Paradise lost: Religion, cultural diversity and social cohesion in Australia and across the World

Abstract

The September 11th and October 12th terrorist attacks and their aftermath have focussed Australia’s attention on the shift from a Christian to a paradoxically multifaith and secular Australia, and on the diasporic links between organizations’ source countries and on Australian ethnic and religious leaders. They are now under greater scrutiny and accountability. In outlining Australia’s current predicament, Professor Cahill will take a global perspective and draw on current Australian research to suggest a way forward by addressing key issues and inoculating our society against ethnic and religious extremism. Faith traditions with their focus on the ultimate and the absolute as well as the local and the universal have been key elements in the formation of Australia’s pluralist and multicultural society. With their localised presence, their community ethic and their universalist outlook, most religious groups have made positive contributions to the construction of a multicultural society. On the other side of the coin, religion has sometimes acted as an oppressive or divisive force such as in the suppression of Aboriginal spirituality, the tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism that was a feature of Australian society until the 1960s and the tensions between certain immigrant communities as a direct consequence of hostilities in their home countries. In more recent times, some ethnoreligious groups could have been more proactive and assertive in assisting their communities to address specific issues such as the AIDS threat, sexual corruption and the gambling epidemic. However, religion at its best remains an asset and a resource, but this can only be achieved through a repositioning of the link between religion and civil society.