STORY - "What can we learn in a multi-faith society?"

Professor Terry Lovat, University of Newcastle

Aurora invited Professor Terry Lovat, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Arts) at the University of Newcastle to reflect on the religious landscape of Australia in 2004.

The significant shift in the religious population of Australia is captured fairly well in our five-yearly censuses. The single fastest growing area in the 'Religion' category of the censuses between 1971 and 2001 was in the area broadly defined as 'other religion', basically defining anything other than Judaism or Christianity. The proportion of Jews has remained steady at less than 0.5% ever since Federation, while the proportion of those claiming Christianity as their prime religion has fallen from 96% to just on 70% in that time. Naturally, the number claiming no religious affiliation has grown significantly, but there has been no growth like that in religions outside Judaism and Christianity. There are now, for instance, three to four times the number of Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims in Australia than was the case in 1971. There is also a vast number who follow 'new' religions, those religions that lie outside the major and well-known traditions.

So what is there to be gained from living in this multi-faith, as well as multicultural, Australia? One of the answers is general, and one more specific to particular religions. To the general one first: I think young people growing up in this kind of society have a stronger appreciation that religion is truly a universal experience. It is not just something that the Catholic Church, for instance, is 'into', while the rest of the world doesn't bother with such things. Belief in what is beyond the 'see and touch' world is as old as humanity itself and is truly a cross-cultural experience. On the one hand, seeing things this way might make young people a little more critical of their own religion, because they have more with which to compare it. On the other hand, it might make them appreciate more deeply the role that religion plays in being human.

To some of the specifics: each of the major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, has something special to add to our religious experience. Let us take Hinduism and Buddhism first. Buddhism is a spin-off from Hinduism, a little like Christianity growing out of Judaism. Hinduism is the great religion of India. It is the oldest of the major religions, having its origins in the Indus Valley some 5,000 years ago. It is a very different religion from Christianity, often being described as 'sensuous'. It has a very rich understanding of God. God truly is everywhere and in many different forms: there is a manifestation of God for every moment in life: a God for love, a God for war, a God for doubt, a God for despair, a God to overcome difficulties, and so on. Each of these Gods (all part of the one God) is a specialist, in a sense. This allows the Hindu to relate to someone in the divine family who is tailor-made for the occasion. The Hindu Gods also tend to be family-oriented: they marry, have families and have their own challenges. This allows Hindus to relate in a very personal way to the Gods, as though their Gods truly understand what they are going through.

Hinduism is a very different kind of religion from the ones to which most Australians are accustomed. Some simply dismiss it as having nothing to offer, but others feel a greater freedom to explore and expand their understandings of the spiritual world. The great Benedictine monk, Dom Bede Griffiths, went to India originally to become a missionary. By the end of his life, he claimed to have learned much about God from Hinduism that he would never have learned had he simply been exposed to Christianity. He claimed to have become a better Christian because he had let himself soak up much of the richness of Hinduism.

The other religion that has so much to teach us about God is Islam. In spite of the sadly awful image that Islam has in our times (one not helped often by the media), Islam is in fact a truly beautiful religion. It is also one that has preserved much of the essential message of both Judaism and Christianity. For the Jew or Christian truly interested in knowing the origins of their own tradition, Islam is a 'must'. The founder of Islam, Muhammad, truly believed that Islam was the completion of what Abraham, Moses and even Jesus had been on about. He saw all of these as prophets of God who believed that God wanted to form a special people, the People of God, who would show the world how to live godly lives of personal integrity and social justice. In a word, this is what Moses tried to form when he led the people to the Promised Land, but in fact the people became too caught up with the institutional side of life. The prophets of old (Jeremiah and Co) reminded them of this but they "failed to heed the warnings of the prophets" (so says the New Testament). Jesus then tried to fulfil the same idea in what became known as the Christian church. The Acts of the Apostles tell us that the early church clearly lived as an ideal community where everyone shared their goods and lived a life of devotion to God.

By the time Muhammad came along 600 years after Jesus, he believed that the church had also become too concerned with the institutional side of things. Like Judaism before it, Christianity had slipped from its own ideals, so he thought. While he truly believed that the God of the Jews and Christians was the one and only God, he also believed that a refreshed spirituality had to be formed to capture what God wanted of his people. This new spirituality became Islam and the new community of Muslims (submitters to God) became the Ummah (the community of God), just as Abraham, Moses and Jesus had wanted it, so Muhammad thought. The early centuries of Islam provide examples of remarkable tolerance and social justice. For instance, a Jew was, by and large, far better off living in an Islamic than a Christian world, and even many Christians were better off living in an Islamic world than in parts of Christendom. This is because Muhammad was very explicit in laying down the law of tolerance by Muslims towards Jews and Christians. He had no time for narrow-minded bigotry. As well as this ground-breaking multicultural tolerance (for its day), it would probably come as a great surprise to many to know that Islam can boast some of the world's first schemes designed to eradicate poverty, to provide education for all its citizens and to bring equality to women.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Islam for Christians is in the place it holds for Jesus. In many ways, Jesus is second only to Muhammad as a sacred hero. Muhammad was obviously very influenced by Jesus but it seems to have been the Jesus of the early church more than the Jesus most Christians worshipped in the seventh century. The 'Muslim Jesus', as he is described, is rather like the gospel Jesus, except even more strongly so. He speaks many of the words we read in the gospels but says even more, and more adamantly. Let me quote just a couple of excerpts: "The disciples said 'Look at the house of God, how beautiful it is.' Jesus said 'I say to you ...God does nothing with silver and gold. More dear to God than all this are the pure in heart." And in another place: "God hates a servant who acquires religious knowledge and then uses it as a craft over others ... too much knowledge only increases pride if one does not act in accordance with it." One can see the same Jesus who confronted the priests and pharisees but, if anything, he is even more hostile to the hypocrisy of false religion. Why is it that the Muslim Jesus is an even more strident version of the Jesus that Christians learn about? Could it be that Islam has actually preserved something of the original Jesus lost a little over time? Some ask if the quest for the historical Jesus might actually be realised eventually through Christians learning from Islam. This is really not such a radical idea. After all, the great Christian saint, Thomas Aquinas, learned much from Islam in the Middle Ages, and he freely acknowledged it.

These are just some of the riches to be found in the wider world of religion. In a multi-faith society, we have the opportunity to explore these important matters through dialogue. If more people understood how much there is to learn from each other, there would be less bigotry and strife between believers. Those living in a multi-faith society should always remember the words of the great World War II martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He said, in effect, that God wanted always to be Lord of the World, but religious traditions tend to turn him into the General Manager of their particular branch office.

Professor Terry Lovat

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