Clinging to the wreckage

However, our freedom, one might say our vacuity, comes at a price and that price is paid out in national superficiality and unquestioned hedonism. It is significant that none of our foundational universities had a place for the study of theology, even though the English models of Oxford and Cambridge were, from their inception, places where this was studied, in their earlier history, exclusively. The role of Oxbridge was for a long time to produced educated priests for the Church of England and in later centuries a first in classics and humanities from Oxbridge opened doors to a whole array of top-level jobs in government and education. In this light the present federal government's attempt to cripple the Humanities through higher fees seem short sighted and philistine. The exclusion of theology as a university subject has nothing to do with the Constitutional ban on an established religion or discrimination according to religion.

While Australia has suffered the decline of the Churches with other Western countries, it appears to be more drastic here because of the fragile base of theological education that is not well supported in the newer universities. The Roman Catholic church has also seen huge decline in congregations but is supporting theological education through campuses of Notre Dame and the Australian Catholic University. It will soon be very difficult to train clergy in Australia and this means that Christianity is destined to resort to a kind of folk religion which is the worst of all outcomes. Witness the support of Trump among white evangelicals.

I might remind readers that theology is not about private religion but about a tradition of rational thinking about what it means to be human that has lain at the base of our civilization for two thousand years. Its absence will and is allowing the uncritical return to "religions" of a different kind, hedonism and mammon being the most common. The accumulative aspect of capitalism threatens to divide society between the rich and the poor and rob us of any understanding of community. There will not be enough of the old morality to hold us in and we will continue down the path of selfish aggrandisement and the search of even higher and luxurious lifestyles.

Horn observed that "Australia does not have a mind. Intellectual life exists but it is still fugitive. Emergent and uncomfortable, it has no established relation to practical life." I was shocked to see a woman on television complaining about the suspension of the football because "that is all we have". If you are male, then you will not get far in conversation with other males if you do not take an interest or support a team in the footy. I am sure other Western countries are similar. It is not that sport is bad, but that it seems to be a place holder for any life of the spirit or the mind. It has become the thing that fills the void. It provides a community of sorts and at least shallow identity, but I think that we rely on it overmuch.

We have come a long way since Donald Horne wrote his Jeremiad against his home country. We do have a thriving arts community and many dedicated readers and theatre goers and the ABC, despite the cuts from the philistines that are so focused on the economy that they do not see that it is the spirit that counts. However, like most Western countries we do not know what we are for.

The default national anthem played endlessly on the ABC, "We are Australian" proclaims that "We share a dream and sing with once voice: I am, you are, we are Australian". What is the dream that we share? Again, no temporal answer will suffice, will keep out temporal values from becoming demonic. There is only one answer to the question of personal and national purpose, and it sounds impossible to the majority in our country, it is to glorify God. What else can be said?