermath of the murder of around six million Jews in the Holocaust, Protestant Americans began using the term more widely, as a way of bringing Jews more securely inside the Western tent. As such, it was a gesture of reconciliation provoked by shame and guilt.

In the second half........

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