Category: religion

Did We Not Do Enough?


In the past two weeks, I have been thinking about the late Kim Beazley, Snr. I knew the great man slightly when I was a priest at Christ Church Claremont, and he was a parishioner. I greeted him after church each Sunday. I visited him at his home in Cottesloe, and on one memorable occasion, he took my colleague John Warner and me to a long lunch at Parliament House, combined with a history of the characters in the Labor Party before the split. He was a lively raconteur.  

I have also been thinking of the Headmasters Conference and their actions beginning in the 1930s.

I have been thinking that the massacre at Bondi Beach last week could have been prevented if their vision had been grasped back then.

In 1938, the Headmasters Conference consisting of the Heads of all the Independent boys’ schools in Australia, together with those of some Catholic Schools, were disturbed by the rise of antisemitism in Europe. The Conference proposed that an association to promote the high-quality teaching of religion in Australian schools should be created.

The war intervened, and nothing came of the proposal until 1974, when the HMC and the Association of the Heads of Girls Schools Australia (AHIGSA) formed the Australian Association for Religious Education. I joined AARE in 1975 and over the next 30 years I served at State and National levels, so I know this Association well. And there have been other similar associations.

The question haunts me; did we not do enough? Did we fail to raise the quality of the teaching of religion? Maybe we could have stemmed the tide of antisemitism, Islamophobia and all the other hatreds of different religious groups.

Teaching in schools about religion may have had more effect if the educational community had listened to Kim Beazley, as Australia’s Minister for Education in 1973-75. Mr Beazley proposed a National Curriculum consisting of nine learning areas. He included Religion as a learning area alongside English, Maths and Science. He meant, of course, not the doctrinaire teaching of Christianity – although he was a Christian – but the proper teaching of the religions in our society.

Other prominent educators, like Professor Brian Hill, Foundation Professor of Education at Murdoch University, who was one passionate advocate, pushed for the inclusion of religion in the general curriculum.

It is true that the learning area of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) mandate some attention to religion in society. And the Arts cannot avoid the heritage of Christians and others who have made wonderful music, literature, paintings, and sculpture to express their faith. Some educators told us that we should be content just to have religion included within other learning areas.

Teachers resist the teaching of religions believing that they are not sufficiently informed about the subject. To me, that is a sad excuse. We can all be better informed. That’s why the Principals of Independent Schools set up the AARE with its biennial Conference model of in-service preparation for their teachers. Teacher educators could easily devise similar in-service for teachers in State Schools.

Imagine if as much effort had been poured into the teaching of Religion as has been poured into English and Maths. Imagine if the students graduating from our High Schools, both public and private, had a sympathetic understanding of Islam, and Judaism, and Christianity, of Hinduism, and Buddhism, and Bahai, of Taoism and Shinto, and Confucianism, of paganism, and Wicca, as well as Indigenous culture as a special and focused Australian spirituality.

Imagine if those students had met Australian adherents of those religions, individual Jews or Buddhists or Christians and recognised them, as they would, as fellow Australians, fellow human beings.  Imagine how that would percolate through society and act as a damper on religious hatred. (Not to mention how much richer their own lives would be.)

Maybe that would have been enough to stop this hatred of religions, especially the hatred of the Jews.

It is possible that I’m overstating the case. No amount of high-quality education would likely have stopped the shooters at Bondi on 14 December 2025. They were too filled with hatred.

But great educators like Kim Beazley Snr, Sir James Darling (Geelong Grammar’s renowned Headmaster from 1930-1961), Peter Moyes (Headmaster of Christ Church Grammar in Claremont from 1952-1982, and my mentor in AARE) and Brian Hill, must all be wondering whether it would have been any different if Australia had listened to them.

Courtesy Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, Canada

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Ted Witham is a Life Member and former President of AARE, and was Executive Director of The Churches’ Commission on Education (YouthCARE WA) from 1999-2003, and founding Convenor of the National Association of Government School Chaplaincy Providers (now called Chaplaincy Australia) from 2000-2003.

He taught Religious Education as Senior Chaplain to Christ Church Grammar School  (1978-1984). He also followed Professor Brian Hill from 1998-2004 as the teacher of the unit ‘Religious Education in Schools’ to students at Murdoch University preparing to be teachers.

In 1985, AHIGSA and HMC amalgamated to become AHISA, the Association of Heads of Independent Schools Australia

The dangerous badge


The badge has arrived in the mail. Although the package was quite small it may provoke savage reactions and will certainly be misunderstood.

Years ago, I was much more politically active and wore badges to signal my involvement in different causes. I have kept a cloth bag of badges made with those old, primitive badge-makers. I shake them out onto the table, and I see now I supported the Campaign Against Racial Exploitation, Amnesty International, the Wilderness Society and all the predictable leftist crusades.

But this new badge is partly to protest the media who have so manipulated our sympathy that we lose our wider view and demonise a whole group of society.

The badge is a blue star of David on a white background. I will be wearing Israel’s colours, Israel’s symbol.

But why?

It may seem perverse, then, to wear a badge proclaiming. עם ישראל חי” (om Israel chai – let Israel live): how could I show support for a nation set on the annihilation of another?

The media encourage us to make a moral calculation: on October 7th in 2023, 1,200 Israeli citizens were killed and 240 were abducted by Hamas. In defending their country, Israelis killed 1,500 Palestinian terrorists. We want to cry out, ‘Isn’t that enough killing? Isn’t an additional 40,000 Palestinian deaths and flattening of homes overkill?’

Possibly like you, I also wonder whether razing Gaza is a precursor, as President Trump advocates, for wholesale dispossession. ‘Take them somewhere nice,’ he says with a blasé smile, their fate evidently irrelevant to him.

Like you, I have long been aghast at Israel’s harassing Palestinians and clearing them from the West Bank, and the current intensification of the IDF’s activity in the refugee camps where, apparently, terrorists peek out from under every Palestinian bed.

But consider Israel. I see a nation lashing out in fear. Many Israelis are children and grandchildren of the Holocaust. They are terrified that they will again be wiped out. They feel abandoned by the Western nations that created the State of Israel 76 years ago.  Their only friend seems to be the US, and that friendship under President Trump now seems brittle too.

For me, that cannot justify Israel’s behaviour in Gaza. But it goes a long way to explain it. And we have rarely seen that mortal dread expressed in the media. So I support Israel as it recoils from violence done to it. It is scared for its life.

Secondly, there is the agony of the hostages; their own agony, but also the agony of their loved ones and fellow citizens. They’ve ached for them to be returned. They’ve raged against their Government for continually prioritising the military response over bringing the hostages home. I stand with all the hostage families. They’re Israelis.

Thirdly, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics counts over 2 million Arab citizens. One Israeli citizen in every five is Arab or Palestinian. At least one Arab is a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. These Israelis are harassed, interrogated and imprisoned if they speak a word against Israel’s actions in Gaza. But they’re Israelis.

Lastly, not all Israelis approve of their Prime Minister. They see his political calculus. He wants to cling to power. He needs to stay in power to forestall criminal proceedings against him. Ordinary Israelis feel the whole gamut of reactions to Netanyahu, from approval to active support, but also from disappointment to feeling betrayed by him. I stand with the critics of the Israeli government.

I like Jewish culture. At its best Judaism is a powerful moral and intellectual force in the world. I like the whole gamut of Jewish ritual from the blast of the shofar to Sabbath meals. It’s no accident that Jews are over-represented in fields as diverse as medicine and music. Judaism was the cradle of Christianity.

Judaism produced the extraordinary collection of books we call the Old Testament. The Jewish Scriptures contain amazing poetry, stunning philosophy and intriguing theology.  I have invested years learning Hebrew and studying the pages of these fascinating books from Genesis to Malachi.

I stand with the Jews’ legacy as builders of an ethical and aesthetic civilisation.

I look into my heart. In the end, I cannot but wear the blue and white badge even it offends random observers. I cannot but stand with Israel.

Keeping alive the rumour of God


One of the few vestiges of “Establishment” in the Anglican Church of Australia is the authority of clergy to act as Commissioners for Declarations. [This authority is unlikely to be withdrawn as it is one of the requirements of Marriage Celebrants.] Several times a year fellow residents of our retirement village ask me to witness their signatures on legal documents. I am glad to oblige. I have even had a stamp made to save me from having to write by hand “The Reverend Edward Peter Witham, Registered Minister of Religion W-ZZZZ.

As a CD, my responsibility is to witness that people have correctly signed their documents. For that I need to know the form of the document – will, passport photo, statutory declaration, bank business, etc. – but not the content. However, most people when they come to sign want to share the background to the document. For my part, I assure them of confidentiality.

So people in the Village do know now that I am a priest – or at least, a handy person for witnessing their signature!

However, when we moved into this village five years ago, we decided we would downplay our faith. We had heard an anecdote about one of the village owners who apparently declared that a public area in the Village Centre would be ideal “for Bible Study or the like”. This remark evoked a strong reaction, almost outrage, among some people.

We thought that if there are people outraged by the thought of Bible study, being public Christians in the village could be counter-productive.

We have discovered the other church-goers in the Village, and we encourage one another in conversation and with cards at Easter and Christmas. We continue all our practice of Christianity outside the Village, both in church attendance and in our involvement in the Franciscan Third Order.

But I treat the Village as though it were a country where wearing distinctive religious garb is banned. I have only once worn my dog-collar in the Village or twice, if you count my performance as the Vicar in the murder mystery one year! I rarely advertise church events within the Village, and if I do, I do it discreetly.

Our stance of being so coy about our faith has been challenged. Once a colleague at church loaned us a DVD of a Passion Play performed in the gardens of Government House. We watched it in our house. When we returned the DVD to our friend, he asked why we had not had a public showing of it in the Village cinema. That was his idea of evangelism. I tried to explain that it might be seen, in our Village, not as an invitation to the Gospel but as an intrusion.

Inspired by Charles de Foucauld and the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, we just try to keep alive the idea of God in our village. The challenge in that is to evangelise simply by presence requires great holiness. If I am not steeped in prayer, and if my lifestyle lacks integrity and sacrifice, then keeping my Christianity quiet in our relatively benign environment may just be an excuse not to talk about Jesus Christ at all.

I am encouraged that people ask me to witness them signing legal documents, and in doing so, to witness something of their trials and difficulties, but, as Lent begins, I am conscious that I have to use my praying and my decisions to be more transparent to God and the Gospel. Brother Charles de Foucauld has set a very high standard!

The Nine Lives of India’s Religions


William Dalrymple, Nine lives: in search of the sacred in modern India, Knopf 2010.
Hardcover 304 pages. Approx. $27 posted from online stores.
Reviewed by Ted Witham
Published in REJA, the journal of the Australian Association for Religious Education, Volume 21, No. 2, 2010

I took my first tentative steps in teaching Indian religion 30 years ago. I still remember my confusion: I learned lists of Four Noble Truths and Eight Right Pathways; I rehearsed the story of Gautama’s enlightenment to tell in class; I read about Shiva and Ganesh. But I couldn’t sort out why some Buddhists are effectively atheists, while others worship the Buddha as a god. I didn’t understand how Hindus appeared to worship hundreds of gods while the text books said there was one, or perhaps three, gods in Hinduism.

No doubt I passed on my confusion to my students. I could have done with Dalrymple’s engaging book then.

Only many years later I learned that “Buddhism” and “Hinduism” were effectively the creation of 19th Century English and German scholars, who had only recently classified Islam and Judaism as “religions”. These scholars cast their eyes across the practices of the teeming shrines of South Asia looking for religious systems. Not surprisingly, they saw what they were looking for and used the suffix “-ism” to describe them.

As Dalrymple knows, the reality is much more complex, and much more interesting, than can be contained in the religion scholars’ enthusiasm for classification. William Dalrymple is a travel writer living in India. He has a particular interest in religious practice. These are the Nine Lives of nine exceptional holy women and men up and down the country.

This approach achieves three things: first, it personalises what might otherwise be abstract notions of religion. We meet articulate people who know what they believe. With his travel writer’s eye for detail, Dalrymple sets these extraordinary sages in their setting, and allows them to tell their stories. All have found that it has cost dearly to pursue the holy.

Second, it allows Dalrymple the opportunity to describe faith-worlds of the “lay” folk who still flock to the shrines and their holy people. The 2,500 year old practices of India are not dead. Who knows how many of their proverbial “nine lives” they have had?

Third, it helps the Western reader build a picture of the lived reality of Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It shines a light on the difference between a Tamil Buddhist in India’s south and a Tibetan monk in Dharamsala. It lets us see practitioners in many shrines as they intertwine Islamic and Hindu practices and ideas. It describes particularly Indian Sufis, and it shows the pressure the Saudis are placing on them to conform to the austere Wahabbi interpretation of the Qur’an.

Teachers of religion will find this book to be a treasure. Some may use the nine sections of the book to structure a term’s work and allow students to experience the same discovery as the reader. Year 12 and university students could read each chapter in preparation for a class discussion. To use the book in this way for younger students would require more structuring.

Others will be enriched by the contemporary update of their understanding of Indian religions. Others, like me, will recognise how India is not a confusion of spiritualities, but a vibrant, and fascinating, profusion of faith and ritual.

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Ted Witham is the Immediate Past President of AARE. He taught religion in Anglican schools and at Murdoch University. Now retired, he lives in the south-west of Western Australia, where there appears to be minimal religious diversity.