I recently read Rodney Hide’s review of Bruce Logan’s book Pilgrim: Multiculturalism, Diversity and Civil Religion. His review deserves our attention because it grapples with one of the most urgent questions of our time: what holds a society together when its foundations are stripped away?

Rodney points out that Logan believes Western civilisation was built upon Christianity, and that the removal of that foundation has left us culturally adrift. In its place, we’ve been given what Logan calls a “civil religion” — an ideological creed of multiculturalism, diversity, and identity politics. It masquerades as freedom and tolerance, but in practice it often functions as a coercive orthodoxy. Schools, universities, media, and public institutions have become its priests, teaching relativism, oppression-oppressed frameworks, and ever-shifting categories of identity.

Rodney’s review is unapologetically Christian in tone. It suggests that the only way back to coherence and meaning is to return to Christian revelation and truth. Whether you share that faith or not, his critique of our current ideological climate is hard to deny. We live in a time of confusion: spiritual roots severed, traditions cast aside, and a new creed imposed from above.

Where the Freerangers Stand

As a Freeranger, I see great value in what Rodney is highlighting — and I also see blind spots. Let me explain.

Recognition of spiritual decay
He is right: the crisis is spiritual. Without inner roots, outer life collapses. A people without meaning will cling to empty slogans and destructive ideologies.

Warning against indoctrination
He is right again: our institutions are not neutral. Children are being trained in ideology rather than in wisdom, resilience, and truth. We must resist this.

Call for deeper foundations
On this point, we agree fully: we cannot live by relativism and technocracy alone. We need a grounding that transcends fashion, politics, and propaganda.

But here is where I step aside from Rodney. To insist that only one religious tradition is the sole foundation is to miss something deeper. The ground beneath Christianity — and indeed beneath all enduring traditions — is nature, truth, human dignity, natural law, and the sacred order of life itself. Different cultures have expressed this in different ways. The danger is not diversity itself, but the abandonment of roots, the denial of nature, and the substitution of ideology for reality.

The Freeranger Path

So what do we do? We don’t rebuild culture by seizing the levers of power and imposing belief. That has been tried, and it always corrupts. Instead, we live differently and build anew from the ground up.

Seed projects, not state decrees
We grow schools, communities, gardens, healing centres, and families that embody freedom, resilience, and natural wisdom. These become islands of coherence that attract others by example, not coercion.

Selective embrace of modern tools
We do not reject everything in modern life. Technology, science, communication — all can serve if aligned with life and truth. We sift carefully, keeping what nourishes, discarding what enslaves.

Strengthening the inner life
Freerangers cultivate discipline, character, and rootedness. We reconnect with nature, with ritual, with spiritual practice, so that we cannot be shaken by propaganda or fear.

Plural alliances
We live in a plural world. There will be Christians, Māori, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, and others who see the lies of ideology and long for truth. We must build bridges on shared principles: dignity, sovereignty, truth, and respect for the natural order. We don’t need everyone to sign up to the same creed — only to honour freedom and life.

Conclusion

Rodney Hide’s review of Pilgrim is a timely reminder of the stakes. He is right to warn of the dangers of multicultural ideology turned into coercive state religion. He is right to call us back to foundations.

Where we differ is in how broad and inclusive those foundations must be. For Freerangers, the call is to return not merely to one tradition, but to the ground beneath all traditions: nature, truth, Godscript, and the law written into life itself.

That is how we will weather this storm — not by lamenting what has been lost, but by living as seed planters of a culture worth inheriting.