Discovering spirit of Australia

He was talking to people from all over the known world, a group that excludes our New World, the Southland of the Holy Spirit, or the cynical response might have been: "Beer, so much more than a breakfast drink."

Nonetheless, the penetration of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to the New World, north and south, effectively gave rise to English as the new universal language.

Australia several times came close to being colonised by another tongue – twice in 1606, and again at La Perouse in 1788. If the French explorer La Perouse had beaten Arthur Phillip to Sydney Cove, rather than drifting off to a watery grave somewhere far to the north, perhaps we would be taming 'Strine through the office of the Academie Australiennne, even banning the burqa from public places.

Australia would have been different, yet it is the most completely English-speaking continent while also clinging to the great hope of multiculturalism.

Without multiculturalism, our post-modern society would not be possible – and nor would a universal church.

History turns in a moment and Pentecost is such a moment – the sudden outreach of the Christian faith to people beyond the confines of Israel, however you read the miraculous gift of speaking in tongues.

Of course, it took more than one speech in Jerusalem to create a worldwide movement, and multicultural Australia remains a work in progress.

But if one transformation can inform and inspire another, then maybe we can still dream of that fabled holy-day in the Whitsundays.