Keywords

FormalPara Trailer

In this chapter, Kathleen McPhillips will explore the complexity of religious hegemonism and its relationship to identity, racismand social cohesion. Maxine Rosenfield and Ridwan Haq further describe personal experiences of growing up in non-dominant faith groups and the impact on identity and well-being.

10.1 Introduction

  • Vicki Hutton 

Definition

Spirituality has often been linked to belief in a God or higher power, but it also transcends this limiting definition to encompass a sense of connection and ‘oneness’ with nature or the universe itself (p.380). Religion is often viewed as more structured, encompassing an organised system of worship, traditions and rituals. The High Court of Australia has proposed various definitions of religion (Australian Law Reform Commission [ALRC], 2016), whilst acknowledging that it would be difficult, or even impossible, to develop a definition to encompass and satisfy all the various religions which exist, or have existed, worldwide. Some suggested criteria or religion include belief in a supernatural Being, Thing, or Principle; and the acceptance of rules of conduct to give effect to that belief (provided these rules are within the law).

Statistics

Religious affiliation in Australia has changed significantly between the 1966 Census and the 2016 Census. Those identifying as Christian dropped from 88.2% of the population in 1966 to 52.1% of the population in 2016. Simultaneously, those identifying as Other Religions increasing from 0.7% in 1966 to 8.2% in 2016, and importantly, those reporting No Religion moving from 0.8% in 1966 to 30.1% in 2016. In fact, No Religion was the most common individual response on the 2016 Census, with young adults aged 18 to 34 years more likely to identify with this category than older adults (ABS, 2017a; Australian Bureau of Statistics[ABS], 2017b).

Australia has a long history of migration, with most Australians other than Indigenous peoples either immigrated to, or are descendants of migrants, over the last two centuries (Harrison & Parkinson, 2014). Different waves of migration resulted in a diverse range of cultures and religious beliefs, especially Catholics, Anglicans and smaller Christian traditions up to the middle of the twentieth century. Italian immigrants added to Catholicism, while Greek immigrantsensured a strong Orthodox community.

With the abolition of Australia’s White Australia Policyin 1966, migration increased from non-European countries contributing to the increase in religions other than Christianity (ABS, 2017a). Increases were especially reported in Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism, with young adults aged 18–34 years more likely to be affiliated with religions other than Christianity compared with other adults. The Muslim community increased through immigration from other conflict-ridden countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Other Spiritual beliefs practised in Australia include the Middle Eastern religions of Bahai’I, Mandaean, Druse, Zoroastrianism and Yezid, Nature religions of Paganism, Wiccan, Animism and Druidism; East Asian beliefs of Taoism, Confucianism, Ancestor Veneration and Shinto; and Australian Aboriginal traditional beliefs (ABS, 2017b).

Australia is a secular nation, meaning the government cannot interfere with the exercise of religion. Religious freedom receives some protection under Section 116 of the Australian Constitution stating:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth (ALRC, 2016, p. 134).

The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is also recognised under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Australian HumanRights Commission [AHRC], 2014). Article 18 protects the religious beliefs of the major religions, as well as non-theistic and atheistic beliefs and the right not to profess any religion or belief at an individual and collective level.

However, there is no standalone law that represents the human right to religious freedom throughout Australia (Religious Freedom Review, 2018). While Australia does not have a national Religious Discrimination Act, most states and territories have their own legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of a person’s religion. The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) also prevents discrimination in the workplace based on religion. Despite the relatively high level of religious freedom experienced in Australia and the direct and indirect protections against discrimination, some people may still be discriminated against on the basis of their religion or spirituality, thus potentially impacting their mental health and well-being.

The Australian Psychological Society (APS) ethical standards cautions psychologists against discriminating based on religion, and draws attention to the need to understand the consequences for people experiencing discriminationor stereotyping related to their religion (Australian Psychological Society, 2007). Counsellors and psychotherapists are similarly reminded to remain aware of their personal attitudes, beliefs and assumptions in relation to religion, and the impact of these on therapy (Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia [PACFA], 2017). The need for this self-awareness is particularly important in relation to religion and spiritualityto avoid the risk of pursuing religious or spiritual goals contrary to the client’s worldview, or alternatively, failing to recognise the importance of these domains in a person’s identity and well-being.

10.2 Religion and Faith in Australia: Diversity, Plurality and Change

  • Kathleen McPhillips 

10.2.1 Introduction

Australia is typically understood as a secular nation where religion plays a minor role in public life and values and is gradually decreasing in importance as secularism grows and organised religion fades (Stanley, 2015). This chapter will contest this notion and demonstrate the importance of religion in shaping the national character, providing significant social services, contributing to public policy and creating social cohesion. Importantly, studies show that religion can make a positive contribution to individual and communitywell-being(Bouma, 2011; Singleton, Rasmussen, Hapafoff, & Bouma, 2019).

Australia can be described as a religiously pluralist, multi-faith society, and where society in general values the inclusion and celebration of religious diversity and its contribution to social cohesion (Bouma, 2006, 2011, 2017). In particular, the contribution to religious diversity via immigration programs throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen the religious base of Australia grow and diversify. At the same time, the numbers of Australians identifying as religious is consistently falling with the Millennial generations now having the lowest commitment to religion (48%) ever recorded (Bouma, 2017; Singleton et al., 2019).

This chapter will explore the major tenets of the history of organised religion in Australia over the last 230 years, and the impact of Christian hegemonism on national values and religious identity. As religious diversity increased in the twentieth century, so too did particular forms of racismand anti-religious sentiments. The dominance of Christianity, particularly Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, ensured that public life was imbued with Christian values and rituals, which resulted in the construction of other religious traditions as exotic and ‘other’ to the norm of white, middle class Christianity. World religions, particularly Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, are characterised by particular histories and politics which have had a significant impact on both public perceptions of these religious traditions and been a site of interest and curiosity. Religious identity, then, is complex, providing a sense of deep meaning, belonging and community for believers alongside contested ideas of what it means to be Australian.

As Australia moves into the twenty-first century and global immigration continues, religious practice and identity is increasingly pluralist and unstable. Three examples will be provided that explore the dimensions of this situation. First, the politicsof Islam and in particular the debate around religious symbolism, such as veiling, will provide insight into how small ethno-religious groups become targets for national anxiety. Second, the current fraught debate around the protection of religious freedom following the passing of marriage equality laws in 2017. And finally, the impacts on religious organisations of the disclosure of thousands of victims of child sexual abuse across the twentieth century in religious institutions and their investigation via the national inquiry Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012–2017).

10.2.2 Contexts and Histories of Religion in Australia

The impacts of Colonisation

Prior to the British colonisation of Australia in the late eighteenth century, Indigenous peoples lived across the land in sustainable, culturally rich societies for over 60,000 years (Pascoe, 2014). Evidence of trading with peoples from the now Indonesian archipelago in the northern parts of Australia as well as between Indigenous groups suggest that there was a peaceful co-existence and cultural and economic flourishing (Marks, 2018) amongst cultures and peoples. Historical evidence suggests that prior to colonisation, Indigenous cultures had complex, well-structured economies and belief systems with formal ritual practices and mythologies constructing powerful meaning makings systems, community identity and belonging to place (Pascoe, 2014).

Indigenous peoples were subject to systemic forms of colonial violence from 1788 onwards, which resulted in the organised destruction of cultural ways of life, including the loss of language and rituals. Practices of genocide, especially through organised massacres (Allam & Evershed, 2019; Ryan et al., 2020) and disease, devastated the Indigenous cultures which came into contact with British colonial forces and settler outposts. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw children forcibly taken from their families and institutionalised, policies of assimilation enacted through the herding of Indigenous peoples into Christian missions, sexual violence perpetrated against women and children, and the imprisonment of Indigenous men (Broome, 2019). The devastating impacts of colonialist policieson Indigenous societies has ensured that the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries have a legacy of racismthat is yet to be reconciled and which Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are constantly engaged in redressing (Broome, 2019). The role of religion in colonialist agendas is complex (Carey, 1996). On the one hand, Christian missions across the country were deeply involved in the violent mistreatment of Indigenous people, often stripping them of access to country, family, language and ritual and forcing them into menial, degrading work or imprisonment. On the other hand, evidence suggests that some Christian missions provided education, health care and family support as people tried to recover from the impacts of colonial violence (Carey, 1996).

Politically, Australia was established as a secular democratic and constitutional monarchy by the British government from 1788. Religion was to be an important but not central part of public life, and the Anglican Church was formally recognised as the main religion (Carey, 1996; Kay, 2014). However, in its beginnings as a penal colony consisting largely of Irish Catholics, and with developing trading and shipping routes across the global south, there was a diverse religious representation from the earliest days of colonial life (Carey, 1996).

10.2.3 The Outcomes of Sectarianism

The politicsof sectarianismFootnote 1 characterised the formation of the Catholic schooling and welfare system in nineteenth century Australia, where Anglicanism remained the established religion in all states in Australia and Catholics were locked out of state aid (Carey, 1996). The stigma attached to being Roman Catholic was significant and originated from the historical marginalisation of Catholicism in Britain and the association of convicts and the penal system with Irish Catholicism. To be Catholic in colonial Australia was to be denigrated and stigmatised. To counter this, from the 1850s, the Australian Catholic Church embarked on an ambitious program of school building, welfare assistance and business development with the express intent of improving the classposition of Catholic Australians (Campion, 1982; Carey, 1996). Dioceses and parishes were formed, bishops appointed, and religious orders established to teach and care for the sick, as the Church built its empire across the land. Slowly over the next century, the impacts of sectarianism were alleviated—but not before it was common for Catholics to grow up in insular tribal communities, almost completely shielded from the influence of other religious and cultural groups (Carey, 1996). This insulation was later to be one of the main causes of the wide-spread sexual abuse of children in Catholic schools and parishes by Catholic clerics in the twentieth century (McPhillips, 2017).

10.2.4 The Impact of Migration on Religious Diversity

Although there were small numbers of devotees of numerous Christian denominations and world religions active in Australian communities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was not until the post-war period from the 1950s onwards that the religious diversity of Australian social life developed with an ambitious immigration program aimed at building economic and cultural resources (Bouma, 2011; Carey, 1996). Orthodox and eastern Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists came from a diverse array of nations across Europe, Asia and the Middle East (Carey, 1996)—with mosques, synagogues, temples and other places of worship springing up in cities and towns. The building of a multi-cultural and religiously pluralist Australia was characterised by ethnic and religious tensions as well as attempts to build alliances across cultural divides. The old dominant values of Protestant Christian Australia were being challenged to make way for new expressions of religiosity and national identity and when the White Australia Policy was finally abandoned in the 1970s, it changed dramatically the ethnic population of the country. Jewish immigrantsfleeing the post-war chaos in Europe were followed by increasing numbers of Buddhists from south-east Asia and Muslims from troubled areas in the Middle East. The 2016 Censusrecords the small but significant numbers of non-Christian groups at 8.2%; and of that group, Islam is 2.6% and Buddhism 2.4%. This is compared with Christians of all denominations at 52.1% and those identifying with no religion at 30.1% (ABS, 2018; Bouma, 2017).

At the same time, secularist tendencies were steadily growing with the Australian Censusrecording a falling number of people both identifying as religious and attending religious services. In 1966, Australians professing a religious belief were recorded at 89% and, by 2016, this had dropped to 52% with only 8% regularly attending services. Those professing no religious identity were recorded at 0.8% in 1966 and, by 2016, this had jumped exponentially to 30.1%, most of whom were under the age of 35 years (ABS, 2018).

10.2.5 Religion in Contemporary Australia

Despite the dire predictions of social commentators and theorists that religion would fade into insignificance by the end of the twentieth century, religion has continued to thrive around the globe. In the twenty-first century the world religions of Christianity and Islam continue to grow in particular, with Christianity expanding into Asia and Africa, and Islam in the Middle East, Europe and Asia (Pew Research Centre, 2015). Western countries are largely multi-cultural, multi-faith societies with the continuing movement of peoples from developing nations to developed nations. An often uneasy truce between religious organisations and their claims for public recognition and state assistance and the state protecting religious freedom while maintaining secular government currently characterises the political landscape of numerous western nations.

In Australia, this truce is underpinned by a multiplicity of factors. The 2016 CensusFootnote 2 figures show that traditional forms of religion are declining amongst the population while smaller world religions such as Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism have grown, mainly due to immigration over the last Censusperiod. Importantly, the “No Religion” category has now become the largest single group identified in the Religion category. However, 69.9% of the population are still designating religion as important, and just under a quarter of all Australians nominate as Catholic (ABS, 2018).

Statistics (◘ Table 10.1)

Despite the decline in traditional religions, religiosity remains a significant factor in signalling identity and belonging. Within this, of course, there are noteworthy differences.

Table 10.1 Top 20 Religions in Australia – 2016 Census (ABS, 2017a)
Full size table

10.2.6 Religion and Education

In recent years, a main area of contention between religious organisations and the state is the role of religion in the Australian schooling system. This covers three areas: first, state funding of private schools the majority of which are Christian; two, the national school Chaplaincy program; and third, teaching religious educationin public schools. Currently, approximately 30% of Australian schools are religious with most of those being Anglican or Catholic (Rowe, 2017). Internationally, this represents a significant section of the educationmarket and points to the growth of the private educationsector over recent years. Private school funding began in the 1960s, when the Menzies liberal government began funding Catholic secondary schools. Funding increased via federal educationpolicy and expanded significantly in the 1990s under the Howard liberal government (Maddox, 2011). By 2008, nearly 40% of all school students were being educated in the private sector of which over 90% were religious (Maddox, 2011). A small percentage of private schools are Jewish and Muslim, and many private religious schools charge high fees thus restricting entry to those who can afford it.

The place of religious educationin public schooling continues to be controversial (Halafoff & Byrne, 2014; Halafoff, Singleton, Bouma, & Rasmussen, 2019). Historically, public schooling was established in the states as ‘free, secular and compulsory’ (Maddox, 2011, p.301); yet, under pressure from Christian groups, religious faith-based educationhas been taught in state primary and secondary schooling for decades. In some states, such as NSW, educationpolicy has involved students having to opt-out of religious education classesand not given educational alternatives until recently. In 2016, Victoria moved to shift religious educationby faith groups out of state schools and include in the curriculum secular religious educationwhich was premised on a diversity of cultures and viewpoints and aimed to increase understanding of world religions and ethical values (Halafoff et al., 2019).

While we have determined that Australia is religiously diverse and pluralist and that this can make a positive contribution to social and cultural capital and well-being, there are clearly areas of concern where some religions have been relegated to a marginalised status in Australian cultural life, where the position of womenin patriarchal religious organisations is compromised and also where the hegemony of major Christian organisations seek to ascertain rights to discriminate against particular often vulnerable cohorts. The following three examples examine this problematic in detail.

Example 1 Islam, Accommodation and Diversity

According to the 2016 Census, just over 600,000 or 2.6% Australians identify as belonging to the Muslim faith (ABS, 2018). This is a growth of 27% from 2011 and signifies a small growth indicator. In the broad Islamic population, the medium age is 27 indicating that the cohort is young, and just over 62% of believers are born overseas and now live largely in major cities. As Milani (2015, np.) states: ‘As a young and diverse community, the future of Islam in Australia is still in the making’.

Beyond population figures, the Islamic community is very diverse in terms of countryof origin, cultural and faith practices and opinions (Milani, 2015). The fact of this diversity often gets lost in public perceptionsof Islam and can be fuelled by Islamophobia and ignorance of the basic tenets of the religion. A conflation between Islam, fundamentalism, violence and terrorism has been particularly problematic in shaping public opinion and has been fuelled by certain media, right wing groups and individuals, some of whom are state and federal politicians (Almond, 2019; Grattan, 2017; Pio, 2019). The idea of Western Christianity as benign and Islam as violent and aggressive, is, according to Almond (2019) and Said (1978), premised on historical mythical and ideological notions that construct Islam as the exotic violent cultural other to civilised European Christian states. This creates an ongoing underlying fear expressed through Islamophobic discourse that the state may be in danger of compromise when providing accommodative responses to the needs of Muslims, such as opportunities for prayer and dietary requirements. In some countries such as Canada, Germany and the UK, the state has controversially provided legal avenues that accommodate Muslim legal systems, including aspects of Sharia law (Goldenberg, 2013) although that seems unlikely to develop in Australia. Given the instability of politicsin the Middle East and the instances of terrorism linked to Islamic fundamentalist groups such as ISIS, the Taliban, Boko Haram and their reach across the globe, it is not surprising that waves of moral panic have resulted in exclusionist foreign policy, racism and public panic. Such responses fail to recognise the contests between and within Islamic traditions and cultures and the great diversity of Islamic expressions (Almond, 2019). And it also fails to recognise the violent histories of Christianity in colonial and post-colonial Australia, particularly in regard to sectarianism and the treatment of Indigenous Australians.

Without doubt, Islamic communities in Australia have been largely accommodative of Australian cultural ways and legal systems, but one area that has been particularly problematic is that of gender, and specifically the position of Muslim womenwho veil. The human rights of Muslim women tend to act as a key litmus test applied to the accommodative capacity of Muslim communities to Australian values (Abraham, 2007). In popular conservative discourse, Muslim womenare often stereotypically portrayed as being oppressed by Muslim men and lacking agency and autonomy and in need of rescue from patriarchal Islam (Carland, 2017). Western attitudes championing the freedom of sexual expression and the rights of womento equality are often articulated as central values of Australian society, despite evidence to the contrary that womenin general face higher levels of personal violence and inequality in the workplace (Sandy & Powell, 2016). Since 9/11, a new intensification of anxiety around womenwho veil has played out in a number of ways in Australia (Abraham, 2007). Conservative politicians have attempted on numerous occasions to pass legislation banning the wearing of veils in public places. This has been attempted unsuccessfully in NSW parliament in 2010 and again in 2014. In 2014, a number of federal parliamentarians fuelled by supportive comments from the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott, moved—unsuccessfully—to ban womenwearing the burqa or niqab from entering Parliament House (Maley, 2014; Zein, 2014) on the basis that they may be terrorists.

It is also the case that instances of terrorism linked to Islamic fundamentalism tend to create moral panics where Muslim womenare often the target of violence. In 2014, when anxiety about the recruitment of young men to ISIS in Australia was heightened, Muslim womenin south-west Sydney reported being spat at in the street, their veils yanked off, physically harassed and not feeling safe enough to leave their homes (Maley, 2014; Zein, 2014). Despite a clear counter-discoursefrom women, Islamic groups, politicians, journalists and academics contesting the representation of Islamic womenas oppressed, the idea that Muslim women are passive and voiceless and Muslim men are patriarchal and dominating persists (Aly & Walker, 2007). This kind of specialist treatment of a small cohort of women who wear head, face and body coverings and who are already culturally marginalised demonstrates that it is often womenwho bear the brunt of national insecurities around security and safety in a post- 9/11 world.

Of course, there have been important developments in inter-faith dialogue between Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups and the diversification of Islam in Australia is slowly being publicly recognised. However, the implications for well-beingamongst Australians who identify as Muslim remain a concern.

Example 2 Marriage Equality and the Question of Religious Freedom

In recent times, religious freedom has become a point of contention and debate focused around calls for further protections for religions to be enacted as part of federal anti-discriminationlaws (Elphick, Maguire, & Hilkemeijer, 2018).

Protection of religion is already enshrined in Section 116 of the Australian Constitution which sets out the relationship between the rights of Australians to practice their religious beliefs accordingly, and the requirement that religious belief not interfere with the practice of public office. In effect, this was intended to settle the place of religion in Australian public life, ensuring that it was principally a private undertaking while protecting the secular character of Australian government. Religious belief and practice is also protected in state and federal anti-discriminationand equal opportunity law and religious groups enjoy a number of exemptions, including the payment of certain taxes and abiding by human rightslaws that might restrict observance of religious rules. For example, in training programs for ministry, Catholic priests are only men, as ordaining womenis against canon law provisions. And in the educationsector, religious schools can refuse to employ staff and educate students who identify as LGBTQI+ on the basis that it is contrary to the values of tradition (Elphick et al., 2018).

Since the successful passing of the marriage equality laws in 2017, the call for further protections for religious groups has grown in some quarters. The reason for this is a perception that equal marriage might lead to discriminationof those who do not support marriage equality but who, through law, are forced to act against their religious beliefs. The famous example demonstrating this case is that of the ‘gay wedding cake’ where a baker refuses to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple based on their religious opposition to gaymarriage. If the baker refuses, they are then breaking the law (Elphick, 2018). Other arguments from conservative Christian leaders championed the need to protect religious groups so that they could continue teaching religious doctrine that mitigates against LGBTQI+ rights.

In 2018, the federal government instigated a report into religious freedom in Australia to determine if current Australian law had effective protections for religious belief and practice (Religious Freedom Review, 2018). The report recommended that there be new federal laws to prohibit discriminationon the basis of religion, and in line with the states, effect further coverage of rights (Elphick et al., 2018). However, this also raised the issue of whether such laws would allow religious groups and individuals to effectively discriminate against others with whom they had moral disagreements, particularly LGBTQI+ people. Although, as mentioned above, religious groups already enjoy exemptions in human rightslaws, the proposed laws would provide further protection and allow the circulation of public speech that could be harmful to already vulnerable cohorts.

The current situation in early 2020 is that following thousands of public submissions reviewing this legislation over two rounds of consultation, the government has delayed the introduction of new laws while it further examines details of the bill. It has come under opposition from various groups including the Australian Human Rights Commission and mainstream religious groups who do not think that further protection of religious rights is required (Martin, 2019) and if implemented could lead to a deterioration of religious pluralism and social cohesion by validating religious ‘hate speech’. It does seem that the main supporters of the bill are conservative Christian groups who represent a very small proportion of the population. And there are serious concerns that the bill is structured to protect religious rights at the expense of other human rights(Karp, 2020). For example, the bill currently provides for religious organisations, such as hospitals, aged care centres, and disability services, the right to discriminate against employing staff on the basis that their religious ethos would be compromised and this will mean that blanket forms of discriminatory employment practices would be allowed (Karp, 2020).

While there has been government support for religious organisations to enjoy specific exemptions in human rightslaws, it is also the case that this is contentious and perceived by many groups and individuals as an unnecessary accommodation to religious organisations. Without doubt, this contributes to an unsettled landscape around the rights of LGBTQI+ persons and groups.

Example 3 The Child Sexual Abuse Crisis in Religious Organisations

As noted above, for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, religious organisations were actively engaged in community building and welfare work. Alongside the development of secular social policy aimed at redistributing wealth and providing welfare provisions and services for low socio-economic groups, religious organisations were providing parallel services as part of their mission to care for the more vulnerable people in their midst. One of the most vulnerable cohorts were children in poverty and from the early 1800s the Catholic church, in particular, undertook significant building programs including orphanages, boarding schools and missions to care for children. As well, parish schools and those run by religious orders multiplied and taught and cared for thousands of children over many decades. Many of these provided education, housingand care for poor children, but amongst the upper classes, elite Catholic boarding schools and university colleges were popularised.

In the early 1980s, reports of the sexual abuse of children in Australian religious institutions began emerging into public discourse, and importantly, the mediabegan reporting on a growing number of cases. This was not a new phenomenon. As the historian Shurlee Swain points out, institutional abuse in child organisations has a long history in Australia with numerous inquiries and reports addressing the question of child safety and abuse from the early 1800s (Swain, 2018). From the late 1990s, a number of important public inquiriesFootnote 3 specifically addressed the treatment of children (Swain, 2018, p.154), and, as evidence grew, supported by advocacy groups and mediareportage, it led eventually to the establishment of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012–2017). The Royal Commission (2017) investigated the status of children across the breadth of Australian institutions, including sporting, artistic and cultural organisations, detention centres, schools and orphanages with a focus on how institutions had responded to reports of child sexual abuse and the outcomes of this. The largest group of institutions investigated by the Royal Commission were religious organisations where it became clear early in the life of the Royal Commission that such organisations had allowed the wide spread sexual abuse of children by religious workers to continue with little interference resulting in a systemic failure to protect children from harm (McPhillips, 2018).

The Catholic Church had the highest level of cases of child sexual abuse with 13 of the 57 public hearings addressing Catholic schools, parishes, orphanages and institutional redress mechanisms (McPhillips, 2018). The Royal Commission found that not only was there a systemic failure to protect children but that in many instances, religious authorities deliberately protected the perpetrator above the needs of the children by moving them around, denying that abuse had occurred, blaming and punishing victims who spoke out and using religious laws to slow and stymie responses to victims (Doyle, 2017; McPhillips, 2018; Tapsell, 2018). Perpetrators were mainly priests and religious brothers and a smaller number of lay teachers, youth group leaders and religious women. The public hearings from hundreds of survivors about their experience of sexual abuse and the documentation from the Royal Commission constitutes an important body of knowledge about this appalling travesty of justice in Australian social life.

The impacts of sexual abuse on children are well documented (Blakemore, Herbert, Arney, & Parkinson, 2017) and the effects are often debilitating and life-long, including adverse psychological health and well-being, impacts on social relationships and educative capacities, spiritual health, financial security and in many instances, suicide (Blakemore et al., 2017; Middleton et al., 2014). Over 8000 survivors gave evidence before a Royal Commissioner in private hearings and attested to the damage that abuse as a child had caused but also to the damage inflicted by poor responses from the particular institutions. Because religious institutions were generally respected as places specialising in pastoral care, they were trusted by the public and by Church members. The final report of the Royal Commission (2017) noted that in relation to religious organisations:

…these institutions have played, and continue to play, an integral and unique role in many children’s lives. They have been key providers of education, health and social welfare services to children for many years. They have been among the most respected institutions in our society. The perpetrators of child sexual abuse in religious institutions, were, in many cases, people that children and parents trusted the most and suspected the least. (p.44)

The outcomes of the Royal Commission findings and report, along with other public inquiries, indicate that public confidence in religious organisations to care for children and other vulnerable groups has been severely affected. Indeed, the results of the NCLS 2016 Church Life Survey report that Catholics had experienced ‘a serious erosion of trust in the hierarchical leadership of the Church’ (Millar, Vedelago, & Schneiders, 2018, np.) Whether the Anglican and Catholic Churches can recover their status as trusted institutions is debatable. Their responses to the recommendations of the Royal Commission will be a key test of their intention and capacity to address governance problems and cultural change. Change so far has been slow and uneven (McPhillips, 2020).

10.2.7 Conclusion

Religiously diverse, multifaith societies are characteristic of many countries in the twenty-first century, including Australia. Without doubt, as commentators have argued, the brief age of Christian dominance in Australian social life is quickly passing (Bouma, 2011) and new forms of belief are shaping social discourseand policy. The idea that the state would be underpinned by one religion and this would be the basis of social cohesion has long passed and ‘diversity is the new normal’ (Bouma, 2011, p. 14). While this is true, it is also the case that Australian institutions and public life are still shaped by Christian rituals, calendars and values.

Hence, religious diversity remains currently an unsettled space where the inclusion of different languages, cultural traditions and religions into public discourseand social organisation is still in a state of accommodation (Bouma, 2011). For example, the Australian Human Rights Commission (n.d.) has provided guidelines for work-places on incorporating the requirements of faiths for daily prayer into daily work life and a complaints mechanism for where this is not met. Many Australian foods have been certified by government bodies as being Halal compliant and the display of religious symbols in public places, such as schools and community centres, is generally accepted (Parliamentary Library, 2016).

Such diversity is only likely to increase as we witness ongoing migration across the globe for multiple reasons. We have seen that religious pluralism is generally valued and continues to make a significant contribution to social cohesion and Australian identity. We have also seen that religions other than mainstream Christianity can be represented in ways that are marginalising and stigmatising and that Christian hegemonism continues to make demands on the state for further rights and, in some instances, these are at the expense of religious, sexual and ethnic diversity. An important contribution to social cohesion is the work of interfaith and multifaith groups. An audit of multi-faith/interfaith groups in Australia by Ennis and Cahill (2018) found a small but engaged group of individuals and groups working to increase and support local and national initiatives around the social benefits of religious diversity. State policiesthat encourage equality and strong anti-discriminationand human rightslaws also provide a necessary framework for social cohesion as do religious educationprograms that focus on world religions and are taught from a secular standpoint. Valuing religious diversity across all levels of social engagement is important and will have an impact on the well-beingof individuals and groups.

The GenZ reportFootnote 4 (Singleton et al., 2019) is perhaps one of the strongest indicators of how religious diversity will be valued in the future. Contemporary teenagers (13–18) comprise the Generation Z cohort and are most exposed to diversity in community and schools across the nation. The report showed that while the majority of teenagers do not identify with a formal religion (52%), over 91% of respondents believe that having a community of people from different faiths made Australia a better place to live (Singleton et al., 2019). This GenZ cohort overwhelmingly supported marriage equality (82%) and had a positive attitude to other world religions, particularly Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism (Singleton et al., 2019). Given that most of this cohort is likely not to be religious, it is very encouraging that their attitudes to those who are religious is generous and accepting.

10.3 Personal Stories and Current Affairs

10.3.1 A Pound of Flesh

  • Maxine Rosenfield 

Growing up in northern UK in the 1970s, I was indoctrinated to ‘keep quiet’, ‘keep your head down’, never ever talk about money and never about being Jewish.

We lived in the North Manchester ‘ghetto’ area which was safe and secure, amongst ‘our own kind’. I attended a Jewish primary school where I learned about my heritage and the customs and practices of the faith, even though my family were not ultraorthodox, synagogue- attending on a weekly basis Jews. We were called ‘three times a year’ Jews—only attending on the Highest of the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and sometimes Succot and SImchat Torah too—all around September/October). My dad worked on Saturdays, though we kids always had to dress nicely and we stayed home until I was old enough to have a Saturday job too. My family, however, was quite strict about their diet, never mixing milk and meat, only eating Kosher meat and observing Passover with the caging over of pots and pans and eating a complete change of food, guaranteed to be ‘leaven free’ for eight days (March/April, close to or during Easter).

At age 14, my parents moved us to the opposite side of the city. There I entered an anglicised world, foreign to me because even my previous high school had such a high proportion of ‘us’ in it that we were safe from the outside world prejudices.

The move to ‘south side’ plunged me into being the only Jew in the school (I was reliably informed). I was identified because of my darker skin and my surname. There was one Muslim Egyptian-born girl in my year and we actually had similar colouring and features, which served to make me more of a target. She had a big sister at the school and seemed to be accepted. Most Muslims did not dress any differently to the rest of the white population and were ‘exotic’ in those days.

Sitting in a classin alphabetical order, next to a girl who had a cleft lip and was very popular, being sporty (I wasn’t- we Jews were encouraged to be academic, not sporty), I was told that she was a Quaker and Quakers hate Jews. I am not sure this is accurate philosophy but coming out of nowhere, it was a shock to the core. I kept my head further down and my mouth further shut. She also told me Jews were evil because we killed Jesus. And this was at a selective grammar school, populated by intelligent and academically bright girls.

English lessons became hell. The teacher, a ‘born again Christian’ who ran the school’s Christian Society lunchtime club, was Jewish born and was now virulently anti- all things Jewish. Added to that, our Shakespeare text for our national year 10 exam was ‘The Merchant of Venice’, an openly anti-semitic play. It was a year of hell in English classwhere I was constantly held up as spokesperson for all things and actions Jewish ‘all Jews are careful with their money aren’t they Maxine..?’; ‘Shylock is like many Jewish men, scheming and grasping, isn’t he Maxine?’ and many more painful jibes, to which I was powerless to respond.

The teacher’s club lackeys were in my class, of course, and occasionally picked on me at other times than English class, but I put my head down, kept quiet and never replied to anything.

In the Merchant of Venice Shylock’s big speech goes:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. (III.i.49–61).

Shylock seeks a pound of flesh as payment from Bassanio if he forfeits paying back money that Shylock has lent him to woo Portia.

Portia, the judge finishes her pronouncement with ‘But wait a moment. There’s something else. This contract doesn’t give you any blood at all. The words expressly specify “a pound of flesh.” So take your penalty of a pound of flesh, but if you shed one drop of Christian blood when you cut it, the state of Venice will confiscate your land and property under Venetian law’.

The Jew is mocked, humiliated, and, given there were no Jews in Elizabethan England after their exile in 1290, any myths of Jews being ritual murderers (such as kidnapping Christian children at Passover to use their blood in ceremonies) perpetuated unchallenged. In 1970s Manchester, I was mocked, humiliated and felt I should defend my entire race against ignorance and myths. But I put my head down and kept silent for fear of antagonising the perpetrators.

The holocaust impacted millions. My own family lost members, those who had not escaped their homes in time; the rest fleeing to Paris, Manchester, Texas and Tel Aviv. I grew up in the North Manchester ‘ghetto’ knowing some people who had blue numbers tattooed on the underside of their forearms, but those people never talked about what the numbers were.

Some people were anti-German—I remember a metallic pencil sharpener with ‘Made in W Germany’ on the back and being told I couldn’t get THAT one because it was ‘German made and we don’t want to help the Germans’. I studied German at high school because it was like the Yiddish I heard spoken in the family and community. It felt disloyal yet I was curious to know this language because it was similar to words I heard growing up. Besides this was the 1970s, surely some Germans were OK people?

As I moved into the professional world as a student and then in radiation therapy, counselling and teaching I kept my head down and mouth shut except when I saw injustices and then sometimes I would join a protest or write a letter. It took me years, well into my 20s, to feel comfortable with my family name as I became comfortable and confident within myself, and then it became a source of pride, and defiance, to use it.

I live in Australia now and whilst Australia has had a broader perspective than other countries in terms of Jews being able to hold high office (two Governors General have been Jewish) and participate as equals in political and military life, anti-Semitism does rear its head. It turns out that my school experience was and still is, experienced.

The Age published an opinion piece on 4/10/19 ‘Antisemitism in Victorian Schools is a monumental and hidden crisis’ citing examples of Jewish primary and high schoolers being targeted in their schools.

I feel shame when I read of atrocities committed between Israelis and Palestinians, but I was proud, oh so proud, of little Israel beating the mighty Arab nations in the Six Day War (1967) and Yom Kippur War (1973). I feel proud of the achievements of the early settlers in the newly defined state of Israel post 1948, thanks to the British Balfour Declaration of 1917. Imagine making the desert bloom, growing crops in inhospitable places. But I feel great shame at the actions of my race in the ‘Intifadas’ in the late 1980s and the early 2000s. No one is blameless, nothing is one sided, and I can be reduced to the teenager in the classroom when I hear anti-Semitic remarks being made in general society, as a ‘joke’.

In my naïve teens, it seemed right that all should be equal in society, everyone should have their fair share of pay for their labours and equal opportunity for educationand health care. I flirted with the idea of kibbutz life in my idealistic dreams, but I had to get my studies completed first (‘don’t waste a good brain’) and by the time those days were over, I could see with clearer vision that nowhere was truly equal.

I am certain that my experience has led to me being more accepting and more curious about difference in race, ethnicity, religion, lifestyle, but don’t try to push your views onto me, whatever they are. I may listen and argue points of politics, or current affairs, but don’t tell me you are superior because of your race, socialclassor religion. At this, I will silently retreat, and we will have no further contact.

My experience has led to me being a watcher, often silent in a group, only pitching in my views if I sense there will be acceptance, or mature debate. Passion is diverted into other spheres where I have ‘influence’, in my teaching, in my counselling and supervision practices, amongst my family; the outside world remains a potentially hostile place for ‘people like me’—I can become the teen in the English classin a few seconds. I have focused many areas of life on trying to help others to reach their potential, irrespective of who they are, their family of origin, their views. This is easier to do in Australia than in England, even today. I am not judged by my accent as soon as I open my mouth. I learned how to play a safe game and advance my life within my social classconstraints in England, I breathe much easier in Australia—but my conditioned response is to be always wary. I know and trust myself well; that is the lasting impact of my early years.

10.3.2 The Allure of Belonging; a Muslim’s Reflection on the Pressure of Secular-Christian Conformance

  • Ridwan Haq 

The weight of religious hegemonism and its imposition on those off the margins is a phenomenon I have come to perceive as a long-standing fixture in my self-identity framework. The conscious appreciation of this, however, has only come well into my late 20s, leaving a large gap where this confluence was processed at a subconscious level. For the sake of clarity, I should disclose my perception of the religious hegemony, as a Brown Muslim male, as that of a White secular-Christian construct. I use the term ‘secular-Christian’ as I have often perceived the framing of our ‘secular’ society, and its companion ‘the Australian way’, as constructs imbibed with Christian values and attitudes. As such, I will use these terms interchangeably throughout this essay.

I will begin this reflective journey in my mid-teen years, the period where I first became consciously aware of my hybrid identity as an ethnic and religious minority. While lacking the intellectual capacity to comprehend what was transpiring, I was facing the common struggle experienced by young Muslims in Western settings; that between upholding the values of my nation of residence and my inherited ethnicity/religion. The balancing of this dichotomy felt akin to being the servant of two masters, with neither satisfied by my efforts to appease the other. This ideological conflict involved negotiating discrepancies between traditional Islamic values and the secular-Christian paradigm that underpins Australian societal norms. At a base level, examples of such clashes revolved around social relations with the opposite gender, sexuality in general, appropriate clothing standards, consumption of alcohol and values towards gender and sexual equality.

My experience with fellow young Muslims has found this clash to result in varying degrees of assimilation towards the secular-Christian values that underpin the ‘Australian way’. This assimilation often results from the pressure to align to a standard way of being, with the underlying reward being that of ‘belonging’ in Australia. This pressure is perhaps felt more strongly from those of non-White ethnicities, where the colour of our skins acts as a subtle but inherent barrier to the goal of being viewed as an unconditional Australian. This invisible barrier is one that I subconsciously perceived during my mid/late teen years and perhaps why I chose such an overt identification and subscription to the secular-Christian way of being. I had several romantic relationships (not at the same time of course), went out clubbing and partying and very much bought into the drinking culture that is so engrained within the ‘Australian Way’. I viewed partaking in such activities as my rights of passage that would signal my subscription to the status quo.

Beyond these overt measures, assimilation to the hegemonyinvolved various gestures that (while minute), allude to a larger desire to appear as assimilatory as possible. A simple example of this is always saying ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes, as opposed to the traditional ‘alhamdulillah’ greeting that is typical within Islamic culture. I would often (and still do if I am being perfectly honest) wish people a ‘Merry Christmas’, even though my religion does not partake in the event. Christmas festivities represents perhaps the most challenging and overt example, for young Muslims, of our divergence from the religious hegemony. The months leading up to Christmas represented a yearly reminder of my exclusion from the norm of Australian society. Being unable to answer simple questions like ‘What are you hoping to get for Christmas’ often engendered a sense of forlornness and isolation, a reminder that I (as much as I tried) did not truly belong in Australian society.

Within my desire to assimilate to the centre, I positioned myself as an Australian first and thus ascribed to the popular assimilatory mantra of migrants needing to embrace Australian culture. I was on-board with rhetoric of migrants needing to confirm to our secular-Christian beliefs and was in favour of migrants needing to take values tests before being permitted entry. Australia is a Christian nation, I would always say as a teen, and thus it is imperative that everyone conform to the ways of the nation. In my desire to signal conformance to the central ethos, teenage me believed Islamic womenshould not wear the hijab/burka, as it is not the norm within Christian societies. It was non-negotiable (in my mind) that Muslim men should freely mingle with women (and vice versa), as this was the standard within a secular-Christian paradigm. I felt individuals should always make the effort to speak English in public, as this was the language of the land and thus should be respected. My sociological schema was, at the time, not sophisticated enough to appreciate the problematic undertones of such a position, with its supporting of a monoculture aligned with a White secular-Christian framework. It is only in adulthood that I have come to appreciate the pressures this conformance places on those seeking to retain a religious identity whose values deviate from the status quo. One should not feel obliged to freely mingle with the opposite gender if doing so engenders a great sense of discomfort. One is not obligated to speak English in a land whose Indigenous ancestry encompasses hundreds of dialects dating back thousands of years. Upon reflection, this is perhaps the greatest trick of multiculturalism and the ‘Australian way’; its pretention of an acceptance of ethnic and religious diversity, provided said diversity conforms to a central unifying ethos.

I would like to briefly traverse to the problematic ‘Othering’ of Islam as this performance has troubling implications for Muslims interacting with the White secular-Christian hegemony. It is difficult to discuss religious hegemonism, as a Muslim, without acknowledging the post 9/11 paradigm that saw the discursive association between Islam and extremism. Within this sentiment includes the ‘Othering’ of Islam as a faith whose values are irreconcilable with the Australia’s secular-Christian ethos. Upon reflection, this ostracization is one I perceived in my teens and contributed to my desire to adopt a strong nationalist identity—an identity free from the troubling discursive associations being placed on an increasingly homogenised male Muslim identity. Indeed, this troublesome view of Islam perhaps explains my overcompensation towards secular-Christian values; an overall desire to be ‘one of the good ones’.

Within this established schema of national identity, I became critical of my religion’s attitudes towards women’s rightsand gender equality. Beyond the perceived inequalities facing Muslim womensurrounding family customs, sexual and gender inequalities were issues that particularly troubled me. Within my cognitive framework, the Hijab/Burka represented injustices to gender equality, garments that forced women to veil femininity to ensure appropriate engagement with the opposite gender. The fact that men were not required to employ similar practices represented an inequality irreconcilable with my notion of basic gender equality. My frustration with traditional Islamic relations led me to fall victim to the discursive trap of anointing secular-Christian society as a liberating force for Muslim women. On the surface, it is not difficult to see why such a framework is appealing. As a prescriber to the ‘Australian way’, being a part of a culture that ‘liberates’ Muslim womenfrom the shackles of oppression is a romantic notion. The troubling ease with which such a notion can be accepted is evident with my personal example; I, as a brown Muslim male, was perfectly willing to buy into the narrative of White culture saving brown womenfrom brown men.

What I failed to recognise of course is that my gender values were formed and based on secular-Christian notions. My submission to these values left no room for cultural nuances, the desires of Muslim womenand their views of femininity. Many take pride in wearing their headscarves as a symbol of their religiosity and modesty. However, my rush to vanguard the secular-Christian spirit left me perfectly willing to remove the autonomy of Muslim womento make this decision about their own attire. While I do still have reservations regarding the power gap between the genders in Muslim communities, I now appreciate that such issues are best solved internally, and not through forced imposition from an external force.

This last example is a nice snapshot of the overall theme of my relations with a religious hegemonyI am an outcast from—an understanding that my faith made me inherently alien from the status quo. A recognition (even subconsciously) that results in a pressure from the status quo, a tug towards centre with the purported rewards of acceptance and belonging to a greater collective. As an adolescent, I fully succumbed to these pressures and shaped an identity that I look back on with a tinge of regret. As an adult, I have come to embrace uniqueness and non-conformance to a status quo. I have come to appreciate that things need not be the same. The comfort of the hegemonyis not a fair price for the loss of one’s ability to express cultural and religious diversity. Such is the message I wish I had received during my teenage years, and one I hope is being given to the current youth in similar situations.

10.4 Experiential Activities

Important

The experiential learning activities are designed to enhance cultural responsiveness. When engaging in experiential activities, it is important to create a safe environment for participants to explore potentially uncomfortable feelings or situations. Facilitators should consider the type of activity and role of the participant and they should provide participants with ways to resolve feelings that may arise as a result of the activity, including reflection and debriefing.