Does a ‘Pride progress’ flag really make rugby more inclusive?

The Rugby Football Union will fly the ‘Pride Progress’ flag at Twickenham this weekend, when a World XV team play the Barbarians invitational side.  

According to the Daily Telegraph, the RFU’s decision is ‘in response to the selection of Israel Folau’ in the World XV. The 34-year-old Folau was a regular in the Australian team for a number of years before he was sacked in 2019 for airing his views on homosexuality. A devout Christian, Folau has subsequently represented Tonga, from where his family – and faith – originates.

Why do some bourgeois progressives appear incapable of respecting the beliefs of Christians and Muslims? It is 200 years since missionaries from the Wesleyan Methodist Mission landed in Tonga. According to the World Council of Churches, ‘after a difficult start the work progressed, and by the middle of the 19th century the whole population was Christianised’. The ‘difficulty’ arose from those Tongans who resented the arrival of hectoring white people ordering them to change their ways.  

Ultimately, however, Tonga was converted, as were Samoa and Fiji, two other South Pacific nations which today are home to some of the most committed Christians in the world.