RE 2 Unit study
Nature of religion and beliefs
Introduction
- People ponder the mysteries of human existence and seek to find answers the questions that people have asked and continue to ask about the search of meaning and the ultimate goal of human life –a number of quite distinctive responses have emerged.
- Some come through sacred texts and writings for others such as Australia’s Indigenous people through ancestral myths and stories of Dreaminess expressed through symbolism and art and reenacted in there ceremonies.
- Living religion explores the expression and practice of various belief systems that have emerged throughout the world as people have sought answers to the ultimate question of existence.
- Religion, however one defines it, is complex. It can be a cohesive force in society and, at the same time, a source of division. But the exploration of these different things is exciting.
- What is religion? “Belief in, worship of, or obedience to a supernatural power or powers considered to be divine or to have control of human destiny”. “ The sate of being grasped by ultimate concern’.
- With all these definitions the only common agreement is that is it ‘ something beyond the ordinary’. It has a transcended dimension – and that helps in some way to map a course through life obstacles and limitations of human existence.
- Transcendent Dimension: The belief in a divine being or powers whose existence goes beyond human limitations.
- Immanent Dimension: A world view that recognizes a divine being or powers as a constant reality and active and continuing presence among believers in this world.
- Religion offers believers a specific set of beliefs and practices that gives meaning to there live. Religious adherents use sacred texts ,key beliefs, ethical systems, rituals and ceremonies to confirm the beliefs and to provide them with guidance on how to live there life.
Two types of Religious World Views
- It is possible to distinguish two types of religious world views. The first is a world view that holds belief in a divine power and/or powers beyond the human dimension. This corresponds to the world view held by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The followers of these religions believe in one God why exists beyond the human and yet guides humanity throughout its everyday existence.
- The second world view maintains belief in a divine being or powers dwelling within he individual such a world view is characteristics of Buddhism and Hinduism.
Characteristics of religion
- There are four main characteristics of a religion:
- Beliefs and believers.
All religions are sustained by beliefs and believers. An example is for Christians they believe Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God, the resurrection, forgiveness of sins. The believers are certainly the living Adherents of each tradition. But in some cases it also includes holy people, saints , mystics and other inspirational figures both living and dead.
- Sacred texts and writings
All religions have at there center oral and written sacred texts and writings or other types of stories. In Islam the Qur’an is the central sacred text. This is meditated from and gives directions
- Ethics
Ethics can be understood as the explicit, philosophical and religious reflection on moral beliefs within a tradition. These are central to any religion there purpose is to clarify what is Right and Wrong and what followers of a religion should freely do or refrain form doing.
- Rituals and ceremonies
Rituals and ceremonies are enactments or systems of actions and beliefs that each have a beginning a middle and a end.. They are directly linked to superhuman beings or forces. Rituals and ceremonies in Judaism include male circumcision and Bar Mitzvah as well as significant rituals for marriage, divorce and death.
A dynamic, living religion
-These characteristics create in turn a dynamic, living religion. A dynamic religion is one characterized by energy, ambition, new ideas and practical achievements. It develops into a powerful force that refreshes itself constantly, and therefore avoids settling into a practicable or conservative rut. A living religion is something that is full of life, not dead, decaying or bereft of ideas
The contribution of religion to individuals and to society and culture
- This section on the nature of religion has provided various examples of how religion contributes to individuals and to society and culture. With its claim to a supernatural dimension, revealed religion succeeds in fixing the minds and hearts of its adherents in the here and now while at the same time pointing beyond the material to the spiritual or divine realm.
- They change over time and affect the society and culture in which that changers take place creating a dynamic and living society.
Australian Aboriginal Beliefs and Spiritualities- Dreaming
Nature of dreaming
- Aboriginal: Capitalized when used to describe Aboriginal people
- Culture: the accepted and traditionally patterned ways of behaving, a set of common understandings shared by the members of a group or community Includes land, language, relationships, and indignity.
- Indigenous: Those people who are the original inhabitants of any country.
- Ancestral beings: Those spirits who moved about forming the landscape and creating the plants, animals and as people know the world.
- Dreaming- A complex concept of fundamental importance to Aboriginal culture, embracing the creative past of the ancestral beings as well as the present and the future.
-Initiation: Formal admissions into a society the ceremony of admission.
-Mythological Symbolism: The representation of the stories about supernatural beings and events.
Rite: A formal or ceremonial act or procedure that is described or is customary in a religious or other solemn use. Within the rite there are central rituals.
- In spite of diversity, no matter where Aboriginal people come from in Australia they are recognized and recognize each other as being one people.
- Aboriginal people have been in Australia for more then 40 000 years. When James Cook entered Australia’s history, the Aboriginal life was nomadic or semi nomadic they were living by hunting and gathering using stones and spears.
- Because they were described as this James Cook described the continent as terra nullius which is empty land.
- Dreaming is the CENTRE of Aboriginal religion and life; it’s the closest translation of the Aboriginal concept of how the world works. Dreaming is the past, the present and the future.
- Dreaming is the unseen spiritual world. It is what gives life and reality to the visible life
- In traditional aboriginal Australia, world order comes form all those events in which ancestral beings travel and transform themselves into sites.
- For Indigenous Australians the land is the core of all spirituality-the land is not dead, it is alive with power and the Ancestral beings who live in it. It is impossible to discuss the beliefs and spiritualities of Indigenous Australians without talking about the land.It is the land that gives them their indignity-‘ the land is my mother’.
Religion in Australia Pre 1945
- Religion as defined by Europeans, came with the establishments in 1788 of the British settlement in the colony of New South Wales and was the religion of the British-Christianity. This British Christianity , however was not unified Christianity and the lack of harmony among Christians remained part of Australia’s religious history well into the twentieth century.
- It was not until the mid nineteenth century that there was any official recognition of any religious tradition other then Christianity and that was of Judaism.
- Relative isolation from the rest of the world and a fairly narrow immigration stream form the British Isles endured that the religious make up of Australia did not change much for a hundred years.
- The exceptions to this were waves of non-British immigration during the nineteenth century gold rushes and some refugees around the time of the First World War. The real marker point for a change in the Australian religious landscape came with worldwide upheaval of the Second World War. The end of that war, then, serves as the point up in to the current survey goes.
- In 1845 , those identified as Christians were 98.6% of the population , 72.4% were Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodist and other protestants from Britain and 26.2 % were Catholics from Ireland and Britain.
Arrival and establishment of Christianity
- Formal Christianity came to Australia, rather as an after thought with the first fleet and its church of England chaplain Rev Richard Johnson. On the first fleet , two thirds of the convicts classified themselves as church of England , one third as Roman Catholics.
- For the first thirty years of the new settlement the church if England ministers were the only clergy with any power of influence in the community. They had a role in legislative activity and were supported financially by authorities.
- The church of England was the sate religion of England and it was expected things would be no different in Austral.
-Many were atheist , the church of England never associated with them.
- The catholic convicts despised the religion of the English, a people they saw as their oppressors.
- Al convicts were obliged to attend church of England services but these had little effect in establishing a climate of religious feelings.
The Church of England (Anglican)
-The earliest Church of England ministers were of the low church, or evangelical.
-The evangelicals stressed religion as an individual matter of personal conviction and salvation, as meditated through the bible.
- Support from the colonial government brought many privileges for the Church of England in Australia.
- Bishop William Grant Broughton sought permission of self government for the church in England in 1850. But was declined.
- In 1962 all the parliaments of Australia passed legislation to separate completely the Church of England from its formal link to the Crown under Australian secular law.
The Church of Scotland (Presbyterian)
- Presbyterians were not necessarily the wealthy classes in the nineteenth centaury Australian community.
- Rev. John Dunmore Lang sponsored a significant number of Presbyterians to Australia to escape the poverty of Scotland and also to ensure a Protestant character to NSW.
- Movement towards the union of various divisions within Presbyterianism in Australia was began in the second half of the nineteenth century.
- A national Federal Presbyterian Union was formed in 1901 as the Presbyterian Church of Australia.
The Church of Rome (Roman Catholic)
- In its Australia beginnings, the catholic church was Irish and the Irish were convicts.
- Convicts on board, English laws had led them to rebel.
- In 1798 Irish rebels were transported to Australia in large numbers mainly men who stood up to English oppressors.
- The Irish Catholics were given more piety than some others in the colony, encouraged as from 1820 by the powerful influence of Fr John Terry.
-Therry became a leader to the Irish Catholics.
- The catholic church began to grow in strength. By the 1880s thirty
seven Roman catholic schools were built and running throughout Australia.
The nonconformist Churches
- The nonconformist played a major role in the establishment in Christianity.
- Came from mainly pacific islands
- Samuel Mars den played a major role being the colonies chaplain and planting the seeds for Christianity in Australia.
- There were small groups of them and they continued for years.
- Strong commitment to evangelicalism, they loved missionary work and were active in establishing schools, churches, hospitals.
- It declined throughout the nineteenth century.
Religious Traditions other than Christianity
- Apart from Judaism, it would be difficult to say that any tradition other then Christianity was established in Australia before 1945.
- However other traditions were presented in Australia particular leading up to Federation and the Immigration restriction act of 1901. Which ensured the white Australia policy became Reality.
- After world war 2 the governments drive to repopulate Australia left many nationalities in Australia
Buddhism
-Buddhism probably came to Australia with the Chinese working on the Goldfields these people likely also stood with the popular Daoism as well.
- There was 1.2 percent in Australia in Australia by 1891.
- No many temples were built.
Hinduism
- Hindu Indians first came to Australia with the British families who had employed them in India.
- There we only a couple in the colony that came to Australia.
- Many Hindus that came to Australia in the nineteenth century worked as hawkers traveling around remote communities.
- There were about 3000 Indians in Australia.
- There is not much evidence to suggest they could practice there religion, probably only domestic ceremonies.
Islam
-There were many Muslim presences in Australia before European settlement.
- Nothing much happened except some carvings.
- Majority of them turned back to there homeland after the period of work, the numbers declined in Australia.
Judaism
- There were at least eight Jewish convicts on the first fleet.
- Convict numbers were supplemented by emigrants Jews from Britain’s urban poor and then increasing numbers of middle-class English who brought with them particular Jewish style practices.
- They flourished throughout Sydney and Melbourne.
- They were fleeing persecution, they continued to come all through the twenty century.
The development of Christianity in Australia
-Rivalries between the Church of England and Catholics. Effected how education developed In Australia and in the way social welfare was organized.
Sectarianism
- There has been sectarianism between Christian denominations for ever.
- Mainly between Anglicans and Catholics.
- All Protestants denominations kept apart from the Irish Catholic.
- The First World War was a crucial period in the entrenchment of the sectarian divide between Catholics, and Protestant and Anglican Australia.
- The conscription tore up Australia.
- Not until 1960s that Sectarianism disappeared.
Social Welfare
- In the area of social welfare, agencies such as St Vincent De Paul, the Wesley Central Mission and the Brotherhood of St Lawrence have a major impact today on the lives of Australians.