Introduction - Religion and Spirituality
In the past few decades much has been written about an emerging spirituality in Western social contexts which is evident in the different expressions and pathways followed by individuals in their ongoing search for meaning and purpose, and their answers to questions such as: Why am I here? or Where am I going? Since much of this is happening outside traditional frameworks of religion and/or family, it has led to a burgeoning commercial enterprise in the shape of books, courses, lifestyles and so on, all on offer and which promise some progress, understanding and even enlightenment on the ‘spiritual’ journey.
In particular, attention has been given to the way in which religion and spirituality have developed separate identities in the contemporary context, and while they are undoubtedly linked for many, for others, spirituality is perceived as quite a distinct entity from religion. Nonetheless, in the perceptions of many educators involved in religious education, spirituality is still closely bound with religiosity so that the expressions of each become blurred, one into the other.
The spirituality of young people has been of interest to researchers for several years now and writings and discussions have continued to revisit and redevelop explanatory theories and concepts. One feature that has been highlighted in understanding contemporary spirituality especially as it pertains to Generation Y (as some researchers have identified them), is the individualistic nature of the search for meaning and the subsequent expressions of spirituality (for instance, see the latest findings of Mason, Webber, Singleton and Hughes, 2006). Previously, theorists appear to have contradicted this view when they have discussed aspects of young people’s lives in terms of both individual and communal yearnings. This could be because of the particular samples of young people used in different studies, some of which have been more or less restricted to particular groups, while others have included a large variety of young people from different religious, cultural and social backgrounds. For instance, Richard Eckersley’s (1997) study of young Australian’s perceptions of the future found that their dreams of their future were of a society where less emphasis was placed on the individual, on competition and material wealth and on enjoying ‘the good life’. Instead they desired more focus on community and family, cooperation and the environment. Some expressed their wishes in terms of a greater recognition of the ‘natural’, ‘human’ or ‘spiritual’ aspects of life. Further, Hugh Mackay (2001) identified this theme when writing about young people. He suggested that their ‘tribal identity’ often meant more to them than their personal identity and claimed that when their experience of family life was one of fragmentation or when their traditional sources of identity were lost or blurred, this generation didn’t retreat into isolation; it connected and searched for a new framework to help them make sense of life in an uncertain world:
For some the new framework is spiritual. For others, it is based on the desire to reconnect with ‘the herd’, so that individuals obtain a stronger sense of identity and of emotional security from re-creating communal
connections that simulate the ‘village life’ to which so many Australians aspire (p. 5)
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As well, Maria Harris (Harris & Moran 1998) described the vital element in the spirituality of young people as:
… its connectedness, its relational and communal character, which is in contrast to a privatized and individualistic spirituality. The impulse towards connectedness places the practice of justice in a special and privileged place, with justice understood as ‘fidelity to the demands of all our relations’. Such justice includes not only our relations to other human beings; it includes our relations to the nonhuman universe as well: to the other animals, the trees, the ocean, the earth, and the ozone layer (p. 46).
Harris’s focus on connectedness was supported by British researchers Hay and Nye (1998) who discussed the relationality of children’s lives in terms of a ‘relational consciousness’ as the essence of children’s spirituality, that is, the relationship of I-Other, I-Self, I-World and I-God. Once again, themes of individuality and connectedness underlie these respective theories.
Indeed, several years ago I referred to the individual and communal expressions that appeared to be constants in the way young people saw their needs and their futures (de Souza, 2001). I drew on the reports from the youth forums that were held during Youth Week Victoria in 2000 and which included 2250 students from 162 Victorian schools. These reports identified major issues in 12 areas that affected young people (Youth Forum Report 2000) and for each they proposed a list of recommendations for action by government agencies, schools and community groups. There were two common threads that ran through these lists. The first was a focus on the value of community and cooperation and the second was a focus on valuing youth and individuality.
The contradictions inherent in these different writings would suggest that there is some confusion about the understanding of the nature of individualism. One argument that helps to illuminate these differences was offered by Moffett (1994):
The nature of individualization has also been evolving, some stages of which are selfish and narcissistic, attained by the majority now, further stages of which, attained by a leading minority, are empathic and compassionate. The latter seem to return to the original group solidarity, but there is a world of difference between the primal herd feeling, which is unconscious and incapable of personal thought or action, and the expanded consciousness of the individual who has parlayed self-cultivation into transcendence (p. 10).
Certainly, young and middling adults today were born into a lifestyle of the sixties, seventies and eighties that favoured the individual over the community since it is one that their parents, and in some cases, their grandparents have maintained. Accordingly, individuality has become such a strong and essential ingredient of their self-expressions that many may reject the tendency to have labels attributed to them, such as Generation X or Y, the Echo-boomers, and Screenagers, which have been variously applied to them by previous generations. At the same time, as Moffett
argues, they appear to be comfortable with the concept of an individuality that can exist within a communal context. If we were to accept Moffett’s argument, there are implications for all educators, that is, a need to raise our awareness of the respective roles of individuality and community in the lives of young people since it is probable that both would provide frameworks for their relationality and therefore be closely connected to their expressions of religiosity and spirituality. As well, it could be expected that if a characteristic of Generation Y’s spirituality was centred on relationality and connectedness, they would have a tendency to be more tolerant of diversity which would, in turn, correspond to a lesser tendency towards being judgemental.
However, these findings for the most part, relate to a generation that has already or has nearly passed through existing educational structures. Accordingly, they have less relevance for current classroom practitioners and new research is clearly needed to guide and inform decision making and planning in future educational programs and environments. Certainly, there are other factors that have crept into modern day scenarios which, potentially, could be of greater concern and which, I believe, may be contributing to the development of a less tolerant society, including less tolerance for religious and cultural diversity. This issue relates clearly to the generation that currently fills primary and secondary classrooms as well as those who are entering tertiary institutions today; and it is a significant element that needs consideration in any educational program. Today’s children and young people, born around 1990, have grown up against a backdrop dominated by media coverage of continued tension between the US and the Middle East, particularly Iraq. Our eighteen year-old, first year university students were around 3 or 4 years when the Gulf War dominated our media, and they lived through the subsequent news coverage of tension in the Middle East and Afghanistan through the nineties. Thus, their formative and impressionable years were lived in the context of continuing news items about radical and extremist adherents of Islam culminating, when they were around 13 years old, in the terrorist attacks on the twin towers and the ensuing war against terrorism. Accordingly, they have grown up in a context of fear generated by media commentaries and political invective associating terrorism with Muslims without any discussion about the differences within Islamic perspectives and practices, which may be likened to the differences within Christianity. Not surprisingly, this has encouraged clear signs of divisiveness through society; a divisiveness that stems from a lack of knowledge about social, cultural, religious and racial aspects of different groups of people with the unfortunate result being the development of an attitude of ‘them’ and ‘us’.
Both the factors that have been discussed so far, that is, the separation of spirituality and religion and the associated decline of religious influence, as well as the signs that we are becoming a less tolerant society, have provoked a reactionary stance from religious and political leaders alike so that there have been calls for a return to more conservative and traditional frameworks which, it is hoped, will take us back to a period of greater uniformity and stability, and within which a more authoritarian leadership style would
preside. Pertinent, here, is Law’s (2006) discussion of education from an authoritarian stance where he suggests that the human person has a tendency towards tribalism and that we are particularly attracted to ‘them and us’ thinking:
By holding up the twisted looking-glass of tribalism, in which ‘they’ appear dirty, smelly, amoral, and perhaps even less than fully human, while ‘we’ take on a noble countenance (we may even find ourselves reflected back as ‘the chosen people’ or ‘the master race’), an Authority can foster still deeper feelings of loyalty to the group, its leadership and its beliefs, making it still more difficult for its members to question them (p. 30).
Without doubt, one may be able to detect certain overtones that support the above contention if one conducts an analysis of some of the political diatribe that has seared our consciousness in recent years, with comments like ‘we don’t want people like that’ from the children overboard scenario to the coining of a new word, ‘un-Australian’, or indeed, the more recent calls for all migrants to adopt ‘Australian values’, no matter that these words themselves come down heavily on the side of ambiguity rather than clarity.
Indeed, it could be argued that an attitude of ‘them and us’ may have become an unconscious element in the nature of Australian identity and behaviour since it was clearly evident for most of the first two hundred years of its history of white settlement in Australia, even though there was only one dominant culture, Anglo Saxon/Celtic, and one dominant religion, Christianity. Within such a mono-cultural/religious context, the Catholics with their Celtic origins were a marginalized people and, in the setting up of their own schools, they promoted their Catholic identity as distinct from other Christian denominations and, as is often the case with marginalized people, they turned inwards for strength and support. Such a tendency may often lead to the development of communities where close engagement with other tends to be restricted to those who are of like background and culture. Indeed, if one examines the patterns of leadership within contemporary Australian Catholic/Christian communities, there would appear to be lingering traces of this insularity since it is dominated by people of Anglo origins with little evidence of the multiculturalism that is apparent in the wider society.
A relevant theory linked to a lack of engagement with those who are different is offered by Wilson (2002) who argues that nonconscious processing of information or learning experiences is a significant element in the development of prejudices. In general, people unknowingly develop two attitudes to everything: one is at the conscious level but the other level is non-conscious. This is what Wilson calls the ‘adaptive unconscious’. Wilson’s theory does have implications for the attitudes people may develop towards minority groups because if prejudice exists at conscious and unconscious levels, it can and will affect the way they behave towards people who are different from themselves. Thus, if children grow up with constant exposure to media presentations or parents’ attitudes which demonstrate particular viewpoints, it is not surprising if they absorb these at a non-conscious level. If, at a conscious level, they learn, through education or wider experience that there may be another way of perceiving things,
they may make a conscious effort to overcome their previous attitudes. However, at a non-conscious level, these original perceptions and attitudes may prevail which will, ultimately, impact on their attitudes and behaviours, and this is particularly so if the context is tense or uncomfortable. Accordingly, Wilson states:
The adaptive unconscious might have learned to respond in prejudiced ways, on the basis of thousands of exposures to racist views in the media or exposure to role models such as one’s parents. Some people learn to reject such attitudes at a conscious level, and egalitarian views become a central part of their self-stories. They will act on their conscious, non-prejudiced views when they are monitoring and controlling their behaviour, but will act on the more racist disposition of their adaptive unconscious when they are not monitoring or cannot control their actions (p.190).
It is a contention here, that Wilson’s theory about the adaptive unconscious may have a role in the negative public views that have been recently expressed towards particular religious groups by some prominent Australian Christian religious and political leaders. If we draw on the earlier discussion, which pointed to the fact that many Australians who grew up in the fifties and sixties did not experience or engage with cultures different from their own. As well, they were more inclined to expect newcomers to assimilate and learn to be ‘Australian’ in the sense of the mainstream culture and this was promoted by government policies for assimilation. It is more than possible, then, that many older Australians may not have developed real understanding of or empathy with people who are different. Unfortunately, the fact that most Australians perceive themselves to be a fairly tolerant people may actually make them complacent and, possibly, hinder the development of any perceptive insights about some of the overt incidents of racial intolerance which have begun to occur. Instead, these may be treated as isolated incidents and nothing more serious. Consequently, little may be done to address these elements in ways that are likely to have a significant impact on the wider community or to promote serious engagement with the other who is different, and which may be a way forward from tolerance to empathy.
The above discussion highlights various issues that need to be addressed by educators, particularly in the field of religious education. However, before that, another emerging feature of the contemporary western world, which has been identified by some writers, has relevance here and is examined next.
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Author: Marian de Souza
