Death of Coptic Pope Shenouda III

The one time I went to Egypt back in 1988, I did the regulation tourism things: the pyramids, the Nile, the temples and the Red Sea. But the one thing I regret was the thing I did not do which was to take up an offer. It was at Aswan where a Coptic taxi driver befriended me. I cannot remember his name but I do remember he asked would I go home and meet his family. I turned him down either out of suspicion or because I wanted to spend more time at the poolside bar (Photo:AP).

It was a shame because I would have learned a lot more about Copts and their ancient form of Orthodox Christianity inherited from the Pharaonic Egyptians. I had blithely assumed Egypt, or officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, was a Muslim country but as my taxi driver reminded me, 10 percent were not. He also told me the leader of that 10 percent, some eight million Copts, was a Pope, just like the more famous one in St Peter's.

The leader then was Pope Shenouda III and he died on Saturday in Cairo after 40 years on throne, aged 88. Shenouda will be buried at St Bishoy Monastery of Wadi al-Natrun in the Nile Delta, where he spent time in exile. President Anwar Sadat banished Shenouda to the Monastery in 1981 after he criticised the Sadat government one too many times. Shenouda was an outspoken critic of Sadat and a thorn in his side who berated him over his handling of an Islamic insurgency in the 1970s and Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

Shenouda was the 117th pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Tradition says the Church was founded by St Mark but its independent history is traced back to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The 'Chalcedonian Definition' defined Jesus as having a separate manhood and godhood. Still central canon to the Catholics and most Orthodox Churches, it was rejected by Alexandria. It was also in Alexandria where the concept of a “pope” first developed, long before Rome stole the idea. Deriving from the Greek word πάππας (pappas), the first man to carry the title was Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Heracleus who died in 249.

In 451, the entire Egyptian population followed Pope Dioscorus in rejecting Chalcedon and the Coptic Church was born. Coptic was the language they spoke, grammatically closely akin to the hieroglyphic Late Egyptian. The Copts were hated by the Byzantines who saw them as heretics. There was a brief interregnum of Persian conquest by the Sassanids before the Muslims conquered Egypt in 642. The religion was left undisturbed on condition they pay Jizya to the new rulers. The new tax slowly took its toll though the conversion to Sunni Islam would take three centuries.

Copts survived but would remain second class citizens suffering petty discrimination in their own country until the 19th dynasty of Albanian Muhammad Ali Pasha. Ali abolished Jizya and saw their value as an administrative caste. In this, Ali emulated the British divide and conquer strategy of raising the profile of a despised minority. The Copts thrived and started their own schools of education. A 20th century Diaspora took the faith to every continent.

Nazeer Gayed Roufail was born into the faith on 3 August 1923, the youngest of eight children. He grew up in the ancient Nile settlement of Asyut, the Egyptian city with the highest Coptic concentration. Here, a traveller in 1918 wrote, “the wealthy Christian families have built themselves palaces and made gardens by the river side - The domes of the Coptic Cathedral and the minarets of the Mosques may be seen in the distance”.

Roufail was active in Sunday School and went to Cairo University, graduating in history and later the Coptic Theological Seminary. Roufail retreated to the Nitrian Desert where he joined the ascetic life of the Syrian Monastery under a new name of Father Antonios el-Syriani. The Monastery had already supplied one Coptic Pope in the 15th century and from the early days el-Syriani was marked out as a special candidate to repeat the feat. For six years he lived as a hermit before being ordained as a priest.

In 1962 Pope Cyril VI made him bishop of Christian Education and President of the Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary. Cyril also gave him a third name: Shenouda. He was named for St Shenoute the Archimandrite, the most renowned saint of the Copts who lived for 118 years. The modern Shenouda revolutionised the seminary and tripled the intake of students. His influence ruffled Cyril’s feathers causing a reprimand when Shenouda argued bishops should be elected. It would not be his last fight over democracy.

In March 1971, Cyril VI died and Shenouda was enthroned the 117th pope six months later on 14 November. A year earlier Anwar Sadat had inherited political power of Egypt and was keen to flex his muscles. The Six Day War with Israel in 1967 had halted Coptic pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a situation that lasted for 11 years. When Sadat brokered the Camp David agreement with Carter and Begin, he hoped the Copts would lead the return of Egyptian travel to Israel. Shenouda did not play ball and decreed a papal ban on Coptic visits to Israel in 1979. “From the Arabic national point we should not abandon our Palestinian brothers and our Arabic brothers by normalising our relations with the Jews,” he said.

Shenouda’s inconvenient pro-Palestinianism irked Sadat as did his support of its suicide bombers. In 1981, Sadat sent Shenouda back to the Nitrian Desert where he had previously lived as a hermit. Sadat was assassinated later that year and on 2 January 1985 his successor Hosni Mubarak reversed the decree. Pope Shenouda came back to Cairo to a hero’s welcome celebrating the Orthodox Christmas on January 7. Shenouda expressed forgiveness to those who wronged him. “All Copts open their hearts to their brothers, the Muslims,” he told the congregation.

As the 20th century ended, more and more extremist Muslims were not prepared to open their hearts to their Christian brothers. In the predominately Christian village of El-Kosheh in 2000, riots between Christians and Muslims led to a shoot-out in which 21 Christians were killed. When the judge blamed Coptic incitement and acquitted most of those accused, Shenouda spoke out in rare public criticism. “We want to challenge this ruling. We don't accept it,” he said. But Copts were increasingly on the outer losing their positions of influence across society with only one percent of MPs.

Worse was to come after Mubarak was overthrown in the Arab Spring. For all his faults, Mubarak was a sometime protector of the faith and allowed them religious freedoms including the right to repair their churches to live broadcasts of Easter services and punished Islamists who persecuted them. When he was deposed, over 100,000 Copts fled Egypt, mostly to Canada. The killing began with a church bombing during a 2011 New Year’s Eve mass that left more than 20 dead and dozens wounded, followed by another deadly attack during the Coptic Christmas a week later. Islamists have called them infidels and accused them of being Western spies and traitors who are stockpiling arms in plots to secede from the country.

Shenouda was the peacemaker, often calling for harmony and he regularly met Muslim leaders to ease tensions. He was revered among Copts and popular among many moderate Muslims who respected him as a survivor. But the strain eventually told on his elderly frame. He flew regularly to the US this year for medical treatment and died on Saturday of lung and liver complications.

His death is a massive blow not only to the 8 million Copts but the 80 million Egyptian Muslims he leaves behind. A strong voice of moderation in a troublesome time, his absence will leave a huge void and may exacerbate the trend of Copts to leave the country. The loss of Egypt’s Copts would not only be tragedy for the millions of refugees, but also one for those left behind. Like my taxi driver in 1988, the Copts form much of the nation’s professional and business class. The loss of their expertise could be a fatal blow to Egypt’s faltering economy.

Have yourself a very Orthodox Christmas

Minus all the Western commercial hoopla of 25 December, 300 million members of the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrated its Christmas today. The day is celebrated on January 7 according to the old Julian calendar by the Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Jerusalem Orthodox Churches and Mount Athos monasteries commemorate the birth of Jesus 13 days after Western Christmas. Unlike the Catholic Church where the Pope in preeminent, there are 14 autocephalous churches in the Orthodox community, though the mother church is Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the “first among equals”. Photo: Orthodox priests lead a Christmas service at the Bosnian Orthodox Church in Sarajevo (Amel Emric / AP)

At the 1459 Council of Florence monks from the self-governing Mt Athos in Greece refused to let Catholic and Orthodox Churches in return for Western military help against the Turks. As a result Constantinople fell to the Ottomans but Orthodoxy survived doctrinally intact. In today’s Istanbul as in many places across southern and eastern Europe, Orthodox Christian worshippers plunged into chilly waters to retrieve crucifixes in ceremonies commemorating the baptism of Jesus. Hundreds from Istanbul's now tiny Greek Orthodox community and Greek tourists attended the Epiphany ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters. About 20 faithful leaped into the cold Golden Horn inlet to retrieve a wooden cross thrown by the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Apostolos Oikonomou, a 40-year-old Greek man, clinched the cross. "This year I was the lucky guy," he said. "I wish everybody peace and happy New Year."

Over 5,000 worshippers gathered at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ Our Saviour including outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called on the congregation to withstand the “cult of hasty lucre”. Archpriest Sergius Zvonarev of the Moscow Patriarchate said the day was both a solemn ritual and joyous celebration, Zvonarev said the Russian Orthodox Church remained loyal to the Julian calendar which regulated church life and traditions for centuries. “It reveres these traditions as the entire civilized world used to live by them in the past,” he said.

Orthodox Christians gathered in Bethlehem in front of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the Church of the Nativity. Barely days after a fight between various Christian sects over territorial rights in the church, the Mayor of Bethlehem Victor Batarseh said the theme of this year’s celebration was Palestine celebrates hope. “Our message in these days is love and peace to all especially in the Holy Land”, Batarseh said. Over 2,000 scouts from all over the West Bank held a parade through Bethlehem with their marching bands and bagpipes.

Many in Bethlehem say the best band is the Syriac Orthodox Scouts’ pipers. Bethlehem’s Syriac Orthodox community is proud to trace its roots to the ancient Aramean peoples and are among the few people left that speak the language of Jesus, Aramaic. The scouts were established in 1958 and became internationally successful in sports in the 60s and 70s. After the Oslo Accords, their pipers became President Yasser Arafat’s military band. One former band member said they were in Gaza playing the bagpipes for Arafat when the news of Rabin’s assassination was announced. “They thought it was a Palestinian who had killed him so they would not let us leave Gaza,” he said. Today they took centre stage in Manger Square.

In Egypt, Copts nervously celebrated the day as sectarian violence continued, the first Christmas in the post Hosni Mubarak era. US President Barack Obama used the occasion to call for the protection of Copts and other minorities. "I want to reaffirm the commitment of the US to work for the protection of Christian and other religious minorities around the world," he said. The call comes after the military rulers cracked down on a Coptic march in October. Coptic Pope Shenouda III commended Islamist leaders, who attended the Coptic Church service. "We all celebrate together as Egyptians,” Shenouda said.

Glenn Beck forced to backtrack after attacking religions

American far-right television personality Glenn Beck has spent the last few weeks in the unfamiliar role of backtracking from earlier espoused positions. Beck’s provocative and confrontational views on Fox News, internet sites and syndicated radio stations have made him a hero to conservatives especially since Obama came to power. He commands audiences of 2.3 million to his 5pm cable show making him as the New York Times said “one of the most powerful media voices for the nation’s conservative populist anger.”

However he took a step too far for his base earlier this month. On 2 March Beck told listeners of his radio show they should "run as fast as [they] can" from any church that preached "social or economic justice" because those were code words for Communism and Nazism.

As Amy Sullivan wrote in Time, Beck probably thought he was tweaking a few crunchy religious liberals who didn't listen to the show anyway. But he was little prepared for the reaction he did get. As Sullivan puts it, “instead he managed to outrage Christians in most mainline Protestant denominations, African-American congregations, Hispanic churches, and Catholics--who first heard the term ‘social justice’ in papal encyclicals and have a little something in their tradition called Catholic social teaching."

Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners a network of progressive Christians is calling for a boycott of Beck’s Fox News program. He said Beck perverted Jesus' message when he urged Christians last week to leave churches that preach social and economic justice. Wallis says 20,000 people have responded to the boycott. "He wants us to leave our churches, but we should leave him," Wallis said. "When your political philosophy is to consistently favor the rich over the poor, you don't want to hear about economic justice."

Peg Chamberlin, President of the National Council of Churches of Christ, was one of many religious leaders outraged by Beck’s views. Writing in Huffpo she said it was nothing short of a call for his listeners to disregard central tenets of their faith because they do not conform to his political ideology. “He is advocating that they abandon the full Gospel message in favour of a hollow idol, and he is doing so for worldly gain,” wrote Chamberlin. “His statements cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.”

There is little danger of that happening and it is par for the course for someone to challenge any utterance of Beck’s. But this time it is hurting as the challenges are coming from his own side of politics. Mormon scholars in Beck's church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in interviews he seemed ignorant of just how central social justice teaching was to Mormonism. Philip Barlow, the Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, said “A lot of Latter-day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church.”

However Sarah Pulliam Bailey warns against getting carried away by the size of the reaction against Beck. Writing at Getreligion.org, she calls it a “sweeping generalisation” and said many conservative Christians were comfortable with Beck’s remarks. She said media were making out there was a wide chorus of criticism “when in reality (drumroll please) Jim Wallis is calling for a boycott,” she said. “I can’t help but wonder if we’d ever see a headline like “Christian Leader Calls for Rachel Maddow Boycott.”

Yet very few have come forward to defend Beck. Perhaps unsurprisingly one of the few voices of support was from fellow extremist Jerry Falwell Jnr, an evangelical leader in the mould of his controversial father. Falwell said those pastors who preach economic and social justice were “trying to twist the gospel to say the gospel supported socialism. Falwell said Jesus taught that people should give to the poor and support widows, but he never said that we should elect a government that would take money from a neighbour's hand and give it to the poor. "If we all did as Jesus did when he helped the poor, we wouldn't need the government," Falwell said.

But social justice is a tenet of mainstream faiths and has been promoted by many respected religious scholars. When this was pointed out to Beck, he issued a “clarification” on 12 March. He began by conflating social justice with big government and then launched an attack on his critics “They always change and confuse the language. Political correctness comes from the progressive movement,” he said. “There's a lot of people who say ‘social justice’ and some people don't mean Marxism. But others do, and you need to know, which is it?” But it was obvious the criticism hurt. As Amy Sullivan said Glenn Beck has certainly discovered the dangers of publicly practicing theology without a licence.

Atheism is apparently not anti-evolutionary after all

Last week The Times splashed a claim that new research by a British psychologist found that belief in God is intuitive and may be hardwired by evolution. The article included quotes from Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, who told the journalists that his research “shows children have a natural, intuitive way of reasoning that leads them to all kinds of supernatural beliefs about how the world works.” The article claimed human tendency towards supernatural beliefs explains why many become religious as adults, despite not having been brought up within any faith. It claimed scientists believe that the durability of religion is in part because it helps people to bond. (pic adapted from original by stuartpilbrow)

As is often the way with journalism, the article was something of a simplification, not least with the words of Bruce Hood. Writing on his own blog two days later, Hood said he was misrepresented. Hood’s point, which he told The Times, was that humans are born with brains to seek out patterns and infer hidden mechanisms, forces and entities. “That does not make me either religious or a religious apologist,” he said. But Hood’s statements did not fit in with the “Born to Believe in God” angle the paper was pushing and his words were twisted and The Times’s angle was repeated by the Mail Online and the Telegraph.

In the rush to prove that religion was hardwired by evolution, the media glossed over what Hood actually said. He did not say humans evolved to believe in God. Instead, he agrees with Richard Dawkins that religion is a cultural construct. However he doubts that supernatural beliefs can be eradicated by education. The power of beliefs is strong and quite often is a positive force. Life is a balancing act between trusting our beliefs enough to act on them without being so certain about them that we could never ditch them. That predisposes the idea that we act on fallible beliefs. For instance, we cannot wait for all the evidence to come in before we act on global warming.

Nevertheless belief is predicated on a set of assumptions about how the world operates. This construct is central to all of the world’s major religions and has been so ever since humans prayed for rain or sunshine. But absence of belief has long been around as a counteractive force even if atheists were usually treated with scorn, or worse (rhe term comes from the Greek “atheos” meaning “deserted by the gods”). But according to Richard Dawkins we have all deserted the ancient Gods and atheists have simply gone one God further.

But evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson believes atheism is a stealth religion. He dubbed Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens “the New Atheists” and said the movement forming around Dawkins in particular was a religion without supernatural agents. For the new atheists, faith is a heresy that must be stamped out. But in truth they are part of an old tradition that goes back two hundred years to when atheism split between those who are primarily concerned with the pursuit of truth and those who are driven by contempt of those who have faith. For those in the latter camp, the fact that citizens could worship their gods in peace supported by the state was an indefensible concession to superstition and prejudice.

Some Christians have gone on the counter-attack and have attempted to demolish atheism’s intellectual credentials. Among the best known of these is Alistair McGrath’s The Twilight of Atheism. McGrath’s book defines atheism not as a suspension of decision but as a principled decision to live and act on the assumption there is no God or any spiritual reality beyond what we know. He says it was inspired by Protestantism which encouraged people to think of a world in which God cannot be experienced. Atheism thrives when Christians get into power and abuse it. But says McGrath, the 20th century godless world of the Soviet Union eroded the imaginative potential of atheism.

But such arguments are unimportant to secular societies such as Australia. The nation’s census doesn’t ask about atheism but the numbers of those who admit to “no religion” are low. From 1901 to 1971, the figure was almost negligible. But it has been rising steadily since and is now 18.7 percent. But active participation in religion is also low. Just 20 percent of adults participated in religious or spiritual groups or organisations in 2006. What the data shows is that materialism rules in this country though people may not necessarily admit to it in census questions.

One category definitely not on the census list is “soft cock atheist”. This is the odd category the author known as “Godless Gross” chose to describe himself in when writing in yesterday’s newly revamped National Times (though unnamed, it is reasonable to describe the writer as male on the evidence). Gross said he represented a “wishy washy” strain of atheism that could easily be swayed into theism if the right faith came along. The author also claims we are “a religious species” with 86 percent of people worldwide believing in some kind of God or other.

But perhaps what we need to become is more of a secular species. Secularism doesn’t necessarily take a side on religion. According to Max Wallace, head of the National Secular Society, the defining characteristic of secular government is separation of church and state. He says that despite the US’s predisposition for creationism (noted again today by a new British film about Darwin which cannot find an American distributor), that country’s government has a better separation than the constitutional monarchy of Australia. Religions get tax exemptions but atheism does not because it is not a form of supernatural belief. Wallace reminds us our government is a soft theocracy “but with a secular twist according to political contingency.” So which is worse, a soft theocracy or a soft cock atheist? God only knows.

Dawkins and the “new atheists" take to the buses

A Christian bus driver in Southampton, England has refused to drive a bus which carries a pro-atheism message on the side. The driver said he was shocked by “the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God”. 800 buses in England are now adorned with the message "There's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life." The English move follows a campaign in Washington DC last year which planted the message: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake” on 240 buses. Here in Australia, the ad agency APN Outdoor took a more prudish stance and rejected a $16,000 campaign to put such slogans as "Sleep in on Sunday mornings" and "Celebrate reason" on local public transport.

While Australian atheists have been forced to take their case to the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Board, their counterparts in the UK would probably be delighted with the publicity their campaign has afforded. While the idea was the brainchild of comedian Ariane Sherine, it was quickly taken up by the country’s most public atheist Richard Dawkins. Sherine got a thousand people to pledge money to counter a pro-religion bias in the advertising world. Dawkins, the author of “The God Delusion” and the TV documentary “The Root of all Evil?” came to the party by agreeing to match all contributions up to the first £5,500. His endorsement also helped the credibility of the project, and in the end, the fundraising drive raised more than £140,000.

The campaign has raised a predictable outcry from the religious lobby and also some surprising support. The activist group Christian Voice has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the ads. However, the Methodist Church said the campaign might be a "good thing if it gets people to engage with the deepest questions of life”. But even some non-believers are finding this new militant brand of atheism off-putting and unnecessary. According to Natalie Rothschild in Spiked, the new atheists are engaging in religion-bashing. She says the reason the likes of Dawkins believe preachers and charlatans form such a threat to rational thinking is because of all the gullible masses that “apparently so easily fall for their quackery”.

But Rothschild’s argument is flawed. She says that Dawkins (and the other atheist campaigners) are preaching at the public rather than trying to engage it. Even if that were true, they would simply be mimicking the way religion also advertises itself. In any case, Dawkins went to great pains in The God Delusion to avoid preachiness and engage with the debate. The book presents 400 pages of closely argued points that look at the evolution of belief, its role in society, morality, philosophy and the impacts of organised religion. Harking to the bus campaign, one of his chapter headings is “why there is almost certainly no God”. Ironically it is one of the least interesting chapters (with its over-intellectual ruminations on irreducible complexity, god of the gaps, and the anthropic principle) of an otherwise engaging book and passionate polemic.

In an early chapter, Dawkins quotes the words of his late friend Douglas Adams. In the speech, Adams tackles the whole notion of the sacredness of religion. Religion was a notion, he said, that people were not allowed to say anything bad about. Adams continued:

“Why not? - because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it, but on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'Fine, I respect that'.”

Dawkins called it an example of “society’s overweening respect for religion”. Religious grounds are still the best bet for a wartime conscientious objector. And in those wars, Dawkins noted a “pusillanimous reluctance” to use religious names for the warring factors. Religions are exempt from a whole raft of laws (include taxation) that govern every other organisation. In the US, the constitutional right to the freedom of religion has been used to justify warped behaviour and discrimination against homosexuals and other minority groups. In the Muslim world, the furore over the Danish cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten was deliberately stoked up by a small group of Muslims living in Denmark. The clerics took their propaganda campaign worldwide with predictable results. Libyan rioters killed nine people and burned an Italian consulate. Pakistanis and Nigerians burned Christian churches, while in Britain some Muslims carried banners which read “behead those who say Islam is a violent religion”.

Believers deemed the hurt and suffering they felt as a result of seeing the pictures worse than any physical violence perpetrated on anyone who got in the way of their revenge. What Muslims share in common with believers of most other faiths is that their values trump anyone else’s. The atheist campaign is not about gratuitous offence or hurt to religious belief. But it is a valid protest against the disproportionate privilege of religion in otherwise secular societies. Dawkins quotes the words of the great H.L. Mencken: “we must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart”.

Gautama and Buddhism

Thousands of Buddhists are marching worldwide in solidarity with the current protests in Buddhist Tibet. With 365 million followers, over 6 per cent of the world’s population claim to be Buddhists. It is the fourth largest religion in the world behind only Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. Established in India in the sixth century it spread out across south, east and south-east Asia before emerging as a truly international movement in the 20th century. Arguably not even a religion, Buddhism is certainly a tradition that focuses on personal spiritual development that dates back almost 2,500 years.

The first external evidence about the existence of Buddhism comes from inscriptions made by King Asoka who ruled the Mauryan state of North India from 269 BCE to 232 BCE. This was some two hundred years after the death of the Buddha himself. The majority of what we know about the life of Siddartha Gautama comes from the voluminous Buddhist scriptures written in various Asian languages. The most useful of these texts were written in Pali, an extinct north Indian dialect which was close to Magadhan, the language most likely spoken by Gautama.

These traditions began to be preserved shortly after his death. Itinerant Buddhist monks wandered around the cities of the Gangetic Plain and taught Buddha’s message of enlightenment and freedom from suffering. During the impassable monsoon rains, the monks retreated to their settlements where they discussed doctrine and practice. Eventually some began to collect their testimony of Gautama and formalised it into songs, discourses and rules of their orders in formulaic and repetitive style. Several monks were assigned the role of committing anthologies to memory.

After a hundred years, these discourses became formalised as the Pali Canon. They covered the Buddha’s sermons, stories about his life, suttas about the Eightfold Path and the makeup of human personality, anthologies of his epigrams and poems, and the Book of Monastic Discipline which codified the rules of the Buddhist Order of monks. They paid more attention to the philosophies of the Buddha than the key dates of his life, which remain frustrating vague for modern scholars. These Pali texts became the provenance of Theravada Buddhism which stressed the importance of yoga and honoured monks who became “Arahants”, accomplished ones who had achieved enlightenment like the Buddha himself.

Siddharta Gautama was born in the sixth century BCE in Kapilavatthu in the foothills of the Himalayas. His father was one of the leading men of the town and showered his son with every pleasure he could desire. But young Siddharta felt suffocated by his lifestyle and took to the road at the age of 29, leaving behind a wife and son of his own. India was undergoing an economic transformation at the time with power transferring from the priestly caste to the merchants. Gautama believed that family life was not conducive to spirituality and he joined the thousands of mendicants, mostly men, who settled in the forests near the plain in a search for “brahmacariya” (the holy life).

Gautama’s Holy Grail was Nibbana or Nirvana (“blowing out”); a deathless, sorrowless and incorrupt place where it was possible to extinguish life’s passions, attachments and delusions. It was also an attempt to deal with the North Indian belief of karma, the endless cycle of death and re-birth. Gautama was preoccupied especially with the horror of re-death and Nirvana, like many other theories of the day offered a way to extricate people from this endless cycle.

Gautama travelled to the Kingdom of Magadha, in modern Bihar south of the Ganges. There he came to the attention of King Bimbisara who was apparently so impressed by the young almsman, he offered to make him his heir. But Gautama instead set off in search of a teacher to guide him through his spiritual apprenticeship. He found what he wanted in Vesali, the capital of the Videha Republic. The school here, under Alara Kalama taught that ignorance not desire was at the root of human problems and suffering derived from lack of understanding of the true Self.

Gautama mastered the essentials of Kalama’s path by using the disciplines of yoga. The word is derived from the verb “yuj” meaning ‘to yoke’ or ‘to bind together’. Yoga was an ancient Indian tradition which cultivates a different mode of consciousness. Gautama used it to train his mind into a state that lay beyond error and illusion. This required the young monk to practice five prohibitions to bring his mind under control. They forbade him to steal, lie, take intoxicants, kill or harm, or have sex. He practiced ‘asana’ the physical cross-legged posture characteristic of yoga where he learned to cut the link between mind and senses by refusing to move. Once he entered a trace, he moved through a succession of stages until he reached the third ayatana – blissful ‘nothingness’.

But Gautama remained dissatisfied he had not found a truly unconditioned and uncreated self. He tried asceticism which proved as fruitless as yoga. Eventually he gave himself up to a childhood memory of sitting under a rose-apple tree when he had gained an ecstatic moment. He wondered if this was the way to enlightenment. He began to notice the ebb and flow of his feelings and sensations and took note of sensual desire when it happened. He became supremely aware of himself and took on as he called it, a state of mindfulness. This purification process took many years. One day around the year of 528 BCE he was walking by the Neranjara River where he spotted a pleasant grove for meditation. He sat there and took up the asana position determined not to move until he achieved enlightenment. It was here he became a Buddha. The word Buddha meant the Enlightened or Awakened One. This spot, now known as Bodh Gaya is an important site of Buddhist pilgrimage.

The rest of the Buddha’s life was spent helping others achieve the same state. But he did not preach. He became known as Sakyamuni the Silent One from the Republic of Sakka because his knowledge was ineffable and could not be described in words. He had no doctrine, no theology, no theory about root cause and no definition about ultimate reality. What was important to him was ‘letting go’, his purpose was to enable people transcend pain and attain the peace of Nirvana. Buddha lived a long life and died an old man in an obscure town. But a Buddhist has no time to think of himself, even on his deathbed. To the last he taught. His final advice to the monks that followed him was “All individual things pass away. Seek your liberation with diligence”.

The one about the archbishop, the media and Sharia

British newspaper the Daily Express printed this picture (left) on its front page yesterday. The three women were snapped for a totally unrelated story about the controversy that has erupted in the wake of Rowan Williams’ “Sharia” speech earlier this week. The preferred reading of the Express was these women represented the future hostile face of Islam in Britain. Nevertheless the women were not giving the finger to Britain but to the intrusive photographer who was harassing them as they went about their perfectly legal business. There hasn't been sumptuary laws in Britain since the 16th century and the women are free to wear burqas if they so desire. In any case as one commentator asked “Is there anything more British than the two-fingered salute to authority? She looks very much like the rest of us”.

The other key point, of course, is that the women also had absolutely nothing to with the story. They were just a handy stick to use to show the dangerous “otherness” of Islam. That this fear is a stick is shown by Britain's second largest selling newspaper the Daily Mail which had a poll for readers to decide “which of these men pose the bigger threat to Britain’s way of life?” While there are several likely candidates to fulfill this intriguing threat (politicians or media owners perhaps, such as billionaire Viscount Rothermere, chair of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc, one of the largest media companies in the UK), the only choices offered in the poll are two bearded clerics: Abu Hamza and Rowan Williams.

Both are considered dangerous demagogues in reference to Islam. Abu Hamza al-Masri is a leading British radical Islamist whose activities in the Finsbury Park mosque led to intense police and media scrutiny. Demonised for his apparent preaching of jihad in the homeland, it didn’t help his image he had a sinister-looking hook in place of his left hand. Hamza’s own lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC said Hamza was “probably the most frequently abused and ridiculed figure” in Britain.

Though perhaps he has relinquished that title for the moment. If Abu Hamza was the media’s Blackbeard with his pirate’s hook, the new villain is the snowy whitebearded mild-mannered Rowan Williams. But Williams is not a Muslim. He is in fact, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, metropolitan of the province of Canterbury, Primate of All England, senior archbishop of the Church of England and the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Williams’ offence was to tap into a fear in the Western psyche about the takeover by Islam. Muslims are a minority in Britain but they are outbreeding other sectors of the population. Combined with a steady steam of immigrants from Muslim countries and the sense of “other” they generate when practicing their culture, any suggestion that their “power” may increase causes howls of protest from Britons feeling vulnerable about their culture and their place in the world. Britain is a Christian country, they say. Actually, like most Northern European countries, Britain is a post-Christian country. And Williams, more than most, is aware of this.

Williams has often been in the headlines for some controversial statements about various aspects of Christianity. But when he moved on to Islam, the media went ballistic. In a speech to lawyers and jurists at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday, the Archbishop examined the intertwining of civil and religious law in England and suggested that some aspects of Sharia law might be practical in terms of solving cultural questions without damaging the civil law of the land. In the last two days this speech has caused a political and social firestorm. While his subject matter was learned and thoughtful, it was doomed from the moment when he said the magical word Sharia.

While Williams has claimed to be shocked by the reaction, he prophesised it himself in the early part of his speech when he quotes Tariq Ramadan’s Western Muslims and the Future of Islam:

“In the west the idea of Sharia calls up all the darkest images of Islam...It has reached the extent that many Muslim intellectuals do not dare even to refer to the concept for fear of frightening people or arousing suspicion of all their work by the mere mention of the word”

Williams’ main point in the speech was that Sharia was a method of jurisprudence governed by revealed texts rather than a single system. He said more latitude should be given in law to rights and scruples rooted in religious identity. Religious groups could provide cultural clarity in issues related to marriage and inheritance much as the Islamic Sharia Council already do. But the media were only interested in the "darkest images of Islam".

And so the evidence that Williams supplied in the speech, such a similar dispensation that already exists for Jewish law (Beth Din) was lost in the stampede to criticise Williams. Reuters reported that bastion of British tolerance The Sun saying yesterday: "It's easy to dismiss Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams as a silly old goat. In fact he's a dangerous threat to our nation." The Daily Express thundered “Muslim laws must come to Britain” before weaseling out with a passive voice “he was accused” without appearing to accuse him themselves. Upmarket was no easier on Williams. The Times said Williams was dangerous and “must be resisted”.

Even the left joined in the criticism. The Guardian said Rowan Williams has a knack for creating problems where none yet exist. The Independent said “let the backlash commence” and put Williams' error as the assumption he had the same intellectual freedom as the leader of a major church that he had when he was merely an eminent theologian. Spiked's editor Brendan O'Neill said Williams (whom he personally attacked as a "smug, guitar-strumming religious leader with a social-worker voice") claimed the adoption of some aspects of Sharia law in the UK is "inevitable" when the only inevitability mentioned by Williams was to “mutual questioning” and only perhaps mutual influence towards change.

There were a few voices in support. On BBC Radio Wales Kim Fabricius launched a spirited defence of Williams in a radio interview with Sunday Mail's editor Peter Hitchens and made the point that if anyone had actually taken the time to read the speech, then there wouldn’t be an issue. Australian blogger and theologian Benjamin Myers defended Williams saying the speech was a “dense, thoughtful, informed, and highly nuanced reflection…on the complex relation between law, citizenship, and the identity of religious communities.” Myers made the very good point that Williams wants us all to think more about the issue. “But thinking is hard work,” says Myers. “It’s neither as enjoyable as a good lynching, nor as satisfying as a posture of moral indignation.”

The Church Times columnist Andrew Brown drew a comparison between Williams and his more worldly predecessor: "The trouble with Rowan Williams is that he can never remember that he is Archbishop; the trouble with George Carey was that he could never forget." Williams clearly has more important things on his mind than merely being an archbishop. If he has upset this many people, it is likely he is doing something revolutionary. As the conclusion to his speech says “if we are to think intelligently about the relations between Islam and British law, we need a fair amount of 'deconstruction' of crude oppositions and mythologies.” Replace the word “British” with “American” or “Australian” and the sentence remains valid.

The Book of Revelation: the end of the world as we know it

In a recent amusing youtube video, US President George W Bush acts out his apocalyptic fantasy to the tune of REM’s It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). It is amusing, partially because the makers have cleverly synched his words to the song, and partially because it taps in to the greatest apocalyptic fantasy of all. That fantasy is the biblical Book of Revelation. The story of Revelation is told in the fascinating book “A History of the End of the World” by American author Jonathan Kirsch.

Revelation is the last book of the Bible. Revelation is Latin for the Greek word apocalypse (“unveiling”). It is a roadmap to the end of the world, according to first century thinking. It is the Omega to the alpha of Genesis. The ‘alpha and omega’ is one of the many images that have seeped out of Revelation and embedded themselves in modern culture. Others include the Antichrist, The Seventh Seal, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Armageddon, the Whore of Babylon, Gog and Magog, and of course, 666, the fabled number of the beast. In short, Revelation is a treasure trove of the eschatology of endtimes.

However, the book is a serious anomaly. Revelation is a violent fantasy that sits awkwardly at the end of the mostly peace-loving Christian New Testament. The story of the lives of Jesus and his early followers segues uncomfortably into this misogynistic fire and brimstone Old Testament-style story of how history will end in catastrophe. Revelation’s moral calculus has been a crucial factor in the lives of many key Christians over the eras and remains a strong force especially in the religion-drenched politics of the US.

Revelation, also known as Apocalypse, has always divided the critics. The pious call it the revealed word of Jesus while feminist theologian Schussler Fiorenza called it “apocalyptic pornography” and literary critic Northrop Frye said it was an “insane rhapsody”. Thomas Jefferson was no more impressed and dismissed Revelation as “merely the ravings of a maniac”. The book was written by a man called “John” in the Romanised Asia Minor (now mainland Turkey) for an audience of early Christians. Revelation is traditionally ascribed to John the Evangelist, but no evidence supports this. However he is likely to be born a Jew from Judea, and a bitter witness to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE.

But John is a Jew who has converted to Christianity and he turns Revelation into a curious mix of anti-Semitism and Jewish history and tradition that made some scholars describe him as a “Christian Rabbi”. The book’s apocalyptic theme is borrowed from the Old Testament Book of Daniel. Revelation is responsible for giving Satan (which the Old Testament merely saw an “adviser”) such a bad reputation. Satan is backed up by a memorable cast of bad guys including plagues of locusts, a seven-headed ten-horned red dragon and the Great Whore of Babylon. The drunken whore is straight out of Freud, a sexual monster with whom “the kings of the earth have committed fornication”. Most intriguingly she keeps a mysterious golden cup full of “abominations and impurities”.

According to Revelation, the abominable and impure endtimes will be presaged by the “Tribulation”, with its plagues and pestilence, earthquakes and floods, comets and eclipses, and battles in Heaven and Earth. Jesus will return to Earth at the head of an army to fight a battle at a place called Armageddon. After defeating Satan and his followers, Jesus will rule for a thousand year Reich. But then Satan will escape, and with his allies Gog and Magog fight a second almighty battle. He is defeated again and cast off to eternal torment in a lake of “fire and brimstone”. Everyone on Earth is killed but the Elect will be resurrected and granted eternal life in the “new Jerusalem”.

The timetable of Revelation has long been a boon to millenarianists ever since the book was written. But it suffered some early embarrassments. In the book, John reserves his wrath for the Roman Empire. The “mark” of the beast was actually a Roman coin, which “branded” Christians when they fell into their hands. The 666 (or possibly 616) was an alphanumeric code which some say refers to Nero (although he died two years before the temple fell). This anti Roman sentiment was inconvenient by the time Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the state religion in 391 CE. The book probably would not have made the cut of “approved” books in the Christian canon if not for the belief that the author “John” was John the Disciple (who, by another tradition, was the author of the Gospel of John).

Augustine then legitimised Revelation by giving it a spiritual and metaphorical reading. But the book’s supporters were always excited by its promise that the “end was nigh”. A medieval monk named Joachim of Fiore fomented apocalyptic revolution based on his interpretation of Revelation. He saw the Muslim warrior Saladin as the latest incarnation of the Anti-Christ. His visions inspired Crusaders such as English King Richard the Lion-Heart who visited Joachim for inspiration on his return from Palestine.

In the 1490s, Dominican friar Girolano Savonarola urged the citizens of Renaissance Florence to toss their paintings and perfume into the Bonfire of the Vanities to bring forth Judgement Day. He was a religious reformer who preached against the moral corruption of the clergy and the pope. His vision of New Jerusalem held Florence in rebellion for three years before he was excommunicated and hanged in 1498.

By the time Savonarola died, Columbus had begun his voyages to the Americas. The ideas of Revelation were quick to follow the first European immigrants. The Puritans saw the English civil war as a battle between Christ and Antichrist. They took their millenarian message across the Atlantic where the apocalyptic message spread quickly. Revelation was the text of choice of the Seven Day Adventists, founded in 1863 by Ellen White and her husband James. Many turned to a new variation called “The Rapture” which believed that the virtuous would be plucked from Earth without being inflicted by the horror of the Tribulation.

The idea was imported into the US by Irishman John Nelson Derby who led a dissenting group called the Plymouth (or “Exclusive”) Brethren. Derby’s plot twist on the Revelation (the Rapture is not mentioned anywhere in the text) has proved immensely appealing to American fundamentalist Christians. Vernon Howell (rebadged in biblical fashion as David Koresh) followed the Savaranola template when led his followers into martyrdom at Waco. There he believed the battle of Armageddon was about to start.

The Rapture is also responsible for America’s love-hate relationship between Christian fundamentalists and the Jewish people. It states that Israel will be restored to the Jewish people before bringing the world to an end. The rise of Darby’s ideas in the 19th century coincided with the rise of Zionism. While early Zionists were prepared to site their nation in Argentina or Uganda, Christians pressed Zionist claims to Israel itself as a precondition of the Second Coming. To this day, Christian Zionists regard peace in the Middle East as an obstacle to their plans, and their ideas match those of the hawks and hardliners in Israel. An uneasy marriage of convenience exists between fundamentalists Christians (who tolerate Jews only as a necessary conduit to Judgement Day) and government of Israel (who think the Christian ideas are crackpot but value their support and money).

Meanwhile Ronald Reagan brought the ideas of Revelation into mainstream American politics. In 1980, he said “we may be the generation that sees Armageddon”. He surrounded himself with people who had similar beliefs. His Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger admitted he read Revelation and said “I believe the world is going to end…every day I think time is running out”. Reagan spoke of the Soviet “evil empire” which predicted would die out with human history itself whose “last pages are even now being written”.

Reagan was only half right. The end of Soviet Communism did not presage the end of history or the last man. And while no president since him has been so outspokenly apocalyptic, the two Bushes and Clinton have all been forced to declare themselves to be “born-again Christians”. Many of the leaders of the End Time movement are rich, well-connected and very powerful. And 46 per cent of all Americans claim to be "born-again" according to a 2002 Gallup poll. George W Bush himself was converted by Billy Graham in 1985 after a drunken weekend at the Bush compound. His core constituency is the fundamentalist voting bloc. While he himself has not openly declared himself, his language is often apocalyptic, such as when he describes the 'war on terror' as 'the epic struggle of good and evil'. His actions in the Middle East show that his government’s support of Israel is a pivotal issue. As it always was, the fate of the New Jerusalem is intricately tied with the old one.

A short history of myths

Myths may be old-fashioned but there is no doubting they still have currency. The world’s media love a good myth. In the last 48 hours alone, the concept of "myth" was used to explain matters as diverse as redemptive violence, search engine optimisation, Hitler's would-be assassin Von Stauffenburg, Black Friday, the music of Gram Parsons, a strong British pound, cricket’s nervous nineties, pay inequality in Bahrain,t he life of Hunter S Thompson and whether the English language was good for India. While today the word "myth" is often used to describe something that simply isn’t true, within its definition is an acknowledgement a myth is more powerful and complex than a mere lie. What is it about this concept of myth that unifies these diverse themes?

The idea and history of myths is explored in Karen Armstrong’s “A Short History of Myth”. Myth is culture’s way of understanding itself and the word has many meanings across ritual and anthropological, literary and semiological fields. Armstrong examines the primary meaning: its ritual and anthropological function. She said humans have been mythmakers since Neanderthal times and our imagination allows us to have irrational ideas. She said the five most important things about myths are 1) they are rooted in the fear of death 2) they are inseparable from ritual 3) they force us to go beyond our experience 4) they teach us how to behave and 5) they speak of another reality, most commonly referred to the world of the gods.

While now more akin to theology, the ancients saw mythology in the light of human experience. The world of the gods and the world of humanity were not separated and mythology was designed to cope with the human predicament. Mythology and lying are now conflated, but a myth used to be something which happened once, but also happened all the time. Because of our chronological view of history we have no word for such an occurrence but mythology transcends this core of reality. This is something we have become alienated to but has long been an indispensable part of our ability to make sense of the world. Armstrong calls this concept the “everywhen”.

The earliest myths belongs to Palaeolithic times, between 20000 and 8000 BCE. Prior to the development of agriculture, hunter-gatherers used myth as a stable backdrop of their lives. One of the earliest myths was the Golden Age which told of a lost paradise where humans lived in close contact with the divine. Its purpose was to show people how they could return to this era by rapture and more importantly by the regular duties of everyday life. Every mundane thing could be sacred. The earliest mythologies taught people to embrace an external reality in the ordinary. The sky with its storms, sunsets, eclipses, rainbows and meteors was a religious experience. People began to personify the drama of the heavens and sky gods were born.

As humanity developed survival skills and organised society, it developed a new pragmatic mode the Greeks would call “logos”. Different from mythical thinking, logos needs to correspond accurately to objective facts. Where mythos seeks explanation in the “everywhen”, logos always looks to the future. Both have their limitations and the pre-modern world realised they were complementary. One covered spiritual matters, the other technological.

Technology was to become increasingly important in human development during the Neolithic period between 8000 and 4000 BCE with the rise of agriculture. Initially this was a religious experience. The crop was sacred and the Earth was a living womb. Sexual myths prevailed. The soil was female, the seeds were semen, and rain was sex between heaven and earth. The Earth was a brutal and unforgiving Mother Goddess which pastoralists battled constantly to gain a living. She was the cause of death and sorrow and her journey was of initiation and transformation.

Around 4000 BCE, humans built the first cities and with them the first civilisations. The earliest successful cities were in the Fertile Crescent where the rate of societal growth rapidly increased. People learned new skills and new occupations: engineers, plumbers, builders, barbers, porters, musicians and scribes. Destruction was common-place. Cities brought wars, massacres and revolutions and urban violence was reflected in new mythology. Cain was the first city-builder and the first murderer. The Tower of Babel caused those who built it to be unable to understand each others speech. Mesopotamian myths such as the Epic of Gilgamesh were the first in which the Gods withdrew from the world. Civilisation and culture were on the ascendency and God was becoming increasingly remote.

The next major development occurred between 800 and 200 BCE. Armstrong quotes German philosopher Karl Jaspers who calls this period the Axial Age because it is a pivotal era in humanity’s spiritual development. It marks the beginning of modern religion. There was Confucianism and Taoism in China, Buddhism and Hinduism in India, monotheism (Zoroastrianism and Judaism) in the Middle East and rationalism in Greece. A market economy developed in which power passed from holy men and kings to merchants. The new religious movements tampered with the older myths. City life made the divine more remote and alien. Indian cultures reflected this with the severe asceticism of their holy men. The Chinese did not speak of the divine at all. The philosophy of Confucius and Lao Tse were based on the ethics of how humans dealt with each other.

All the new religions believed strongly in rites which gave the myths emotional resonance. Myths demanded action. The Jews, convinced by the emptiness of earlier myths, began to insist that their god, Yahweh, was the only God. The Greeks used logos to find a rational basis for old myths. In physics, philosophy and drama, they explored ancient themes in new settings. Plato was impatient with myths but he saw they were important in exploring ideas that lie beyond the scope of philosophy. He used the myth of the cave to show enlightenment was relative. Irrational matters, he conceded, might allow a plausible fable.

In the post-Axial Age of 200 BCE to 1500 CE, the status of myth remained constant. Judaism inspired the myth of Christianity. The historical figure of Jesus was mythologised by St Paul. Paul was uninterested in Jesus’s teachings. What was important to him was the mystery of the crucifixion and resurrection. He turned the death and ascension into a mythical creation of the ‘everywhen’. Western Christianity used the Fall of Rome to develop the myth of Original Sin, but the myth is unknown to the eastern Orthodox, where the Roman Empire did not fall. The Christians were followed by Mohammed and the Koran. The Muslim holy book is a series of parables that speak about the divine in terms of signs and symbols.

In the 16th century, Europe (followed by its North American imitation) was beginning its world dominance. The Western modernity was based on logos. Society was freed from its dependence on the constraints of traditional cultures and forged forward fuelled by technological advances and constant reinvestment of capital. The western economy seemed infinitely renewable. This modernity bred an intellectual enlightenment that deemed myth useless, false and outmoded. Modern medicine, hygiene, technologies and transport revolutionised life in Europe and North America. However logos could not explain these successes’ intuitive sense of significance. In reaction, some read religion factually; hence the horror of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

In 1882, one of Nietzsche’s characters in “The Gay Science” famously proclaimed God was dead. Armstrong argues Nietzsche was right in one way; without myth and ritual, the sense of sacredness dies. Humanity turned God into a wholly notional truth. The nihilism of the 20th century bore this out. The sinking of the Titanic, the killing fields of World War I, the death camps of World War II and the Russian gulags seemed to indicate the results of a total loss of the sacred. Armstrong argues we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion myth is false or inferior. She says we need them to help us identify with all of humanity, create a spiritual attitude and help us become transcendent. The stakes are high. "Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet," Armstrong concludes.

Howard refuses to put out Nalliah’s fire

Australian PM John Howard has refused to cut ties with the controversial Catch the Fire Ministries despite its leader’s links the far right League of Rights group. Church leader Danny Nalliah has addressed the holocaust-denial group in 2005 (pictured) and has accepted another invite to address the league again. Nalliah has had private audiences with Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello. Howard described the League of Rights as “a bit anti-Semitic,” but said he could not be responsible for what the people he meets do. Nalliah is unrepentant. "I would not change my view. I stand by it," he told The Age. "I am a Christian minister — my task is to go after the sinner, not cast away the sinner. There is no one beyond redemption".

Grahame Leonard, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said Nalliah’s view were naive "at best" given the league's anti-Semitic stance. He also cautiously chastised Howard, who has long been a staunch supporter of Israel. “We would urge all our politicians to publicly distance themselves from the pastor and his views,” he said. The B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission and the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council also criticised Nalliah’s decision to accept the league’s invitation.

This is not the first time Nalliah has run into trouble with racial vilification. In January 2004, Nalliah fell foul of Victoria’s controversial Racial and Religious Tolerance Act in the first case before the Victorian Civil and Administration Tribunal (VCAT). VCAT found against him for vilifying Muslims. The tribunal said that he was one of two pastors to suggest the Koran promoted murder and looting, Muslims wanted to take over Australia and terrorists were true Muslims. However the Victorian Supreme Court overturned the verdict last year saying the Act does not “mandate religious tolerance”.

Religious tolerance is not something anyone can accuse the Sri Lankan born Nalliah. In 2004 he was the second person on the Family First ticket for the Federal Senate election in Victoria. During the campaign Nalliah called on his followers to “pull down Satan's strongholds”. These strongholds included bottle shops, brothels, casinos, gambling places, mosques and temples. Nalliah wasn’t talking about Christian temples, he meant Freemason, Buddhist and Hindu ones. While party chair Peter Harris distanced himself from these comments, Nalliah's rhetoric had results. Steve Fielding - the man ahead of Nalliah on the ticket - was successfully elected.

Danny Nalliah was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, in 1964. In his early years he played in a band in Colombo. After “finding God” Nalliah began to preach to congregations in Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia. He arrived in Australia in 1997 and founded Catch the Fire Ministries soon afterwards. The group is associated with the Pentecostalist Assemblies of God and has grown to be one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the country. Ten thousand people get the Catch the Fire newsletter and Nalliah is now head of Rise Up Australia, a national prayer group with over a hundred affiliated churches.

On Australia Day this year, Nalliah held a service at Melbourne’s Festival Hall, a venue normally reserved for rock concerts. Prime Minister John Howard agreed to provide a DVD message for the service. Margaret Simons described the event in her book “Faith, Money and Power”. The venue was bedecked in Australian flags and Catch the Fire’s flame-coloured banners. A choir sang on a stage backdropped by pictures of Uluru. An usherette danced in the aisle while waving a flag. Simons instinctively recognised a dangerous combination of religious and nationalistic fervour.

Nalliah spoke to the assembled audience. His speech on this occasion was benign but fitted in with the theme. He praised the “freedom of Australia”, thanked the armed forces serving overseas, emergency services fighting bushfires and prayed for the country’s leaders. He was followed on stage by other pastors and then some students, one of whom denounced postmodernism “with its claim that truth is a matter of opinion”.

After an hour and a half Nalliah finally introduced the message from John Howard. Nalliah said that Catch the Fire had also approached Opposition leader Kevin Rudd to send a message but Rudd was unable to do so “because of all his business and travel”. On his DVD speech, Howard spoke of the shared values and of the “great contribution Christianity has made to our country”. He concluded by congratulating Catch the Fire for “bringing Christians from many denominations together for this celebration” and he wished them all a very happy Australia Day. His minute long address was lacklustre and greeted with muted applause and cynical laughter. While Howard was widely criticised for making the DVD, the audience didn’t care about it at all. Simons said many had left the auditorium before the speech ended.

Nalliah has not decided to stand for election this time round. However the pastor has thrown his support behind the Prime Minister and his heir apparent Peter Costello. In a letter sent to the Catch the Fire faithful, he said the Lord had told him to meet personally with Howard and Costello. There Nalliah was to “prophetically prepare Federal Treasurer Peter Costello as the future Prime Minister of Australia”. Nalliah met Costello on 9 August and Howard one day later. Unfortunately he could not share the timing of the Costello handover with his flock or disclose what else transpired in the meetings. But whatever he said, it had resonance. Howard continues to stand by Danny Nalliah despite his racist rants.

Senate candidates public forum in Brisbane

Last night, the Brisbane suburb of Mansfield held a Senate candidates forum at the Broadwater Road Uniting Church. The session was entitled “Your Faith, Your Vote, Your Voice” and was a community election forum organised by the local Uniting, Anglican and Catholic churches. It was moderated by ABC religious programming executive producer David Busch and featured senate candidates from five political parties: Liberal (Sen. Sue Boyce), Labor (Sen. Claire Moore), Democrat (Sen. Andrew Bartlett), Greens (Larissa Waters) and Family First (Jeff Buchanan). The five candidates all gave introductory speeches and then answered a series of questions from three panellists Rev John Parkes (Assistant Anglican Bishop of Brisbane), Sr Kathleen Tynan (Co-ordinator, Catholic Social Action Office) and Andrew Johnson (Uniting Church Justice and International Mission Advocate).

Aboriginal elder Aunty Jean Philips began the evening with an acknowledgement of the traditional owners of the land (interestingly, this was an acknowledgement reiterated by all candidates and panellists except for Liberal and Family First). After an opening prayer by the local Uniting church minister Bruce Johnson, Rick Sheehan (Chair of the Catholic Justice & Peace Commission) read a prepared paper about faith at the ballot box. The paper urged Christians to “take their democratic freedoms seriously and become involved in the political process”. It encouraged “people of faith” to include the test of the common good as well as their own interests when casting a vote and should ask who is the beneficiary of economic policies.

Larissa Waters of the Greens was the first candidate to speak. She began by saying she had noticed a “real shift” in the last election towards less compassion, more selfishness and less concern for the community – “not values I hold” she hastened to add. She spoke of the four key principles of Green policies to combat this tendency. They were: ecological sustainability, peace and non-violence, social justice and grassroots democracy. She said that if the Greens won the balance of power in the Senate, they would use tax cuts to finance clean, green, renewable energies – not “unproven clean coal or toxic nuclear waste". She also spoke in favour of public transport, dealing with poverty, free access to health and education, affordable housing and an end to our "pre-emptive strike" foreign policy.

Liberal Senator Sue Boyce spoke next. Boyce was elevated to the Senate in April to fill the casual vacancy left by Santo Santoro’s resignation after a share scandal. Because Santoro’s term expires in 2008, Boyce is up for re-election. She began by saying said one thing underpins everything else in this election: a strong economy. This allows the government to deliver universal medical care, education and equity. She said families have been better off under the 11 years of coalition government and only the coalition could effectively manage the prosperity to benefit Australia with new industries, road funding and indigenous programs. Boyce said the government have spent $660 million on climate change programs and said only they could deliver the innovation and choices needed to solve complex problems.

She was followed by Labor Senator Claire Moore, also up for re-election. She began by saying she was “one of those terrible union officials mentioned over the last few years”. She said the political system needed to be “valued and respected” and the need for a strong economy must be permeated by compassion and respect. Like Waters, Moore noticed a sense of division in the community and said politicians “must engage with people to ensure they are part of the future”. She noted this was anti-poverty week and we needed more compassion for those most disadvantaged in the community.

Jeff Buchanan from Family First spoke next. He said he was passionate about the family’s fundamental role in society and his values were informed by his faith and life experiences. He said he was the leader of Family First’s Queensland team and promised the party would be a voice in Canberra for families, farmers and small businesspeople. Buchanan said the party was objective and “no one’s lapdog”. He also said Family First doesn’t agree with WorkChoices and the loss of public holiday, overtime, penalty rates and redundancy entitlements.

Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett was the last candidate to speak. He began by saying democracy wasn’t working well at the moment. He said that diversity was not being taken into account in the political process. Bartlett highlighted the disadvantages of Australia’s first people and our inability to listen to their problems. He said there was a growing gap between the country’s haves and have-nots. Bartlett believed that the Democrats have demonstrated “sensible economic policies” over the years with a balanced approach to workplace issues. He said more needed to be done to recognise those people who bear extra burdens such as volunteers and carers for those with disabilities. Bartlett said that climate change was not just an environmental issue, it was a moral issue and we needed to focus more on what he called “the common good”.

The panel then got involved and began by asking the politicians what contribution they could make to achieve balanced democracy in the Senate. Bartlett said this was a crucial issue and the Senate was not getting enough focus in the campaign. This issue was “core business” for the Democrats. Senator Boyce rejected the charge that the government had stifled debate in the Senate. She said “standing committees and enquiries produce worthwhile results”. Senator Moore lamented the lack of knowledge in the public about how the Senate works. She said the Senate worked best in a committee system where it had “the opportunity to listen to the community and make recommendations”. Larissa Waters said that since the government won a Senate majority in 2004 it had cut committees and guillotined debates. “The house needs to become a house of review again,” she said. Buchanan agreed that it was remarkable how little most people knew about the role of the Senate.

The second question asked what the ends to the economy were. Senator Boyce saw a strong economy as an effective strategy to reduce poverty. She said that she believed in the power of work to overcome the gap of haves and have-nots. She said a million people had genuine reasons why they could not work and the system would support them, but, she added “work underpins it”. Waters decried the $32 billion tax cut election promise announced by the government this week. She said it was “not a proportional response” when hospital waiting lists and the costs of education were sky-rocketing. She added action on climate change was also crucial. Senator Moore said that policies “must include compassion”. People who have no choice but to seek welfare should not be labelled for it, she said. Sen Bartlett noted that many roles in society are not properly valued. He said community work “doesn’t measure up right” as productivity. This, he said, was not the government’s fault but society’s. He said the social fabric was not recognised.

The third topic was IR laws and whether there was a way beyond what panellist Andrew Johnson called “the dichotomy” between employers and employees. Buchanan said Family First’s dictum was “work to live not live to work”. He said work-life balance issues needed to be addressed in Workchoices and they would work with the government of the day to fix this up. Senator Moore spoke about the “demonising” of workers’ rights and said they should share in the prosperity and not just be valued as a “unit of labour”. She said unions don’t want conflict and the country needs to work together to achieve results. Senator Boyce denied there was a dichotomy and said “as an employer, I give a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”. But she said that without Workchoices, there was no flexibility to encourage those with better work ethics. The majority of employers were small businesspeople “not oligarchs of industry”, she said. Senator Bartlett said that the only reason Workchoices existed at all was because of the 2004 Senate result. He didn’t recall John Howard saying before that election the IR laws needed repairing. Bartlett said that the gap between reality and political rhetoric was “huge”. Waters said that most people were worse off under Workchoices and it didn’t take into account that “happy workers are productive workers”.

The candidates were then asked about their views on the environment. Waters said that Queensland was the Sunshine State but we were not doing enough with solar energy. She said coal was creating problems for the whole world. “Climate change is an ethical issue,” she said. “The impact is disproportionate on the worse off”. Senator Boyce said that since 1998 the government has spent $3.5 billion in climate change initiatives in clean coal, solar and wind energies. She hailed the Australian led Asia Pacific Partnership and the Sydney Declaration at APEC to set targets for 2020. Sen Moore said that Labor would announce its climate change policy “soon” and Labor would work closely with the state government to achieve results. She said Labor “would not walk away from coal”.

The next question was what qualities Australians needed to integrate refugees and asylum seekers. Buchanan said the asylum laws were tight enough but we needed to process them more quickly. Sen Bartlett disagreed about the laws and labelled them “a disgrace”. He said putting refugees and their children into prison is a deliberate strategy of “stress and harm”. “We have a responsibility not to demonise or play on prejudices,” he said. “For politicians this is particularly unacceptable”.

The final question was how each of the parties would deal with indigenous issues. Sen Bartlett said we needed to make it a priority and “listen more” to what they say. He said the Senate only had one day to examine the 500 pages of the Little Children are Sacred report and its authors were prevented from giving evidence to the Senate Committee. Senator Moore said the evidence that was presented was serious but she too was unhappy with the lack of consultation. She said “the idea that child abuse is [just] an indigenous issue is criminal”. Senator Boyce said that 350 people did give evidence to the tribunal and Minister Mal Brough consulted with many elders and tribal women. She said “Brough was desperate to help”. Waters said that sending the army into the Northern Territories doesn’t help. She said indigenous people needed representation and abolishing ATSIC was not the answer.

This was a useful forum to hear prospective Senate candidates air their views. Queensland currently elects 12 senators (5 Libs, 4 Lab, 2 Nats, 1 Dem). Six of these (2 Lib, 2 Lab, 1 Nat and 1 Dem) are up for re-election this time. While predicting the Senate result is difficult to the complexity of preference deals yet to be revealed. It is likely that Queensland will elect 2 Labor, 2 Liberal, 1 National and a sixth to be fought over by the Democrats, Greens, Family First and Pauline Hanson. In 2004, the Liberals won the 6th seat from the Democrats on the 175th count (pdf), giving them an overall majority in the Senate.