Cultural DiversityReligion, and Safeguarding Australia A Partnership under the Australian Government’s Living In Harmony initiative by Desmond Cahill, Gary Bouma, Hass Dellal and Michael Leahy DEPARTMENT OF IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURAL AND INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS and AUSTRALIAN MULTICULTURAL FOUNDATION in association with the WORLD CONFERENCE OF RELIGIONS FOR PEACE, RMIT UNIVERSITY and MONASH UNIVERSITY (c) Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2004 This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the Commonwealth available from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. 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Design and layout Done...ByFriday Printed by National Capital Printing ISBN: 0-9756064-0-9 Religion,Cultural Diversity andSafeguarding Australia 3 contents Chapter One Introduction . .6 Religion in a Globalising World . .6 Religion and Social Capital . .9 Aim and Objectives of the Project . 11 Project Strategy . 13 Chapter Two Historical Perspectives: Till World War II . 21 The Beginnings of Aboriginal Spirituality . 21 Initial Muslim Contact . 22 The Australian Foundations of Christianity . 23 The Catholic Church and Australian Fermentation . 26 The Nonconformist Presence in Australia . 28 The Lutherans in Australia . 30 The Orthodox Churches in Australia . 32 Other World Faiths in Colonial and Federated Australia . 34 Chapter Three Post-war Historical And Demographic Profile Of Religious Australia . 41 Moving away from Protestant Australia . 44 The Movement to Multi-Faith Australia . 45 The Rise of the Pentecostal, Charismatic and New Age Movements . 48 Chapter Four Religious Practice At Local Level Across Multi-faith Australia . 51 The Increasing Diversification of Religious Australia . 52 From Mainstream Christianity to Immigrant and Evangelical and Pentecostal Religiosity . 57 Positioning and Repositioning Faith Communities: the Precarious Nature of Faith and Community . 60 Local Religious Leadership and Provision of Religious Personnel . 65 Faith Communities and Social Capital . 67 Religion,Cultural Diversity andSafeguarding Australia 3 contents continued Chapter Five Racist and Religious Violence, Ancient Hatreds, Intercommunal Relationships and September 11th . 75 Inter-Faith Relationships: the Local Level . 75 Inter-Faith Relationships: Views of Australia’s Religious Leaders . 83 Inter-Faith Co-operation and its Limitations . 85 Conclusions . 90 Australia and September 11th Ecumenical and Inter-Faith Co-operation High Level Dialogue and Awareness Religious Leadership and Hostility Defusion The Special Situation of the Australian Muslim Communities Knowledge about and Attitudes towards Other Faiths Reluctance for Inter-Faith and Social Participation Inter-Faith Marriages Chapter Six Religion, Cultural Diversity and Social Cohesion: National and International Perspectives . 96 Shift from a Christian to a Paradoxically Multi-Faith and Secular Society 97 Signs, Symbols and Sacred Places Education in and for a Multi-Faith Society Faith Communities and the Media The Repositioning of the Relationship between Religion and State . 104 Organizational Ethos and Employment Practices Marriage Celebrants for a Multi-Faith Society Advisability of an Inter-Faith Advisory Council Construction of an Electronic Network The International Dimension: Interface with the Formation of Religious and Linguistic Diaspora and the New Technologies . 112 Authority, Jurisdiction and Representativity Websites and Web Links 4 Religion,Cultural Diversity andSafeguarding Australia Religion,Cultural Diversity andSafeguarding Australia 5 Chapter Seven Safeguarding a Multi-faith Australia: Conclusions and Recommendations 116 Conclusions . 116 Recommendations . 119 Formation of an Advisory Council Establishing an Electronic Network Quality Religious Leadership: Orientation and Preparation of Religious Personnel Constructing a Multi-Faith Australia Educating in and for a Multi-Faith Australia In Conclusion . 127 List of References . 128 Appendix One Consultations with religious, government and community leaders . 134 Appendix Two Public Consultation: Religion, Diversity and Social Cohesion in Contemporary Australia . .138 4 Religion,Cultural Diversity andSafeguarding Australia Religion,Cultural Diversity andSafeguarding Australia 5 Chapter one Introduction his report aims to map the After October 12th, it has been Religion in a interrelationship between said that Australia’s multicultural Globalising World religion and cultural innocence was lost at Kuta Beach T The events of September 11th were diversity in the context of Australia’s on the island paradise of Bali. symptomatic of and brought to social cohesion and internal security, Australians can no longer wander the surface long-term trends that especially in the aftermath of the around tourist resorts in thongs can be neatly summed up in two terrorist attacks of September 11th, and shorts with quite the same very complex words, ‘religion’ and 2001 upon New York and Washington relaxed, carefree Aussie spirit. It was ‘globalisation’. The terrorist attacks and in the broader context of the a Hindu island paradise carefully also brought home to us that religion, relationships between religion and chosen by the extremist Islamic whether transcendent religion or the state, on the one hand, and terrorists to show their white-hot religion corrupted for political between religion and globalisation on hatred not just for Hindus allegedly or economic purposes, is at the the other. Data collection occurred persecuting their co-religionists in centre of world stage. The anti- after those attacks, but the report India but more specifically against religion ideologies of Communism itself has been written in the shadow Westerners, particularly Americans and Nazism have been consigned of the bombing in Bali of October and including Australians. Speaking to the dustbin of history though 12th., 2002 when 88 Australians, through the Al-Jazeera TV network, Marx himself retains his attraction, mostly young, were killed. After Osama bin Laden explicitly referred including his notion that “religion is September 11th, we can never again to Australia, “Australia was warned the opiate of the masses”; however, gaze upwards at skyscrapers in the about its participation in Afghanistan it is very apparent, certainly for the same way as before - those steel and its ignoble contribution to the several decades ahead, that religion and concrete cathedrals, those tall separation of East Timor. It ignored and faith are not going to drift away minarets reaching upwards to the this warning until it was awakened into a privatised world as many sky, are now symbols of the risk and by the echoes of explosions in Bali. atheists and agnostics had predicted. unpredictability of the future. And As you assassinate, so will you be In fact, one of the major features of for Australia, both internally and assassinated; and as you bomb, so twentieth century history was the externally, there are implications will you be bombed”. Australia’s enduring stability of religion and for its political and social leaders, response to these chilling words its institutions - 86 per cent of the which need to be reflected upon, in and to safeguarding itself against world’s population claim a religious safeguarding Australia. For more than terrorist extremism cannot merely faith (2 billion are Christian, 1.2 a decade, theorists have been writing be in military and security terms, billion are Muslim and .8 billion of a backlash against the West; they important though these be, but must are Hindu) and in Australia, the have written about the link between encompass cultural, commercial and comparable figure is about risk, responsibility and trust, and educational realities in a global world. 75 percent. of ‘organized irresponsibility’ and This includes religion and faith the ‘limited controllability’ of the communities playing their role in Australia thus exists in a very dangers to be faced, the dangers from safeguarding Australia against ethnic religious world even though Australia disorganized or corrupt commercial and religious terrorism and against itself is a strongly secular nation. operations, from a polluted religion perverted by those with environment, from fanatical terrorist political objectives. groups or from the destruction of tradition, scholarship and wisdom (Beck 1999). 6 Religion,Cultural Diversity andSafeguarding Australia Religion,Cultural Diversity andSafeguarding Australia 7 However, as we shall see, secularism to be extended across the world Religiosity and religious is only one aspect of Australian through the movements of peoples. organizations, and ultimately the society, albeit important. The recent In this generation we have come spiritualities that underpin the great Pew Global Attitudes Project (Pew to understand that secularity does global and local religious traditions, Research Center 2002) in a survey not necessarily mean unspiritual or are interacting with globalisation