herbswanson.com

My home is in Australia. But it has not always been that way. I was born in London. Back in the early 60s, my parents decided to immigrate to Australia. The major reason for the decision was the Cold War. They had been active in the peace movement and were very anxious about the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the fact that Britain had so many American military bases located in it, making it an inevitable target if nuclear war did become a reality. They thought that Australia would be a little safer. They had no knowledge of the American military bases also present there!

Thus, we joined the millions of people around the globe who are on the move, looking for safety and security, looking for a better life. We were among the fortunate ones, welcomed by Australia, rather than those who have recently tried to immigrate and found themselves placed in desert prisons and shut away for years behind miles of barred wire. My father had a job to go to in Australia. Our family was welcomed by a local church which found us a place to stay until we could choose our own, stocking our cupboards with food and inviting us into their homes.

The flow of immigrants and refugees is part of the patterns of globalisation. Of all the people who currently live in Australia, about one person in three was born overseas. Most others have been there only two or three generations at most. Only one person in fifty identifies themselves as Aboriginal.

The settlement of Europeans in Australia, which occurred first in 1788, can be seen as being a consequence of the European desire to map the globe and to build controlling influences around it – early forms of globalisation.

The 19th century in Australia was a period in which Australia saw the influx of migrants from all over the world, bringing with them many of the world's religions. Following the discovery of gold in 1851, tens of thousands of Chinese joined the Europeans on the gold fields, hoping to strike lucky. A few of Chinese Daoist and Buddhist temples built in the days of the Gold Rushes still exist. Not long after, Indians began arriving. Many of them became hawkers, moving around the huge

country, selling cloth, soap and other products to the widely scattered farmers and miners. Afghan Moslems arrived in the latter part of the 19th century with camels. They opened up the out-back areas of Australia, providing transport and cartage for the outback communities. They built the first mosques in Australia, two of which survive – one in Broken Hill and another in Adelaide.

At the same time, indigenous people continued to practice their own spiritual practices where they were able. The treatment of the indigenous people by the Europeans is a very sad story and a major blight on the last 200 years of European history. Europeans failed to recognise the reality of Aboriginal law, spirituality, morality. In fact, they failed to recognise them as fully human. And many were exterminated like vermin. The point remains, however, that despite the prejudices and ethno-centrism of the early settlers, they found themselves in multi-cultural and multi-faith society, as a result of globalisation of exploration and immigrant movements as people looked for an income.

The Australian Federal government, as distinct from the governments of the various States around Australia, was created in 1901. One of the first acts of the Federal government was to virtually ban immigration from non-English speaking countries by requiring that all immigrants pass tests in the English language before they were allowed to enter the country. Many of the non-English speaking immigrant communities dwindled. Many Chinese, Indians and Afghans went home and their communities virtually disappeared from the Australian scene. For more than 50 years, the White Australia policy, as it was called, maintained the dominance of British-born Europeans.

The scene began to change following World War II as Australia opened its doors to new waves of immigrants. The first wave of immigration following World War II was from Europe. Large numbers of immigrants arrived from Britain, Germany and Holland. Other large groups arrived from Italy and Greece in southern European, and from Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. Melbourne, where I live, is now described as one of the largest Greek cities in the world apart from Athens with a quarter of a million people from Greece living there. There are even more people of Italian background.

A second wave of immigration began in the late 1960s from the Middle East, following the civil war in Lebanon and war with Israel. Lebanese Christians followed by Lebanese Moslems began arriving. Then others came from other parts of the Middle East: many thousands from Turkey, some from Syria. There is even an Assyrian community in Australia. It was the Moslems from Lebanon and Turkey who began to build mosques around Australia. There are now mosques and significant Moslem communities in all major Australian cities.

Immigrants from Vietnam began arriving in Australia in the late 1970s following the war in Vietnam. Among them were many Catholics from the south. Again, large number of Buddhists also came from Vietnam. There are currently about 175,000 people in Australia who speak Vietnamese at home.

In the 1980s, the immigration laws changed again. Australia began encouraging wealthy business people from all over the world to come to Australia. Tens of thousands of wealthy business Chinese arrived from Hong Kong and other parts of China. So Chinese is now one of the most dominant languages in Australia apart from English. Tens of thousands of wealthy Indians arrived.

Each group has brought its own religious heritage. In the last thirty years, there has been a flurry of building of Buddhist temples of all kinds – Chinese, Thai, Cambodian, Korean - Hindu temples, Sikh temples and Islamic mosques. All the major religions of the world now have a significant presence in Australia, from the Baha'is to the Zoroastrians. I was interested to see a program on the television a year ago about a Hmong community – one of the tribal groups living in these hills in the Chiang Mai area - practising its own ancient animistic practices in Australia.

The global flow of immigration has directly contributed to the context of ministry. Globalisation of the media, of business and academia, of sport and other forms of culture, and most recently of terrorism has added to the very strong sense that we live in a multi-cultural and multi-faith environment. Australians travel. Every year, hundreds of thousands go overseas – many for pleasure, others for business or academic pursuits.

Ordained as a Christian minister 25 years ago, I was aware that the church had to change to respond to the changes occurring in the Australian environment and in its

culture. But how should the church change? And what should not be changed in order for the church to remain the church over against the culture?

I felt that I could think through this issue most effectively if I examined what had happened to the church in a cultural context quite different from my own. I was also keen to learn more of the Asian context in which I saw Australia to be located geographically, if not culturally. Hence, after some study of sociology and anthropology back in England, I came to Thailand in 1979 to look at the expression of the Christian faith here in the context of the Buddhist culture. I lived and worked here in Chiang Mai for 3 years, completing my doctoral studies here through the McGilvary Faculty of Theology. That experience has certainly helped to prepare me for ministry and further research in the Australian context.

For a large part of my life, I have had two jobs. I have worked half-time as the minister of a church, and half-time in research for the churches of Australia. In both occupations, the inter-faith and global context has been significant.

My last church in Melbourne where I was the minister for 9 years was relatively mono-cultural: mostly people with a Scottish Presbyterian ancestry. But, we did have a few people from other cultures who came into the life of the church, people from Korea, Singapore, Hungary, South Africa and other places. Ministry involved finding ways in which those people could be affirmed and their different cultures appreciated.

Inter-faith marriages have become increasingly common. I myself have been involved in marrying a couple in which one was Moslem and the other Christian, and another couple in which the husband was Buddhist and the wife Christian. In those services we have discussed issues of faith, how children should be raised, and how each can be sensitive to and supportive of the faith of the other person. In the case of the Moslem – Christian wedding, there were separate Moslem and Christian ceremonies. In the Christian ceremony which I conducted, I tried to be sensitive to the language, the beliefs and the culture of the Moslem partner. These inter-faith marriages have also meant some interchange with the parents, thinking with them welcoming people of other faiths into their families.

Since 1985, I have worked half time for a research organisation established to serve the churches of Australia. The Christian Research Association is responsible to a board made up of representatives of all the major denominations: Catholic, Anglican, Uniting, Baptist, Salvation Army, Assemblies of God, Seventh-day Adventists. Our mandate is to provide the churches with information about Australian culture and particularly about the nature and place of religion in the Australian culture. The themes of immigration, multiculturalism and the multi-faith context have arisen frequently in our research.

A few years ago, a government research agency called for tenders to put together a series of books on the major religious groups in Australia – 8 Christian groups, plus Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. We won the tender. We worked with Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu people to write the books. I edited the series.

Each book sought to describe, as objectively, but sensitively as possible, the history, beliefs and forms of organisation of each of these religious communities. The government published the series of 12 books between 1995 and 1996. The major purpose was to provide a resource so that government bodies could find information about the various religious communities with whom they have to work. They have been used in the government. But it was found that the schools made most use of this series – for they are facing the challenge of preparing students to live in a multi-faith, global world. Hence, the Christian Research Association took it upon itself to re-prepare the material more appropriately for schools. We re-wrote all the books and added the equivalent of another 30 of them, covering a total of 170 different Christian denominations and religious groups. We added a lot of photographs, of video of worship in each of the major groups, and we put it all on a CD-Rom. We have sold several thousand copies of that CD-Rom and are currently revising it with more recent statistical data and up-to-date information. Many schools and universities have it on their networks so that students can access the information.

At a deeper level, the rapid increases in globalisation have contributed to what has been described as the development of a post-traditional society in Australia. Partly because of the multi-culturalism present in Australian society and partly because of the awareness of the great range of options in different cultures around the globe,

people in Australia are picking and choosing among these options as they put their lives together.

Many Australians eat ethnic food most weeks. My daughter's favourite food is Indian. My son prefers Japanese, or Mongolian. Both have many friends of different ethnic backgrounds. My daughter is preparing for her 18th birthday party in two week's time. Of her friends, two are Vietnamese, one is part Sri Lankan, another is Greek, another has a German background. She has no close friends born of parents who were themselves born in Australia. Many of her friends have traveled overseas themselves, several on student exchanges, preparing them to be citizens not just of Australia, but of the world.

Within this multi-faith context, In something of a similar way, people are putting their own spiritual journeys together drawing on a wide range of resources. Many are trying Hindu forms of yoga or Buddhist forms of meditation. They are trying the New Age resources. And sometimes they also go to church. Religion is no longer predominantly something cultural, or a product of the community in which one grows up. Rather, younger people are putting their own lives together, as individuals, drawing on a wide range of resources.

At the same time, there are many who have little interest in any form of religion and ignore religious resources of every kind. One of the impacts of globalisation is that religion has become something very individual, even personal, rather than cultural and communal. As individuals they will take something out of a particular faith is they see it to be helpful. They will try yoga as a practice, but it does not mean that they accept the religious basis of yoga. They may try some meditation, they do not necessarily take to heart the teaching about the 'cool heart' that accompanies it.

The very understanding of truth has changed – at least partly under the impact of globalisation. Most young Australians see truth, at least to some extent, as 'what works'. Truth is not contained in any one religion. Indeed, around two thirds of all Australians explicitly affirm that most religions and philosophy contain some truth.

Even in terms of church attendance, there is a greater tendency than ever before for people to try something out, and if it works for them that is fine. If not, they

move on to try something else. In a five year period, we have calculated that there is approximately a 50 per cent turnover in Pentecostal churches in Australia. Within 5 years, half of all those attending have gone and another group have arrived. And there are more attending Pentecostal churches than any other kind in Australia, apart from Catholic churches.

What this means for ministry is that one cannot assume that the children of church-attending parents will attend church themselves. The Sunday School system and the Catholic school systems whereby the churches have tried to hand on the faith to the children of church attenders have not been working. There is a huge drop-out rate. Most children who reach their teenagers years claim their own right to make decisions about whether they will attend a church or not, or what they will believe, and the majority of them decide that they will not have much to do with the churches at all.

This means that ministry has to be very much oriented to people's needs and interests. There are all sorts of new forms of ministry developing around Australia, seeking to make contact with people, and perhaps then putting the challenges of faith and worship before them. We have to function in the context where every individual believes they have the right to make their own decisions. Hence, the Catholics are trying groups such as 'spiritual in the pub', developing discussion groups on religious and spiritual issues which take place over a meal in a pub or restaurant. The Protestants prefer cafes and coffee houses, and there are quite a few 'churches' which take place in cafes. Some are looking are connecting with people through welfare or educational activities.

In my own church, we have explored different approaches to faith. We have had several sessions of Sunday evening discussions and advertised them widely through radio, newspapers, schools and other means. One Sunday evening series I organised a series of seminars exploring other faiths. I invited people from various religions to teach us something about their faiths. One seminar was addressed by a Hindu, another by a Jew, a third by a Moslem and a fourth by a Buddhist. About 70 people attended – most of them not from our own church. Some were keen to think through the relevance of other religions to their own spiritual journeys. Others were more interested in understanding the faith of others. Ministry must be targeted at the

individual, putting options before individuals and allowing them to make their personal choices.

There are some people, however, for whom the choices that become apparent in globalisation are overwhelming. People do not know what to believe or what to think. They find this situation very insecure. They want a set of answers. They want something they can hold on to in a world which appears very fluid.

There has been an increase in the numbers of people attracted to the groups who offer a single set of answers, groups which say 'this is what you should believe'. While only half the number of younger people under 30 attend church compared with the numbers people over 60, those younger people, on the whole, are much more conservative in their views than the older people. A recent survey of church attenders found that around three-quarters of them said they took the Bible literally, compared with only half of older attenders.

Globalisation appears to be dividing the church with the liberal and conservative sectors moving further apart and with greater extremes of opinions found in both camps. The terrorist events of September 11th in America in which several Australians died, and then in Bali in which 88 Australians were killed, have heightened anxiety and strengthened the arm of the conservative camp – not only in the churches, but at the national level. Australians have become more inward looking and protective. Unfortunately, the government has encouraged such attitudes knowing that they help its election chances. The government won the last Federal election on the basis that it was more effective in keeping out refugees who were seeking to come to Australia illegally ... and who could be terrorists!

One of the large research projects on which I am now working is on the culture of insecurity in the Australian context, and how spirituality relates to this culture.

The sense of insecurity may have a long-term tendency to increase the interest in those groups offering a full set of ready-made answers. There are some indications however that others want to learn more about their neighbours. They want to learn how to live with them. The churches can provide a very valuable role in these processes, helping people to understand their own faith and other faiths. They can

encourage openness to others, and provide opportunities for dialogue with people of other faiths. I believe strongly that it is only as we learn to live with each other in a global environment will we survive.