Religion in a Culturally Diverse Society
(Panel address by Dally Messenger III at Monash University on September 18, 2002)
There is a phenomenon, which I have noticed in my life, and it is this. The practice of religion definitely inspires some people to be better, and certainly makes some people a lot worse. Those whom religion seem to me to make better, appear to have the ability to choose the best values — and to totally ignore the destructive and the questionable in their religious package.
In my close network of family and friends, I experience the full diversity of belief and unbelief. There are the full believers in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the Dreamtime, Buddhism, Hinduism and their various offshoots. At the other end of the spectrum there are those who see the practice of any and all religions as totally absurd and destructive. I have dinner and/or coffee with all of them — but there are some I do not invite to the same occasion!
Another phenomenon I have noticed is that an important question I absorbed when I was young seems to have lost its importance. This is the simple question “Is this religion true?” To put it another way, the question I asked, when I was young, and indeed the question I still sometimes ask is – “Is there a higher Power – and is this the group that is tuned in to the good stuff?”
When I come down to this very basic question, like many other thinkers before me, I can’t help but conclude what many others I know have concluded i.e. anyone who thinks, that of the thousands of religious groups and religious sub groups, that their truth is the only truth, are in a lift that can’t get to the top story.
Religion in a culturally diverse society is not a problem or an issue with the great majority of the people, who don’t seem to think much about it at all. The problem is with those who need, as I did once, to feel that they are on the right track – and here’s the rub, the corollary, the other side of that coin if you like – the others are not!
Among “true believers” if I may call them that, is that they have the need to feel a cut above the rest of humanity. I hesitate to give a few of the hundreds of examples I have, as, in a forum like this, I do not want to give offence. But, it seems to me, that built into the belief in any particular religion, – as distinct from absorbing its best values, reassuring rituals, art and literature – built into the belief system of that particular religion is the clear implication that the believer is superior to the rest, and the corollary, that they, the others, are inferior to her.
If you are such a believer, the Higher Power has favoured you, and has not favoured him, her or them. The Higher Power has given you more truth, wisdom, insight, knowledge and therefore privilege, than the Higher Power has given him, her or them. In my observable experience of such people, the Higher Power has given hardly anything at all to him, her or them. You’ve got it, they haven’t; God is on your side, not theirs. You are good; they are usually evil, or at least very wrong. It comes across quite clearly from people like George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Mohammed Ata, Ariel Sharon, Rev Ian Paisley, and Sheikh Whatshisname of Hamas – for starters.
Fortunately, for most people, the culturally and religiously diverse society softens this inbuilt arrogance and superiority, and most people opt for a pragmatic respect and compatibility for and with everyone else — but personally I still fear it.
There are countries in the world where people have lived harmoniously together for centuries and decades until one day the deep inbuilt desire for superiority is stirred and, in the name of religion, neighbour slaughters neighbour with unbelievable ruthlessness and baseless hatred.
Seventeen years ago I crystallized my thinking on these matters and in writing, by charter, so to speak, and declared myself a Citizen of the World. I rejected all the harmful nationalism and religion, which, in any way, leads any person to mistreat a fellow human being on the grounds of being other.
I loved it when Bill Clinton, then visiting Australia, was asked should the boat people from the Tampa be sent back out to sea. He replied that in asking him they were asking the wrong person, as he believed “in a borderless world”.
I am a civil celebrant, a wonderfully liberating experience, because the skill I am challenged to develop is to evoke from my clients, their values, ideals, moral beliefs, yearnings for a better society and artistic choices in ceremonies, which, almost exclusively, have no element of anything else, but the search for personal truth. I mean the search for the truth in values, moral behaviour, and rational wisdom in developing and maintaining good relationships and a better community.
I find that, in practice, I deeply respect the beliefs of the religious people I know, I deeply respect the civilising influence of the great religious traditions and the insights they have given to humanity. I have an affection and a kinship with my own background of Irish Catholicism. I have to tell you, however, that I feel much closer to Ned Kelly than Pope John Paul. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in each case, and in each religion or sub-religion, the whole package is questionable.
Religions, it seems to me, should be respected not as repositories of immutable truths but as historical movements of people and thinkers who have struggled, and are still struggling, to find such truths. They should be respected as value systems, appreciated as patrons of great art and literature. All of them, it seems to me, have some good insights to offer us; all of them have some baggage that should be left behind.
About the practices of religion in a multicultural society.
I find that such practices compromise my integrity but others I respect do not feel the same. Most of us have an emotional attachment to our inherited tradition. I have a Jewish friend, David Langsam, a highly intelligent man, who after his mother died, regularly attended the synagogue to recite the Kadish. When I asked was this some kind of tribute to his mother or his ancestors, he explained to me that it was a sort of prayer that praises God. But saith I, “David, you don’t believe in God, you are a declared atheist”, to which he replied “But this is what Jews do when someone dies”.
My Aunt Daisy, whom I am fond of quoting, a declared atheist, never missed church on Sundays because “she loved singing with other people”.
Rosslyn Ives, Another friend of mine, is very active in the Humanist Society works at a church school and, though a professed non-believer, at school assemblies loves singing the hymn “Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise.”
There are certain religious ceremonies which out of respect I sometimes join in, and which could be broadly termed the practice of religion. I often feel very compromised, because surrounded by believers, I feel that they could be concluding that I believe in their words, and thus I would be reinforcing that believer’s interpretation of their tradition – which I don’t.
I obviously feel too, that the challenge facing the Civil Celebrant is to provide an, authentic, and honest alternative in which people can express their values in words, in music, in song, in symbolism and in choreography what they truly and honestly believe. Celebrancy, properly understood, and as taught at this University and the International College of Celebrancy, is a great part of the answer to a more honest society, and a non- compromising and authentic secular spirituality.
As a corollary I just might add that when civil celebrants have asked to represent the secular people in society at Memorial Services for the Port Arthur Massacre, the Black Hawk Helicopter tragedy, the Thredbo landslide, the Geelong Firemen and Memorials for 9-11 in this Multicultural Society, would you believe, we have, in every case, been blocked out and refused. Work that one out if you can.
About belief in a Religion (in a multicultural Society)
When it comes to the various supernatural infrastructures, which the religions use to back up their particular fixations and convictions, I have to say in each case, “– sorry guys – the story doesn’t stand up”. And even when all else fails, neither do near- death experiences, weeping statues of the Madonna, or geometrical shapes mowed out of the cornfield.
My heroes, and none of them are on pedestals in cast plaster, are Nelson Mandela, Lionel Murphy, David Attenborough, Mikhail Gorbachev, Kemal Ataturk, and take me up on this one if you like, Martin Luther King Junior. The kind of people I really admire are those who hug trees, march for human rights, campaign for decent treatment for asylum seekers, write letters to the editor, whistle blow at the risk of great personal loss, make the perfect cafe latte, and who work quietly and efficiently behind the scenes making good organisations work.
The Real Priorities for all of us – secular and “religious”
I think that filling the hole in the ozone layer, and getting down the track with solar energy, solving the world’s overpopulation problem, and decently settling desperate refugees, is far more important than unsolvable arguments over the nature of human stem cells, and whether we should kill more Iraqis than we already have, by war and sanctional starvation.
To quote Mikhail Gorbachev (The Age 24/08/02)
“More than 1.2 billion people lack clean drinking water, 800 million people are malnourished, deforestation is spawning floods which demolish whole communities, pollution is desecrating our air, water and land, and the predicted impacts of global warming are almost too alarming to contemplate, We are destroying the earth our home, bit by bit”.
The Secular Society
I suppose by now it is pretty clear that I believe in a secular society, a secular society respectfully based on the moral insights, myths, stories, parables, discoveries and best values of the world’s great religious traditions. Having said that the more secular the society it is, the safer I feel. The more secular it is, uncluttered by inherited prejudices and irrelevant beliefs, the greater chance we have, it seems to me, of working out the best values, best moral principles, and most balanced and idealistic spirituality.
We also have a chance, it seems to me, of focusing on the issues which really matter, and ordering our priorities to the best effect for our world and our fellow humans.
© Dally Messenger 18/09/02
Australian Humanist Celebrant Network 