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…….. a politically progressive force which seeks mass support needs to project a different idea of ‘Australianness’. We need to strongly define the Australian way as one of equality, fairness and tolerance. But, more than that, we need to identify positive ideals and national values of which we can all be proud, and to which we can legitimately expect all Australians (local and overseas born) to be loyal. This already happens to some extent, but still the main definers of loyalty to Australia have the loudest voices and the narrowest ideas of ‘Australian values’. In turn, this encourages progressives to adopt a cosmopolitanism, which is fine as a personal attitude, but is articulated in high-minded and abstract notions that often fail to connect with many people. When articulated in a culture war, this cosmopolitanism fails to translate adequately, and appears remote and elitist to many Australians who take pride in their country. Its values need to be articulated in a national framework. It is no longer sensible to celebrate cultural diversity without also asserting the need for core values common to all members of the nation. Projecting a national pride and identity does not automatically mean promoting Anglo-Celtic values or denying Australia’s Indigenous heritage. It means drawing a distinction between an assimilation which discards the cultures of the Indigenous and non-English-speaking, and an evolving hybrid national identity which values the cultural mix, but also projects agreed common values.

A sense of national identity encourages social cohesion, which is a necessary condition for the continued operation of a welfare state based on the redistribution of wealth. That is, if the middle class and the rich feel no sense that `us’ includes the poor, they will become very hostile to paying taxes to support `them’. This has occurred to some degree already, but in countries where the poor are not from the same ethnicity as the middle and rich, it has proceeded much further—with disastrous consequences. For such reasons, it is vital to build bonds of commonality in a synthetic common culture. In a similar way, in spite of globalisation, the nation remains vital as the forum for the exercise of democracy, the administration of justice and the law and a range of other institutional practices. Given this, what other political vocabulary do we have to talk in popular terms about the common good and the public interest?

What would a progressive ideal of national identity mean in practice? One sample concerns the popularity of environmental issues. Put simply, such concerns have appealed to many peoples’ love of and pride in Australia. In the popular mind, campaigns on environmental issues mean protecting the country they love from the ravages of those who narrowly value only commercial self-interest. Preserving rivers, mountains, rainforests and desert landscapes appeals to a legitimate national pride in a wild and beautiful land.

David McKnight; Beyond Right and Left , 2005, (from last chapter)

To see the universal and all-pervading spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.  And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life.  That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics;  and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.
Gandhi, Autobiography 1948; p. 615

New and Newer Religions: Unitarianism and Eckankar

Mark your diaries for October 2-5 when the Australian and New Zealand Unitarian Universalist conference comes to Sydney.  This year’s theme is ‘Think Truly, Speak Bravely, Act Justly”.  For updates and details, go to http://www.anzua.org/anzua_alt/

Institutional Christianity has always been tied up over and repressive to issues of human sexuality. This stemmed from its move into a dualistic Greek thinking world in the second century that identified flesh and bodies with sinfulness while extolling souls and spirits so pure and holy. In time denying the flesh or the desires of the body came to be identified with Christianity. Later the Church declared that the holy life was the sexless life and so virginity was the pathway to holiness and celibacy was the mark of the holy or priestly life. A wide variety of negative things flowed out of this, including the negativity toward family planning, negativity toward a married priesthood, negativity toward women who were defined as “temptresses” if they were not virgins and the sense that sex was somehow dirty or unclean. For years, women had to go through a ceremonial cleansing after childbirth before they could return to the Church. During the Middle Ages, cathedral choirs were normally made up of men and boys because menstruating women in the choirs might pollute holy places with their unclean menses.

I think it is also fair to say that institutional Christianity’s negativity toward homosexual people and even the outbreak of priestly abuse of young boys that has drained the resources of many part of the Roman Catholic Church in paying off lawsuits is one more illustration that unhealthy and sometimes violent expressions of sexuality always
result from the repression of healthy sexuality.

Once these negative attitudes are present in institutional Christian life, any attempt to change the cultural attitude is defined as immoral.  So nations and states have made it difficult to oppose laws that when they were enacted reflected that distortion of the dominant religious
perspective.

Today, efforts to teach sex education in public school are opposed by an unholy alliance of traditional Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestant fundamentalists. The current administration in Washington, bowing to the pressure of its “religious right” supporters, had advocated the teaching of abstinence instead of sex education. It has been a colossal failure, as statistics reveal. It has been about as effective in curbing sexual activity as the “Just say No” campaign was in controlling drug use. This administration has also refused to fund international family planning clinics around the world for the same reason.

I do see a new day dawning in America on these and many other issues.