The Uniting Church in Australia

Centenary of Federation
1901-2001

Religious influences in Australian history

The Commonwealth Government-funded Discovering Democracy Project is not giving a fair and reasonable representation of the important influence of Christianity and other religions in the development of the Australian nation as it is today.

The aim of the Project is to help ensure that all young Australians are equipped to play their part as citizens. This requires "a knowledge of the history and operations of Australia's political and legal systems and institutions, and on the principles that underpin democracy. They also need analytical and investigative skills and an appreciation of the values and attitudes that are integral to effective participation in civic life." 1

Key people in the development of these systems and institutions were people of religious conviction. General principles that underline democracy such as the value and dignity of each person can be found in Christian and Jewish scriptures. The legal system of the nation has a distinctly Jewish and Christian base. 2

Religious people who have been involved in working for a democratic society have drawn on their faith experiences to inspire and sustain them. Students need to understand this so that, as an outcome of the project, they can interpret people's motives and actions from various perspectives.3

Human rights history in the Discovering Democracy Project refers to secular thinkers and events but ignores both the Old Testament prophets and the Reformation, and the evangelical humanitarianism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the Christian underpinning of the modern Australian democratic state (clearly expressed in debates on Federation in the 1890s).

The practical initiatives of the first chaplain to the NSW Colony, the Rev. Richard Johnson, a member of the Methodist Society, and his wife Mary, are expressions of protecting the rights of the vulnerable. They established the first Christian day school near Circular Quay and cared for a number of Aboriginal girls.

Christians, often with the help of governments, initiated and maintained charitable networks and organisations. They nurtured people so that they in turn were motivated to care for the needy. Christians have made important contributions to the spirit of Australian communities, shaping perceptions of love, forgiveness, fairness, integrity and compassion. At its best, that spirit has nourished a tolerant pluralism that is one of the foundations of Australian democracy.4 It has also been always true that many Christians have cooperated with people of no religious conviction who have also sought to build a more just Australia.

People act out the cultural influences of their time

It must be recognised that people act out of the contemporary cultural influences of their time, and personal experiences. Until the 1960s and 1970s, Christianity was fundamental to most Australians' world view.

The impact of the church in the cultural and contemporary thought and life of the nation needs to be acknowledged (in every period of our history).

"Australia's cultural inheritance cannot be understood unless the Judeo-Christian inheritance and traditions are understood. This applies even to those who do not continue their belief in these traditions directly. Even in Australia's secular society, the stories from the Judeo-Christian, and other religious traditions continue in Australia's culture informing some Australians' way of thinking about questions of identity, belonging, war and conflict, everyday morality and much else." 5

Church people had and have different points of view. The changing attitude to the White Australia Policy, Aboriginal people, and Australians' involvement in the Vietnam War show this.

The constraint to help those in need

Too often, many who sought to spread the Gospel of Christ did not feel duty bound to follow Christ's one rule of life (as shown in the Bible) to help those in need and to open up opportunities for them. Many church people neglected, or did not understand, their call to ensure that justice be done for the landless and the poor. There were those, who like us, were inclined to let greed, pride, self interest and racism stand in the way of their Christian and humanitarian commitments.

Others were ill-equipped through lack of education and poverty themselves to be the voice of the voiceless, or were centred on meeting immediate needs rather than having the energy to strive for the vision of what ought to be.

Contributions of people of religious conviction to Australia

The following are examples of the ways that people of religious conviction have contributed to Australian history. It is not claimed that such contributions were always good.

They have been involved in education and welfare (and countless community organisations.) For example
* the Catholic school system which has added a distinctive element to Australia's culture for over a century
* the role of the Salvation Army in peace and war
* the role of many of religious conviction in inner-city missions
* the work of the Uniting Church and the Anglicans, in particular in aged care.

Some have worked in good faith at the forefront of concern for justice for Aborigines. From our present stand point it is acknowledged that at times actions were misplaced and had anticipated, and also unforeseen effects. At times the Church seemed to be the only group speaking out for Aboriginal rights.6

Aboriginal Christians have been significant in the struggle for Aboriginal rights. Most of the leaders in the 1938 Day of Mourning were Christian Aborigines (for example Bill Ferguson). Pat Dodson, a contemporary leader, was a Catholic Priest.

They have been involved in struggles for civil rights; for the development of self-government; and in steps towards Federation, even though it must be acknowledged that there has been divisiveness because of sectarianism. They have been involved in the formation of Trade Unions and the Australian Labor Party (particularly Methodists and Catholics).

Protestants, in particular, have been involved in the development of non-Labor parties and played a very active part in parliaments and local governments. They have been to the forefront in the struggle for women's suffrage Mary Lee, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Kate Dwyer and have been in opposition to it. They have been involved both in support for, and opposition to, the White Australia policy. They have been active in establishing the basic wage and defining poverty.

They were heavily involved in the conscription debate during World War I and in the public expression of attitudes to the Vietnam War. It was strong Protestant and Catholic opposition to Communism from 1942 that contributed towards a long period of conservative national government.

The Temperance movement addressed what was, in its time, a serious social evil and also often extended its action to other issues, for example The Woman's Christian Temperance Union and women's suffrage, children's courts, guardianship.

Many Christians have contributed in wealth creation (and in many philanthropic foundations,) through their involvement in businesses that serve the community and offer employment.

Many Congregationalists, Methodists and Presbyterians campaigned for Federation; for example, the Rev. James Jefferis in Adelaide and Sydney.

For some, involvement in business was a sacred vocation in which God was honoured and the needs of the community served. For example, David Jones as a result of his business success was a philanthropist. Christian businessmen were foundation directors of the AMP Society.7 They have been involved in such diverse factors in Australian history as the settlement of immigrants and the ending of transportation of convicts. They have been involved in multiculturalism and in advocacy for refugees.

All students have a right to be made aware of the latest considered research that points to religion's place in Australia's history. State Governments need to ensure that syllabi resources are adequate

History, truth cooperative living and compassion

A sound understanding of history will better equip all Australians for dialogue and cooperative community living with people of other cultures and religions. A history that is comprehensive and encourages the search for truth is one of the best means of encouraging young Australians to work for a more compassion society.

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Footnotes

Bruce Wilson (1998) Chief Executive Officer. Curriculum Corporation in the foreword to Discovering Democracy Middle Primary Units. Carlton South Curriculum Corporation P. iii. This foreword is found in other Secondary and Primary units as well.
Theorists of democracy tend to trace the foundational principles in Christian thought to the political theory of Christian thinkers, especially Augustine and the Reformers. Indeed the first modern democracies were founded by Christian congregations who transferred methods of church deliberations to secular political decision making at the town meeting, eg. In New England USA. See See G. Maddox (1996) Religion and the Rise of Democracy Lond. Routledge.
Studies of society and the environment - a curriculum profile for Australian schools: a joint project of the States, Territories and the Commonwealth of Australia initiated by the Australian Education Council. (1994) Melb. Curriculum Corporation Outcomes 53 P. 80.
Ian Breward (1993) A History of the Australian Churches St. Leonards. Allen & Unwin. P. 234
Ann Curthoys Personal Communication. 1997 and 1999
Christobel Mattingley and K Hampton (1988) Survival in Our Land. Adelaide, Wakefield Press. John Harris (1990) One Blood Sutherland, Albatross Books. eg p.774-
Ian Breward (1998) in a chapter in Exploring Religion. Melb. OUP p.24

Number 7

Beliefs are a basis for values;

and other points of particular note.

Extracts prepared by Alex Mills

Note Professor Hill's second last paragraph:

"As I said earlier, values always have a belief component, and reasons given in justification of those beliefs supply part of the motivation for their adoption. In the end, public morality is reliant on personal morality and vision, and any education worthy of the name will seek to merge these elements."

Alex Mills

40 Alban St Taree NSW 2430

23 May 2004

Values Education in Schools

Issues and Challenges

Brian V. Hill

Emeritus Professor of Education, Murdoch University

…There is nothing more pernicious than ….an education which is so preoccupied with the foreground of facts and skills, that it neglects the backdrop of purposes and values which supposedly validates the facts and skills we choose to teach….

In regard to state education, I was arguing that schools could not remain value-neutral and still call themselves “educational” institutions. …

And what of the Commonwealth Government? There were signs it was beginning to emerge from its neutralist stance when the so-called Civics Expert Group was set up, reporting in 1994.[1] This report confirmed the priority of values education in the public sector. I remarked at the time that this was a welcome initiative, albeit by focusing primarily on public morality and citizenship, it ran the risk of encouraging a continuing neglect of personal values and life commitments

What Disturbed Our Dogmatic Slumbers?

the 1950s The culture in general was conformist, and still largely beholden to the sometimes contradictory values consensus derived from our religious and cultural roots in the old Mediterranean world.

As for academia, it was locked in the certitudes of the Enlightenment.[2]

So what disturbed the dogmatic slumbers of that era? The story is familiar and I need only summarise. In the ‘sixties the contraceptive pill came on the market, and there was rising angst among youth at the nuclear threat and the war in Vietnam. The ‘sixties also launched television’s window on the world, giving an enormous boost to materialistic goals as expressed through avid consumerism.

The resulting emphasis on satisfying individual desires was paralleled by agitation for individual rights – for women, for children, for oppressed minorities, and so on. Many gains have been made in these areas, in terms of greater equity, but along with these has come a worrying downside: climbing rates of marriage breakdown, and of suicide among youth and young adults. The holding power of old values has decreased; but permissiveness is breeding disillusionment and new intolerances. There has also been a huge increase in the use of litigation to advance private preference at the expense of the common good.

Meanwhile …migrants seeking new horizons, .., have transformed the Australian community into a multicultural society in which alternative value traditions challenge both the old values and the newer permissiveness.

The apparent difficulty of defining a consensus on common purposes, at a high level, has left the door open for resolution at a more materialistic level, dominated by an economic rationalism which bases everything on market value under competitive conditions. Woe betide us, if we let the values debate default to economic priorities alone.

What are some pedagogic challenges?

1. Describing the nature and sources of values

First, I am not sure we yet know how to talk about values. The Final Report of the Values Education Study ..adopt a definition… by Halstead and Taylor which spoke of values as principles and standards that guide behaviour.[3]

This carries a cognitive weighting which potentially obscures the motivational aspect.

How and why should propositions of thought be supposed to have any real bearing on conduct?

I sense that we are still grappling with the problem of moving the student from “knowing the good to be desirable” to “desiring to do the good.”[4]

Oliver and Bane, researchers who had worked with Kohlberg, :.. although they seemed to be able to stimulate mature classroom reasoning about justice and cognate values, there was little observable flow-on into behaviour in the school playground![5]

VALUES: Preferred definition

My own preferred definition is that values are “the priorities individuals and societies attach to certain beliefs, experiences, and objects, in deciding how they shall live and what they shall treasure.”[6]

This shifts the focus from a value being a merely cognitive state of mind to a whole-person decision, readiness or “disposition” to act in certain ways, given the opportunity.

2. Identifying the teaching domains

The definition I have proposed has several significant implications for the way we view the teaching of values.

First, it implies that there is a cognitive component, because clearly, value priorities can be described in propositional terms, and are accessible to good reasons being given for holding them.

Commitment to a value is not merely a socially conditioned habit.

But words like “experiences” and “treasure” invoke the affective and volitional dimensions of valuing.

To speak of “experience” requires that we encourage students to feel “what it’s like” to act out, or live by, the values being commended.

Empathy needs to be awakened

through such teaching strategies as drama, role plays, simulations, and being given responsibilities within the school community and the classroom lesson.

An important part of values education then becomes the act of talking about the insights gained from these experiences, which again brings in the cognitive dimension.

One school in the recent values education study reported that there was an observable “change in the language of students who [were] more able to express their feelings through their success or otherwise in living the values of the school.”[7]

I also want to repeat that a value is a “’disposition’ to act in certain ways, given the opportunity.” We do not always act according to what we believe or value. While normally valuing honesty, we may baulk …a man at our front door with a gun … Similarly, fear of peer group pressure often prevents students who are actually interested in the material we are teaching from showing it. It is not “cool” to show interest.

The teacher’s task is to enhance capacities of thinking and feeling in regard to values. This is not to deny that the teacher can and should teach with the hope of influencing the student’s actual commitment.

Framed in this way – and the present Report does tend to polarise the options in these terms[8] - values education appears to be caught between the devil of value-free rationality and the deep blue sea of conditioned conformity.

Surely we would want to affirm that education is about liberation, not domestication? But equally, surely we want out of it responsible citizens not fence-sitting self-pleasers?

The resolution I argued for in the ‘nineties was a position I called “critical affiliation.”[9] This involved:

(a) the right of students to know the nature and sources of the values impacting on them;

(b) the development of their capacity to empathise with these values, and also to evaluate them;

3. Applying complementary strategies

…But my comments to this point have been intended to apply just as much to other realms of value, such as the intellectual, aesthetic, technical, religious and social. [as well as moral values]

This validates the claim that every curriculum area is implicated in values education.

Adminstrative Practices, formal teaching, sabotage, "hidden curriculum"

Since the ‘sixties discussion of the so-called “hidden curriculum”, which postmodern critics in the ‘eighties have reinforced, we have known how easily the teaching of values in the classroom can be sabotaged by other school practices.

Teachers and administrators inevitably function as role models, and have little chance of hiding their true values from the people with whom they are so constantly and intensively in contact.

Values education "across-the-curriculum" & justifying VALUES for life choice

Again, schools in the study exhibited a growing appreciation of the need to have a two-pronged strategy: one interpreting values education as an “across-the-curriculum” theme, infusing the teaching of every subject; and the other, of providing a place in the curriculum for specifically studying values as such – their nature and significance in our life-choices, and how one goes about justifying them and negotiating value agreements in the group: in short, studying the “discipline” of values discourse.

few timetables which allow for the systematic study of logic and values discourse as such.

What is the Cognitive Core?

1. Exploring Underlying Belief Systems

This curriculum deficiency is magnified by deficiency in regard to another area of disciplined study: the study of underlying belief systems.

… I mentioned earlier the researchers who, while working with Kohlberg, concluded that their cognitive developmental model seemed unable to guarantee a carry-over of mental practice into voluntary life-situations.

… But it is now becoming much harder to impose unquestioning obedience on the “options generations”[10] in modern Asian societies.

The point is that the motivation to act on the values we accept intellectually comes from more basic beliefs about the nature of the reality we inhabit, and the point of going on living in that reality. Each individual develops a personal framework of meaning which may vary from an inconsistent mish-mash to a thoughtfully integrated network of beliefs and values. Hence there is a need to help students understand this connection and to inspect some of the more fully articulated life-stances influential in their culture.

The operative word here is neither to “impose” or “ignore“ the ways underlying belief systems influence values, but to “explore” them. In this connection, approaches to values education such as the Living Values project initiated by Brahma Kumaris, and the Virtues Project promoted by Baha’i, to the extent that they neglect to spell out the religious belief systems on which they rest, are potentially miseducative.

WORLD VIEWS and VALUES

Teaching About Worldviews and Values, by former English teacher Julie Mitchell.(2004) Melbourne: Council for Christian Education in Schools.[11] I commend it as a new breed of teaching resource which takes seriously, and deals impartially with, a number of the worldviews which are influencing value commitments in today’s world.

This highlights the need to ensure that what has traditionally been known as “religious studies” is seen as both an integral and a distinguishable part of values education.

It implies the same two conditions that I laid down for the formal aspect of values education in general.

First, each curriculum area should accept some responsibility for life-stance education, acknowledging that wider frameworks of meaning account in part for both the justification and the motivation for learning about that area.

Second, the curriculum should also accommodate the specific study of religious and other life-stances, not just as an appendage to “cultural studies”, “moral education” or sessions on “personal development”, but as a conceptual focus in its own right.

The neutralism of state schools has been one of the reasons given by the newer wave of alternative Christian schools for offering an alternative.

But we are not requiring the state school to adopt neutralism but impartiality in its approach to the study of worldviews. And, as I argued earlier, impartiality includes advocating, particularly by example, that students enter into worthy value affiliations, including those embraced in the school’s values charter.

In any case, religious schools face the opposite problem: of ensuring that students do not just conform to group pressure but embrace such affiliations critically, having first come to terms with the value pluralism of modern society and learnt to respect those with whom they may nevertheless disagree.

2. Clarifying the Core

Value pluralistic and…Non-state education & social fragmentation and…

... But to the extent that such… [non-state education]… schools become strongly protectionist, they are likely to contribute to increasing social fragmentation, which is on the increase. Is there no middle ground?

This was the problem which the 1995 Values Project in Western Australia tried to tackle head-on. It began with an attempt to get four major faith traditions to talk together, in the hope of identifying some common ground based on their mutual desire to live together in a political democracy. Some misunderstanding was caused at the time by the inclusion in their Agreed Framework of a value dimension identifying ultimate life-stance values.

the project, by ..[including this ]…was making two points.

First, it was expressing the conviction that attachment to other values, such as those of a democratic or educational kind, ultimately depends – for the individual – on that person’s more general world-view or life-stance: a point I have just been making.

Second, it granted that people might achieve public consensus on democratic and educational values for more proximate reasons, even though they didn’t agree on the ultimate beliefs which for them validated those values.

One other feature of the WA Values Project that I would like to highlight here was a procedural rule adopted to avoid stalemates. Our stated aim was:

not to develop a totalistic account to which all participants would be expected to conform, but a minimalist set of agreements on which to base common action in the wider educational arena . . . Where specific beliefs and values […] failed to secure general agreement, they [were not to be] treated as unimportant, but [were] put on hold for further attention at a later stage, while the main process of achieving an agreed minimum proceeded.

3. Transcending the Public/Private Dichotomy

. I noted earlier that the Civics and Citizenship Report was mainly concerned with public values.

I commented that this could blind us to the need to seek consensus on many values that are more personal, though not less relevant to the common good.

It is interesting to note in the reports of schools in the present Values Study trials which values tended to dominate. There is much emphasis on self-esteem, community morale, and responsible citizenship, less on personal morality and life-goals as such. Feelings and attitudes depend not only on affirmative procedural values such as “resilience” and “connectedness”, but also on personal visions of the life good to live.

As I said earlier, values always have a belief component, and reasons given in justification of those beliefs supply part of the motivation for their adoption. In the end, public morality is reliant on personal morality and vision, and any education worthy of the name will seek to merge these elements.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I hope I have given you reason to take heart from what has already been done. We now have available an increasing number of case studies on which to model our attempts. But I also hope that I have been able to point out some particular areas in which we have yet to get up to speed. In a culture on the turn, it is urgent that we maintain the momentum. Hopefully, that includes funding!

[1] Civics Expert Group (1994).

[2] Max Weber nearly a century ago considered that intellectuals were caught in the “iron cage” of instrumental rationality. With unusual foresight, he warned that our civilisation would not see the importance of value rationality “until the last ton of fossilized fuel [had been] burnt.” Quoted in Flyvjerg (1993).

[3] Final Report, (2003, 2).

[4] Cf. Frankena, (1958).

[5] Oliver and Bane (1971, 260).

[6] Hill (1994a, 7).

[7] Final Report (2003, 112).

[8] Final Report (2003, 175ff).

[9] Hill, Brian V. (1994, chap. 5).

[10] The insightful term coined in Mackay (1997).

[11] Mitchell (2004).