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Is the Projected Population Growth for Australia Sustainable?

I mentioned some points from the excellent SMH article of April 10-11,2010 and then I facilitated a discussion with the fellowship as to their views. The discussion was quite lively, with most people having a point of view which they expressed, and mostly believing it was not sustainable.

The points I made from the article were:

“For more than two decades Bob Carr has been warning Australians against unchecked population growth, cautioning that the fragile soils and erratic rivers of the world’s oldest continent make it highly vulnerable to the pressures imposed by every extra resident.”

“According to the Monash University sociologist and long-term advocate for low levels of immigration, Bob Birrell, the increase is overwhelming due to immigration policy, not natural increases.”

“As the debate over the 36million figure rolled on, comments from the Greens began to echo those of the opposition. ‘We don’t have the infrastructure to deal with 21 million people at the moment… let alone the estimated 36 million people by mid century,’ the Greens leader, Bob Brown, said. What I don’t think he (Rudd) understood was the concern about population policy that’s out there in the electorate. It’s the single most unprovoked question I get, speaking at public forums around Australia. In this rapidly warming political environment, no political leader has been game to publicly support an immigration policy that will see Australia grow to 36 million.”

“A Victorian Labor MP, Kelvin Thomson, is one of the few serving politicians campaigning for a population cap and says the mood is swinging against the big business view that population growth is critical for a healthy economy. ‘I dispute the view population growth is necessary for our prosperity. 8 out of 10 of the countries with highest GDP per person have populations of less than 10 million. They show there’s no need to have population growth to drive prosperity.’ Thomson has produced his own plan on how Australia’s population should be stabilised and wants big cuts to the area employers say is vital in overcoming specialist labour shortages. ‘The particular element that needs to change is the skilled migration. There were 24,000 in this category in 1995-1996 and it went to up over 100,000. I think it should come back to where it was.’

“The Anglican Church wants Australians to have fewer children and has urged the federal government to scrap the baby bonus and cut immigration levels. The General Synod of the Anglican Church has issued a warning that current rates of population growth are unsustainable and potentially out of step with church doctrine – including the eighth commandment that ‘thou shall not steal.’ ‘Out of care for the whole Creation, particularly for the poorest of humanity and the life forms who cannot speak for themselves…it is not responsible to stand by and remain silent,’ a discussion paper by the commission warns.

While personally agreeing with the points raised and those of our fellowship, I would also like to see a far more concerted effort to develop the regional and rural areas of Australia, for the great minds in our midst to work out how we can best do that, to relieve some of the congestion in the east coast cities.

Geoff Matthews

The Seven Principles: my reflections

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Written and Delivered by Ginna Hastings in January 2010

To live with some sort of spirituality for many people means to try to make meaning out of the chaos of life. Justice is not always done. Bad things do happen to good people. What is right in one situation isn’t right in another. For many, religion is a way to find answers. Others fall onto clichés such as “it was meant to be” or “God closes a door and opens another one”.

I am not sure I need a defined god to determine what I need to believe. After all, we never really know IF there is a god, and IF this god has a clear idea of what we should ALL do with our lives in this chaos we’re living in. We can only surmise. I believe I need to decide life’s meaning for myself rather than have a theology dished out for me. On the other hand, for me, ignoring the search for meaning, getting wrapped up in selfish material pursuits or political power also does not satisfy me either. That’s why I come to church: to find inspiration.

I have come to the conclusion that LIFE IS A GIFT. And, IT IS NOT THE DESTINATION THAT COUNTS SO MUCH AS THE JOURNEY. With this conclusion I bless my grandmother, Virginia Hastings, who shared this wisdom with me at a young age – and her journey WAS difficult!

So why does Unitarian Universalism bring me a religion I can live with happily. As you know, our faith does not have a particular theology, nor does it exclude one. Yet UU’s are, to me, some of the most moral people I know. Unitarian Universalism does not stop at being humanist. It gives me the Seven Principles with which to negotiate down life’s unpredictable journey. Through the Seven Principles I can find significant meaning among the chaos of this life.

On first inspection one could read the Seven Principles and see them as almost “motherhood” statements. Most reasonable persons in a democracy would agree with them. One is inclined to say, “Yea, yea, fine, so what’s next?” Well, not so fast…. Which gets me to the topic of this talk, the Seven Principles .

Principle 1: We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Yes, but easier said than done. In dealing with others we frequently find people who are disagreeable, and/or whose ideas we adamantly disagree with. In our own self centered view, it takes mental discipline to still recognize the inherent worth and dignity of others. We can stand up to bullies, tyrants and principle-lacking individuals who manipulate matters to their own advantage and at the same time acknowledge the inherent worth and dignity in them. It is indeed a challenge to acknowledge worth and dignity in those we don’t respect while at the same time standing up to their destructive behavior.

On speaking on the first principle, Jim Nelson, chief minister of Neighborhood Church in Pasadena, said, “In essence – be kind.” Kindness seems to be a lost value in our society. It is viewed as weakness. It is viewed as getting in the way of pleasure, or of self-serving goals. As UU’s, we can make kindness itself into a satisfying pleasure, a value, something worth doing.

This first principle gives us a belief, reactionary to Calvinism, that we are ALL worthwhile. Now. Incomplete. Confused. We do not need “saving” by a god. Our individuality is to be celebrated, along with that of others. It’s even okay to love ourselves. We don’t even need a specific god to love us to love ourselves.

With this great gift of the first principle comes an enormous responsibility as well. It forces us to accept life with its confusing diversity and chaos just as it is, and still seek love, still acknowledge the worth and dignity in others and ourselves. As UU’s we need not, indeed CANnot shrink from the endless exploration of the inherent worth and dignity of every individual in our lives. Looking for the worthiness in others becomes a lifelong challenge.

Principle 2: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

It is easy to see all those poor people who are recipients of racism, sexism, economic injustice etc. etc. We seek justice for them. That’s a given. The press tells us about it all the time.

But, are we limiting others by putting anyone – even those not obviously oppressed – in boxes that limit them in our eyes? Are we dismissing the need for justice and equity in others by blanket generalizations? Without true, endless efforts to apply compassion to justice and equity, we are not living this principle. It’s a challenging responsibility.

Charities these days are often complaining about “compassion burn out”. As Unitarian Universalists, we cannot afford to let compassion burnout hit our hearts. Our religion is not just one of reason alone. It is one of an endless supply of heart and love as well. This is its biggest challenge.

Unitarians in the past have been great initiators in movements to achieve human equality in our society. – the abolition of slavery, votes for women, laws against racism and sexism and so much more have been a result. Indeed right now in the USA Unitarians ban together to educate society education society to understand and acknowledge that denying the legal advantages of marriage to same sex couples denies justice, equity and compassion. What are WE doing in this country? Are we speaking out on this particular issue loudly enough? Ah, a challenge!

Principle 3: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.

This is where we get to the “g word”. Yes, I mean what most religions discuss: GOD. Understanding the divine as we understand what the divine is, or isn’t, is most definitely essential to our own spiritual journey. We can’t escape it. This is why Unitarian Universalism also presents us with the great traditions of knowledge and wisdom that come from all religions – even the Bible. These are the Six Sources of our Faith that come from all the world’s great traditions. Therefore we Unitarians must be prepared to accept Muslim Unitarians, Buddhist Unitarians, even, dare I say it, Christian Unitarians among our midst as we head on our own spiritual journeys. It’s okay to discuss God, but sometimes Unitarians try so hard not to offend those who do not believe in God that they do not mention God. There is no solution. It’s okay to mention God, and it’s okay to not believe in images of God that others have created, but as Unitarians we don’t have to. That’s the key!

One thing I see as a weakness of Unitarian Universalists is that many are “smart” – often well educated, and intelligent. Sometimes pride in our own intellect and reason becomes our god. The result is an arrogance that proves exclusive and contrary to the traditions. The traditions, if read and followed thoughtfully, keep us humble. We are all just “works in progress.”

Principle 4: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning

Yes, just recognizing and valuing the right we have for this free and responsible search for meaning has got us Unitarian Universalists into a bit of hot water, perhaps literally, over the centuries. That we, and everyone, ARE free to choose beliefs is such a valued freedom. UU’s tend to get almost high on this freedom.

With this right of personal spiritual exploration comes an enormous responsibility. We are responsible for thinking through what we know, hear, read and decide upon. We are dedicated to thinking through carefully what we believe using not only logic and reason, but also intuition and compassion that comes from our inner soul. This requires constant self-honesty with ourselves and with others. It takes time. It requires courage.

For example, does one speak up at work about an injustice to a co-worker even if it threatens our own job? Do we stand up to bullies rather than take a “peaceful” road of complacency? Do we speak out at union meetings when we feel our union bosses are speaking for their own power rather than for the needs of the workers? A free and responsible search for meaning means living what is meaningful. It is not simply an intellectual exercise. It takes enormous courage.

In our congregations we also need to learn from one another. If what you learn and what I learn from our different experiences is shared, it makes us both richer. Each different carefully studied belief or idea held by a member of our congregation adds to the fabric and strength of our Unitarian cloth and of each other. It is what makes us unified in diversity .

Principle 5: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.

Within our congregations, the democratic process may seem easy. We propose, we discuss and debate, we vote, we decide, and we act. Ah yes.

This principle does not, however, give us the right to ego. Having things our own way may not be democratic. Sometimes we have to cede to the wider community’s needs and wishes over our own to be heard. Should our behavior prove destructive towards others then it is unacceptable. We need to be open to one another.

In the wider community we Unitarian Universalists have proven effective in using the democratic process to promote justice, equity and compassion by banding together and speaking out. Many laws today exist because of just such work in the past. However, such changes took time, persistence and hard work. The democratic process cannot exist without an orderly society, and to this effect we must behave in an orderly way.

Principle 6: The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;

Yes, right, when Superman comes again! It is easy to dismiss this principle as another motherhood statement while being “pie in the sky” in nature. It’ll never happen. Well, it may not in our lifetime. But if it is not our goal, it makes our journey meaningless as members of society. By working towards peace, liberty and justice for all we may not win “the battle”. But we don’t reach for this goal because it is achievable right now. We reach for it because it is right, and it is right NOW. Who says UU’s aren’t dogmatic?

Principle 7: Respect for the interdependent web of al existence of which we are a part.

This principle, the most recently added, is sometimes viewed in a narrower focus than perhaps was meant. Some Unitarian Universalists are pantheists. This is where their understanding of this principle stops. Others boil it down to scrupulous recycling of their waste or buying or even voting Green.

The wider issues of this principle are also challenging. Forrest Gilmore in Brandenburg says that understanding ourselves as part of the interdependent web of life is something even greater than being “green”. The seventh principle reminds us that “we are what we have come from, and to what we belong.” (P. 112-113). In itself, the seventh principle is an enormous statement of hope and commitment to the healing of our world, our human world as well as our environmental world. Perhaps I may now quote part of the Lords Prayer here: ‘thy kingdom come on earth”.

It requires us to change, grow and think differently for the sake of the interdependent web of life that we are a part of. It propels us to work to create a society of compassion, harmony, and justice with courage NOW and with hope in the future, and the future of our descendents. It’s an ideal we may never achieve, but heading in that direction is what it’s all about. To ignore this principle because it is probably unattainable is to deny hope in the basic capacity of human beings to improve. One might as well give up on life as we know it as to give up on the seventh principle

I became a Unitarian Universalist because these Seven Principles challenge me to live thoughtfully and carefully, carrying the burden of a huge responsibility along with freeing rights. I am responsible for my own conscience. I am responsible for my own actions, while, at the same time, being very much a part of the wider society and environment.

The Seven Principles are, then not to be seen as rules or simple guidelines. They are not an intellectual exercise alone. They are designed to motivate us towards an examined, purpose-driven life while at the same time achieving an acceptance of life’s complexities, with love, courage and hope. The Seven Principles are there to challenge us individually and collectively. They are what teach us to live as Unitarian Universalists.

Buber claimed that a community is defined by the centre that holds it together. Without a center to hold it together it is like a doughnut, and will not grow or thrive. In Unitarian Universalism there is no central theology. Nevertheless, we cannot discount the meaning and purpose that the Seven Principles bring to our lives and our community, for they are what our “faith” is about.

Perhaps in the new year we can all examine the Seven Principles and what they mean specifically in our lives.

Tomorrow’s Song

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The following is a copy of the service ‘Tomorrow’s Song’ , given by Spirit of Life regular, Martin Horlacher on 30 August:

One of my favourite authors used to be a fellow by the name of Dean Koontz – ever heard of him? He’s a prolific American horror/thriller writer with more than fifty books to his name, at least twenty of which I’ve read. I had a lot of fun reading his stuff over the course of the past few years; his books were easy to read, and he had a knack for writing good thrillers that hooked you in. I would always look forward to picking a book of his up for a bit of fun.

That all changed a few years ago, when he published a book called The Taking. The story follows a writer named Molly, who, along with her husband Neil, must deal with what appears at first to be an alien invasion, not just of their sleepy little town, but of the whole world. At one point, most of the adults in the town are literally lifted up into the air, apparently taken away by the invaders. Some of these adults laugh and smile while this happens to them; the rest cry and scream. Molly and Neil then spend most of the book roaming around the town with their dog, searching for and rescuing all the children, who strangely seem to be immune to the carnage caused by the so-called “aliens” who are laying the town to waste. The denouement of the novel comes when Molly faces down one of the “aliens”, rescuing the few remaining children it is keeping prisoner. The “aliens” then mysteriously depart the planet with most of its population, leaving only the children and a minority of select adults to rebuild the world. Throughout the story, the “aliens” sometimes break into a strange chant of some sort. In the book’s final few pages, Molly writes this chant down, then reads it backwards.

And, lo and behold, it reads:

My name is legion, is Lucifer, is Abbadon, is Satan, eater of souls.

In other words, what was taking place for the past few hundred pages was not an alien invasion, but the Apocalypse. In Koontz’s view, to a “faithless” world, what was in fact magic would seem like advanced technology, rather than the other way around. The “aliens” were not aliens, but demons. Those adults taken up into the air who were smiling and laughing were the elect, on their way to heaven. Those who were crying and screaming were, of course, the ones being taken to hell. Now, I don’t know if I’m reading the story right, but if I am, the denizens of that latter place would seem to include not only murderers (and especially the murderers of children), rapists, child molesters, and proponents and arbiters of a supposedly too-liberal justice system that allows such dregs of society back onto the streets after an apparent average of just seven years, but also alcoholics, parents who neglect or abuse their children, pacifists who are too stupid to fight back against the invaders even when they are literally having their faces ripped off, and people who believe there’s any truth to the theory of global warming.

I had always been aware of a fairly right-wing slant to Koontz’s work, not least of all a love of guns and a tendency to reflect at length about the supposed decline of society over the last half-century because of liberal-based tolerance of wrongdoing, but I had up until then been able to put that aside for the benefit of reading an exciting story. The Taking, however, was too much for me. I found it arrogant, supercilious, and – yes, I will use the dreaded F-word – fascistic. Koontz justifies the events of the book in its closing pages by arguing that the world has never been as terrible a place as it is now, citing events such as the Holocaust and the mass killings of China’s Cultural Revolution. Thus, in his view, a Biblical “cleansing” of the Earth was needed to straighten everything out and make us better people. It’s depressing – and more than a little scary – to read some of the positive comments made by readers of this book on the Internet, who apparently find the idea of a global religious genocide appealing. All of that is particularly sad when you consider what I believe The Taking to really be – an attempt by Koontz, either at the behest of his publisher or of his own volition, to capitalise on the immense success of the much more openly fundamentalist Christian Left Behind series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. 2004, which saw Koontz’s book appear, also saw the publication of The Glorious Appearing, the climax of the Left Behind series, in which Jesus returns to Earth to throw all non-evangelical Protestants into the Lake of Fire in hell. Cynical, Dean, very cynical.

Suffice to say, I hated The Taking. However, it did get me thinking about the shortcomings of institutional religion and just what faith means to me. I do not consider myself a religionist, but nor am I an atheist. I feel the need to somehow connect to something that is bigger than me, but I baulk at worshipping a theistic God. Indeed, the very idea of a judging, condemning, punishing God is completely alien to me. I simply cannot understand how some people can respect such a deity, let alone love one. This is, for me, perhaps the main reason for rejecting organised religion and instead classing myself as a humanist, albeit a spiritual one. I simply do not believe that the Christian doctrine of original sin, which argues that we are all baseborn and damned by default, is a healthy way of viewing and experiencing the human condition. Bishop John Shelby Spong alludes to this in one of his books, describing his view on humanism and Christianity:

In 1999 the New York chapter of a humanist organisation presented me with their “Humanist of the Year” award. Almost immediately some of my ecclesiastical critics leaped upon that designation to suggest that I was, as they had long suspected, not really a Christian at all, but a humanist…I was amazed by this rhetoric, because it revealed that in their minds a Christian was one who was defined by a negative view of humanity.[1]

Indeed, it is this negative brand of Christianity which so often seems to come to the fore. In his book Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, the American liberal Christian author Bruce Bawer draws a sharp distinction between legalistic and non-legalistic Christianity, saying of the former:

[T]he problem with legalistic Christianity is not simply that it affirms that God can be evil; it’s that it imagines a manifestly evil God and calls that evil good…In America right now, millions of children are taught by their legalistic Christian parents and ministers to revere a God of wrath and to take a sanguine view of human suffering. They are taught to view their fellow Americans…as being saved or unsaved, children of God or creatures of Satan…This is not only morally offensive, it’s socially dangerous – and it represents, for obvious reasons, a very real menace to democratic civil society.[2]

He also adds:

[T]he willingness of legalistic Protestants to believe that a loving God would support genocide is of a piece with their violent, bloodthirsty End Times theology. After all, if they gladly worship a God who plans to subject most human beings to eternal torment, why not a God who would engineer the mass slaughter of children? Many legalistic Christians have claimed that the atrocities of the twentieth century teach us that we need to retreat from the secularism that is supposedly responsible for these happenings and return to religion – by which they mean, needless to say, their own brand of Christianity. Yet their religion is altogether too close for comfort to modern totalitarianism…As James Sibley, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s mission to the Jews, said in a 1997 interview, “As terrible as the Holocaust was, it will fade into insignificance in comparison to God’s future judgment. There will be the Holocaust of all people who don’t accept Jesus.”[3]

Such theology raises many questions. The atheist writer Charles Templeton poses some very obvious yet profound ones, such as:

If there is a loving God, why does he permit – much less create – earthquakes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, and other natural disasters which kill thousands of innocent men, women, and children every year?

How could a loving Heavenly Father create an endless Hell and, over the centuries, consign millions of people to it because they do not or cannot or will not accept certain religious beliefs? And, having done so, how could he torment them forever?[4]

And, perhaps my personal favourite:

Is it possible to believe that the Creator of the universe would personally impregnate a Palestinian virgin in order to facilitate getting his Son into the world as a man?[5]

Some will undoubtedly argue that a theistic deity, one willing to dole out rewards and punishments in this life and the next, is a necessary fixture of any truly moral system. They are essentially buying into the tired old argument that without a divine judge, there can be no morality. While I can see where they are coming from with this argument, I certainly don’t agree with it. In my view, those who try to argue for the Bible, for example, as the source of all morality in this world, simply haven’t read that book closely enough. This is especially true of the Old Testament – rapings, killings, slavery, and other evils abound…nearly always sanctioned by God. The atheist writer Sam Harris puts it bluntly:

The idea that the Bible is a perfect guide to morality is simply astounding, given the contents of the book. Admittedly, God’s counsel to parents is straightforward: whenever children get out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13-14). If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Mark 7:9-13, and Matthew 15:4-7). We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshipping graven images, practicing sorcery, and a wide variety of other imaginary crimes.[6]

The New Testament is marginally better, but only marginally. While it does not record God-sent plagues and terrors as the Old Testament does, it does, I would argue, still portray God as a judging, condemning, punishing figure who promises to mete out punishments that are grossly disproportionate to the sins people have committed. Then, of course, there’s also the Book of Revelation…let’s not even go there.

It is my belief that the image of such a God simply cannot work anymore – if it ever did – that has led me to do a lot of thinking about this. I have well and truly made up my mind on what I believe about God, if there is one, and it is not the kind of God found in a book like the Bible. The God of Christianity I see as a product of what John Shelby Spong describes as the human need to suffer. In his book The Sins of Scripture, I believe Spong has hit the nail on the head when he says:

If one begins a faith journey with the definition of a human as a fallen creature who is deserving of punishment, then the faith system that grows out of that journey will surely develop a cure for the accepted diagnosis. That is what has happened in the way the Christian story has been told historically. That is also the doorway through which the human sense of guilt and its corresponding need for punishment entered the tradition and found therein a compatible dwelling place.[7]

Like I said earlier, I am no atheist. I need something more than just this life, just what we can see, touch, hear, smell. I hold out hope for something bigger than myself, bigger than all of us, something we can all, without exception, share in. Call it spirituality, call it God, call it a song if you want – that’s how I prefer to think of it. I don’t think we need a Biblical Apocalypse to make a better world; indeed, I believe we need to jettison that way of thinking if we’re going to make a viable future for this world. I don’t know if the twenty-first century has begun in earnest yet, or what wonders and horrors lie ahead for all of us, but I know what kind of faith I’ll be carrying into it.

In my first talk that I gave at this fellowship, Always With Me, I made mention of my passion for anime, that is, the art of Japanese animation. In particular, I am a fan of the great anime director Hayao Miyazaki, whose films capture a beauty rarely seen on the big screen. In 1984, he directed Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, a science-fiction adventure story. Set in post-apocalyptic Earth’s far future, the story follows the titular heroine, the pacifist princess Nausicaa, as she attempts to forge a bond between the warring nations of her world and the Earth itself. If the film has a flaw, it is the admittedly contrived deus ex machina of an ending, which sees Nausicaa killed and then resurrected in a Christlike fashion in order to bring peace to the world.

Thirteen years later, in 1997, Miyazaki directed another film, Princess Mononoke. Set in roughly fourteenth or fifteenth century feudal Japan, it follows a young Emishi prince, Ashitaka, who finds himself afflicted with a deadly curse from a rampaging boar god that is threatening his village. To find a cure, he travels west, where he meets San, the princess of the film’s title, a young human girl raised by the wolf gods of the forest. Although human herself, San fights alongside the gods of the forest against the humans who are destroying it for material gain.

Although similarly themed, the two films are very different in one regard. While Nausicaa is very black-and-white in its view of the world, depicting nature as good and technology as bad, Mononoke is much more ambiguous. It depicts both humanity and nature as inherently flawed, with both negative and redeeming features, and cautions that in the inevitable battle between human beings and the world in which we reside, there is not likely to be a “happy ending”. In his proposal for Mononoke, Miyazaki laid out the worldview that would be present in the film:

Here lies the meaning of making this film towards the confusing era of the 21st century.

We are not trying to solve the global problems. There can not be a happy ending to the fight between the raging gods and humans. However, even in the middle of hatred and killings, there are things worth living for. A wonderful meeting, or a beautiful thing can exist.

We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things.

We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.

What we should depict is, how the boy understands the girl, and the process in which the girl opens her heart to the boy.

At the end, the girl will say to the boy, “I love you, Ashitaka. But I can not forgive humans.”

Smiling, the boy should say, “That is fine. Live with me.”

I want to make such a movie.

Although Miyazaki is talking about the uneasy relationship between humanity and nature, I believe his words apply just as much to my view of what a faith for the future needs to be. I don’t want a faith that offers easy answers, that divides mankind into good or evil, saved or unsaved. I need a faith that freely acknowledges that although the world can be a terrible place, and the people in it awful to each other, there can also be something beautiful worth striving for. That is, I believe, a song worth singing.

Bawer, B. 1997, Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York.

Harris, S. 2007, Letter to a Christian Nation, Bantam Press, London.

Spong, J.S. 2001, A New Christianity For a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York.

Spong, J.S. 2005, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York.

Templeton, C. 2007, “Questions to Ask Yourself” in The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings For the Nonbeliever, ed. Christopher Hitchens, Da Capo Press, US.

[1] Spong 2001, p. 150.

[2] Bawer 1997, p. 10.

[3] Bawer 1997, p. 223.

[4] Templeton 2007, p. 285.

[5] Templeton 2007, p. 286.

[6] Harris 2007, p. 8.

[7] Spong 2005, p. 163.

Human Seasons, Religious Needs

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From Janet’s 19 July Service, which generated much interesting discussion…

Earlier this year, I had the unexpected pleasure of learning about the work of Robert Kegan – a noted Harvard Psychologist who has spent his career charting the upward movement of consciousness across the life span. (repeat)

What does that mean? It means understanding how humans make meaning and how our meaning making systems change as we age. He has been able to disprove the long-held believe that human complexity, like height, stops growing at adolescence. That’s right – there is finally some good news about getting older.

Kegan’s work immediately resonated with me (even beyond the age stuff). It highlights, among other things, how different people at different phases of evolution see the world differently – how they create reality differently, and construct a world that makes sense through their own eyes. It also explains why it is so darn hard to help groups of people to work together – they are all viewing the world through their own unique lens.

But, it also got me thinking about something else…if humans’ meaning making systems change over time, then don’t their religious needs? As Unitarians, we accept that concept quite easily – the free search for meaning. But what about people from other belief systems?

I asked this question on an online forum of students of Kegan. A student of the subject of psychology and religion gave me this answer, which I found especially insightful:

“whether an individual believes in god or not, is not nearly as important as how they do that. The how of religion is a much more important question that whether we might be religious or not, since religion is our way of making sense out of our existence”.

So, I started to make this connection…the complexity of our meaning making systems and our desire for and needs of religion.

Let’s talk a bit more about that complexity…

Kegan’s work describes several distinct stages of human evolution across the life span. He talks about these as being a subject-object relationship – the stuff that is so much a part of our meaning making systems, that we are subject to it and cannot see it. We might also think of this as a ‘me’ and ‘not me’ relationship…our ability to take steps back from our ‘me’ and see ourselves and the world from any vantage point. Clearly, this kind of stepping back is not something everyone can do. For example, an infant can’t do it. But, it is something we can start to do as adolescents. Here are Kegan’s words from an interview with EnlightenNext Magazine

RK: In adolescence and early adulthood, a transformation occurs in which we essentially develop the complexity to internalize and identify with the values of our surround—an epistemology that enables us to be truly a socialized member of the tribe. Socialization, from a psychological point of view, is the process by which we become more a part of society because the society actually becomes more a part of us. Thus, the self feels whole, connected, and in harmony through its identification with a set of values and beliefs that both make the self up and simultaneously preserve its intimate connections—relationships to the bigger tribe or to the culture of which one is a part. So a person who has reached this level is able to think more long term, more abstractly. Based on the particular tribe or culture, one constructs a set of values with which one is identified. And we call this the socialized mind, or third order consciousness.

The Kegan phases of adult development in complexity I will talk about today are just 2: This 3^rd order consciousness, or what Kegan calls the socialised mind, and the 4^th order, which we will come to later. As Robert has just explained to us, the socialised mind is subject to others views and values. People in this mind find their meaning and comfort in the values and measures of others. They pick up their ideas wholesale…they like the priest and his book.

If you are not familiar with the work of Jeanette Winterson, I highly recommend her first book, ‘Oranges are not the only fruit’. I think it tells a story about human evolution and religious needs quite beautifully. The book is the story of a young girl looking back on her life being raised in an evangelical household whose world is overturned when she falls for another girl.

She begins the story by telling us how her mother viewed the world:

JW “Like most people, I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn’t matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that.

She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill-town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window.

She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies.

Enemies were: The Devil (in his many forms); Next Door; Sex (in its many forms); Slugs

Friends were: God; Our dog; Auntie Madge; The Novels of Charlotte Bronte; Slug pellets…

The book soon shows us that Winterson will make a transformation that her mother has not yet made. Winterson describes the book both as autobiographical and not.

Her mother is subject to the church and its beliefs and that is all Jeanette knows. Yet, she begins to be able to see ‘me’ and ‘not me’ as separate. The church is still very much her life, but soon she can see multiple vantage points. These vantage points cause her to confront most of what her mother and the church have taught and to begin to select which of those beliefs she chooses to keep as her own. Kegan calls this move to the 4^th order the self-authoring mind. According to Kegan’s research, 79% of the population never transforms beyond the 3^rd order (58% of middle class and above).

RK: Now, the transformation that is most common to the period from twenty-five to fifty is a move out of this orientation of being shaped by one’s surround to become what we call self-authoring. This is fourth order consciousness. While this particular transformation doesn’t happen for everyone, it does take place with considerable density. In our highly pluralistic postmodern world, we do not have a homogeneous definition of who we should be and how we should live. We’re living in the midst of a rapidly expanding pluralism of tribes, which means that there are competing demands for our loyalty, faithfulness, time, money, attention, and so on. Thus, the stance of being shaped by our surround is actually insufficient to handle modern life. Rather, we are called on to have an internal authority by which we ourselves are able to name what is valuable, or respond to the claims and expectations on us, sort through them, and make decisions about which ones we will and will not follow. So we are not just made up by or written on by a culture, but we ourselves become the writer of a reality that we then are faithful to.

It is these competing demands that cause us to abandon our 3^rd order thinking. We begin to ask questions. We begin to put into question what we once took for granted. We begin to objectify what we were previously subject to and start to cobble together ideas from multiple sources and make our meaning in a self-authoring way. But it happens in stages.

James Fowler actually dedicated his life’s work to studying these stages. Here is how he defines the stages of faith.

The third stage is labeled Sythetic-Conventional faith. The majority of the population finds its permanent home in this stage. Usually arising in adolescence, this stage demands a complex pattern of socialization and integration, and faith is an inseparable factor in the ordering of one’s world. It is a stage characterized by conformity, where one finds one’s identity by aligning oneself with a certain perspective, and lives directly through this perception with little opportunity to reflect on it critically. One has an ideology at this point, but may not be aware that one has it. Those who differ in opinion are seen as “the Other,” as different “kinds” of people. Authority derives from the top down, and is invested with power by majority opinion. Dangers in this stage include the internalization of symbolic systems (power, “goodness” “badness”) to such a degree that objective evaluation is impossible. Furthermore, while one can at this stage enter into an intimate relationship with the divine, one’s life situations may drive one into despair (the threshold to the next stage). Such situations may include contradictions between authorities, the revelation of authoritarian hypocrisy, and lived experiences which contradict one’s convictions.

The life situation that drives Winterson into despair and causes her out revolution is when she falls in love with another woman, Melanie. She now faces this contradiction of convictions…the church vs. love.

JW : I knew that demons entered wherever there was a weak point. If I had a demon my weak point was Melanie, but she was beautiful and good and had loved me. Can love really belong to a demon? What sort of demon? The brown demon that rattles the ear? The red demon that dances the hornpipe? The watery demon that causes sickness? The orange demon that beguiles? Everyone has a demon like cats have fleas. “They are looking in the wrong place,” I thought. “If they want to get at my demon they’ll have to get at me.” I thought about Robert Blake. “If I let them take away my demons, I’ll have to give up what I have found.”

And, in fact, it is that sense of giving up that is the first sign of transformation from socialised to self authoring. It signals the beginning of a journey. And, often a painful one that involves letting go. This is Fowler’s 4^th stage of faith…

The fourth stage is known as Individuative-Reflective. This is primarily a stage of angst and struggle, in which one must face difficult questions regarding identity and belief. Those that pass into stage four usually do so in their mid-thirties to early forties. At this time, the personality gradually detaches from the defining group from which it formerly drew its identity. The person is aware of him or herself as an individual and must–perhaps for the first time–take personal responsibility for his/her beliefs and feelings. This is a stage of de-mythologizing, where what was once unquestioned is now subjected to critical scrutiny. Stage four is heavily existential, where nothing is certain but one’s own existence, and disillusionment reigns. This stage is not a comfortable place to be and, although it can last for a long time, those who stay in it do so in danger of becoming bitter, suspicious characters who trust nothing and no one. But most, after entering this stage, sense that not only is the world far more complex than his or her stage three mentality would allow for, it is still more complex and numinous than the agnostic rationality of stage four allows.

Letting go of the meaning-making system might also mean letting go of the people, as it does in ‘Oranges’. In Winterson’s book, she makes a deal with her demon and repents to buy herself some time. But time does not change much. When Jeanette’s character is caught with her second girlfriend, the church once again intervenes and tries to drive the demon from her. By this time she is more self authored and she can objectively see what before she was subject to:

JW: The days lingered on in a kind of numbness, me in ecclesiastical quarantine, the in a state of fear and anticipation. By Sunday, the pastor had word back from the council. The real problem, it seemed, was going against the teachings of St Paul, and allowing women power in the church. Our branch of the church had never thought about it, we’d always had strong women, and the women organized everything. Some of us could preach, and quite plainly, in my case, the church was full because of it. There was an uproar; then a curious thing happened. My mother stood up and said she believed this was right: that women had specific circumstances for their ministry, that the Sunday schools was one of them, the Sisterhood another, but the message belonged to the men. Until this moment, my life had still made some kind of sense. Now it was making no sense at all. My mother droned on about the importance of missionary work for a woman, that I was clearly such a woman, but had spurned my call in order to wield power on the home front, where it was inappropriate. She ended by saying that having taken on a man’s world in other ways I had flouted God’s law and tried to do it sexually. This was no spontaneous speech. She and the pastor had talked about it already. It was her weakness for the ministry that had done it. No doubt she’d told Pastor Spratt months ago. I looked around me. Good people, simple people, what would happen to them now? I knew my mother hoped I would blame myself, but I didn’t. I knew now where the blame lay. If there’s such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore.”

And now we know that she has objectivity. She is maturing on her journey toward being self-authored. She has seen the line between ‘me’ and ‘not me’. And she can objectify both her mother and the church. I suspect many people in this room have had some kind of ‘not me’ moment that signalled a transformation.

Eight years after writing Oranges, Winterson used the following words to describe the work:

JW “Everyone, at some time in their life, must choose whether to stay with a ready-made world that may be safe, but which is also limiting, or to push forward, often past the frontiers of consciousness into a personal place, unknown and untried.”

But the next question you might be asking is what drives this movement of choice? In Winterson’s case, there was a compelling, emotional event – relationships with woman that put her values of love and faith in conflict. But, for most of us, it is more subtle than that. Kegan points out that emotions associated with transformation do not always equal transformation. You have to have an interest in bringing about transformation in relationships to yourself and others, or as he says ‘to separate the rose from the perfume’.

Here is what Kegan has to say to the question ‘what is it that drives human development?’

RK “Now you really are asking a religious question about what is the nature of life itself… If you ask me about ultimate motives, I would say that it’s all going somewhere. The process by which each living thing in the universe organizes and reorganizes itself—which is transformation—is a process by which each living piece, or part, is, in a certain way, better recognizing its true nature. And this is a declaration of faith here—its true nature is ultimately its participation in a single intelligent whole. Prayer is sometimes described as an expression of our dependence on this force that is bigger than ourselves. And that may be so, but our own transformation is an expression of God’s dependence on us. That’s what we are called to do, what the universe needs of us. And each living thing in the universe has the opportunity, through the process of transformation, to move toward a more complex form.”

We each have the opportunity, yes. But, not everyone’s God calls them to do it. In fact, some people’s gods (or at least their human representatives) might take issue with this transformation to a new meaning-making system – making that transformation even more painful. Not all religions choose to teach about transformation to a more complex form.

Maybe people join some religious groups when their needs are socialised and depart as they become self authored. And maybe it is it the self-authored folk who the Unitarians catch. But somewhere someone has a goal of membership retention and that person has probably not heard of Bob Kegan or James Fowler. In a perfect world the those religions and the Unitarians would get together – them recruiting early and us taking over when things get more complicated. Each church would become a place for the people for whom it is best suited.

Somehow we can accept as fact that primary school is a place for young minds and secondary school for older ones. Our teachers do not feel rejected when we graduate. Science has shown us that this meaning-making evolution is a natural part of our human development. Yet, the churches fight hard against the thought of a changing meaning-making system. Some churches seem to want to put a gate around our beliefs. But just as we cannot hold back an approaching storm, there can be no gate – our religious needs have seasons or their own.

“I could have been a priest instead of a prophet. The priest has a book with the words set out. Old words, known words, words of power. Words that are always on the surface. Words for every occasion. The words work. They do what they’re supposed to do; comfort and discipline. The prophet has no book. The prophet is a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not always set into meaning.“

Jeanette Winterson

An Evolving Hybrid National Identity for Australia?

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…….. a politically progressive force which seeks mass support needs to project a different idea of ‘Australianness’. We need to strongly define the Australian way as one of equality, fairness and tolerance. But, more than that, we need to identify positive ideals and national values of which we can all be proud, and to which we can legitimately expect all Australians (local and overseas born) to be loyal. This already happens to some extent, but still the main definers of loyalty to Australia have the loudest voices and the narrowest ideas of ‘Australian values’. In turn, this encourages progressives to adopt a cosmopolitanism, which is fine as a personal attitude, but is articulated in high-minded and abstract notions that often fail to connect with many people. When articulated in a culture war, this cosmopolitanism fails to translate adequately, and appears remote and elitist to many Australians who take pride in their country. Its values need to be articulated in a national framework. It is no longer sensible to celebrate cultural diversity without also asserting the need for core values common to all members of the nation. Projecting a national pride and identity does not automatically mean promoting Anglo-Celtic values or denying Australia’s Indigenous heritage. It means drawing a distinction between an assimilation which discards the cultures of the Indigenous and non-English-speaking, and an evolving hybrid national identity which values the cultural mix, but also projects agreed common values.

A sense of national identity encourages social cohesion, which is a necessary condition for the continued operation of a welfare state based on the redistribution of wealth. That is, if the middle class and the rich feel no sense that `us’ includes the poor, they will become very hostile to paying taxes to support `them’. This has occurred to some degree already, but in countries where the poor are not from the same ethnicity as the middle and rich, it has proceeded much further—with disastrous consequences. For such reasons, it is vital to build bonds of commonality in a synthetic common culture. In a similar way, in spite of globalisation, the nation remains vital as the forum for the exercise of democracy, the administration of justice and the law and a range of other institutional practices. Given this, what other political vocabulary do we have to talk in popular terms about the common good and the public interest?

What would a progressive ideal of national identity mean in practice? One sample concerns the popularity of environmental issues. Put simply, such concerns have appealed to many peoples’ love of and pride in Australia. In the popular mind, campaigns on environmental issues mean protecting the country they love from the ravages of those who narrowly value only commercial self-interest. Preserving rivers, mountains, rainforests and desert landscapes appeals to a legitimate national pride in a wild and beautiful land.

David McKnight; Beyond Right and Left , 2005, (from last chapter)