I am the chaplain of a high-fee, private, non-denominational boarding and day school. Its student body is broadly multicultural.
Its constitution indicates that our education of
students is to be grounded in Christian Values.
One of its stated aims is ‘to encourage the exploration of students' spiritual values and
their power to make ethical decisions.’
The two notions taken
together appear to be straightforward enough, the sort of ‘motherhood’
statements you’d expect any school to have in its shopfront window.
But if we look closer at how
these align, questions start to emerge.
First: Is it possible to explore
one’s spiritual values and make ethical decisions without reference to
Christian values? Of course it is. Just ask any Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, or Jew.
If you look around, you’ll find a few in SA, and on our campus as well. It is
more than likely they’d report a sense of having their own spiritual values,
and the ability to make ethical decisions based on them.
On what basis, then, is the supremacy
of specifically Christian values merited?
(But we’ll return to that
question of Christian supremacy in a moment…)
Second: WHAT Christian values
are being assumed here? All of them? Some of them—if some, which and why? Not
even Christians agree on what these values are, or which are non-negotiable,
hence the 1001 flavours ranging from The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic
Church to Shakers to 7th Day Adventists to…(add your own here).
But let’s pick ONE Christian
Value that seems to be the most basic and that therefore all who call
themselves Christian should agree on. It’s expressed in Galatians 5:14--
“For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping
this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
That’s the familiar Golden
Rule. But wait, that’s Paul, not Jesus. Maybe it will be safer to go to the
source. Jesus had an extra layer to that value, as expressed in Matthew
22:36-40--
“Teacher, which is the
greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the
first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour
as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments.”
So, it would appear to the
face of it that Jesus requires a certain theism that Paul does not. Or rather,
that (for Paul) to love you neighbour as yourself is how you love the
Abrahamic God. The distinction here is rather a critical one, for religious
freedom would include the freedom to be atheistic. Do we insist our students
believe in this God, or at least predicate their education on the assumption of
this God? (That is a conversation I would not care to have with, say, Buddhist
or Hindu parents.) And if we do not make the insistence or assumption of
this God, in what sense are we upholding Christian values? (This is a
conversation I would not care to have with, say, Pentacostal or Catholic
parents.)
Leaving an insistence on
theism to one side, however, let us assume that by ‘a Christian Value’ we mean,
as the most sound example, this ethic of the Golden Rule. But in what sense is
this a Christian Value? The Golden Rule is in no sense originally Christian.
There are expressions of this same ethic that predate Christianity by thousands
of years. The Golden Rule is in no sense exclusively Christian. It is
universally endorsed by faith and wisdom traditions ranging from the ancient
Hindu, Amer-Indian, and Aboriginal traditions, to the current Tenets of the
Satanic Temple (“One
should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in
accordance with reason.”) At best, it is a human value, also endorsed by
Christianity, among many others.
On what basis, then, is the supremacy
of specifically Christian values merited in our work as a school? If its core
value is neither exclusive nor original, there seems to be no theological
basis for its supremacy above others.
Perhaps Christian values are
culturally supreme, in that Australia identifies itself as a Christian nation?
This would be fair enough, as we take government money as part of our
financing. However, the Australian government has also funded Islamic schools.
It has also funded Catholic schools, although technically Catholics recognise
the supreme earthly authority of the Holy See. (Let us hope Catholics’
allegiance is never tested by Australia getting into a war with Vatican City… 😉)
The cultural supremacy of
Christianity in Australia begs the question: in what sense is Australia a
Christian nation? If we mean church-going, Australia is in no sense a Christian
nation. According to Professor Hugh Mackay, only 8% of the Australian
population attends ANY sort of church service regularly. Such a quantum is the
very definition of a niche interest.
If we mean a stated
affiliation, Australia as a Christian nation is at best a 50-50 proposition.
According to the 2016 census, while 52% self-identify as some species of
Christian, 8% identify as something other than Christian, and 30%
self-identify as having ‘no religion’. But since the census question was
optional, the remaining 10% did not think the question worth answering. Or
rather, that their choice not to disclose anything amounts either to indifference
to the question itself, or to a sense that the terms of the question were
specious and did not reflect their identity. Either way, it would be safe to
add this 10% to 38% non-Christian responses. That leaves a statistical
difference of 2%. Most quantitative research considers such a small difference
to be within the realm of a margin of error.
The most important fact about
the religious identity of the nation is that these numbers have been trending
consistently and dramatically for the past two generations: Christianity
sharply downward from 88% in 1966, Other religions up from 0.7% in 1966,
and No Religion sharply upward from 0.8% in 1966 to the whopping 30%
most recently. There is nothing to suggest these trends will not continue at
the same steep rate. This means that by 2030, Australia will not even be a
50-50 Christian nation. Christianity is headed, seemingly inexorably, to a
minority status. One is left to wonder what will be left by then of the 8% who
currently attend any form of regular worship.
This will no doubt distress
those who consciously identify as Christians and whose lives are given
coherence by its traditions and theology. This distress will be tied up, in
part, with a perceived loss of cultural capital, and the power to direct the
affairs of the nation and its institutions (including schools) in light of their preferred faith.
It may be of some comfort to
Christians to return to the model of inclusivity and generosity that
characterized the person on whose teaching their faith was founded. As
Christian theologian Rob Bell puts it:
If
the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody.
And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders
its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church
gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing
in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display.
To do
this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of
in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these
terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non",
they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus
commanded us to love our neighbour, and our neighbour can be anybody. We are
all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of
God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what
is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone.
As the book of James
says, "God shows no favouritism."
Non-denominational schools should show no favouritism either. To
move toward a stance of religious pluralism, to include theist and non-theist
alike, does not deny Christ. Rather, the widest possible inclusion upholds the
very essence of his life and teaching. His crucifixion is the ultimate act of
self-effacement in the service of the higher ideal of universal, self-giving love.
In this context, what would
chapel and other religious services in such a school look like? They would look something
like a church service for people who are broadly spiritual, but who don't
identify with a particular faith or denomination. Broadly, they would look like
religious humanism, and would be suited to a school setting where we would want
to encourage and enable participation in an ongoing exploration of the
spiritual side to human nature. It would not tell anyone what doctrines to
believe. Rather than the certainty of answers, we would keep re-engaging
with the age-old questions and watching how our (provisional) answers evolve
and change as we experience new things and encounter new writings in both the
arts and sciences. We would not necessarily throw out the baby of religious
language (grace, peace, sacredness) out with the bathwater of exclusivity, but
we don't wish to exclude anyone whom that language either triggers, or doesn't
help. As the reality of our student body reflects the broad cultural and
religious diversity of the nation, chapels would attempt to include people of all cultural
backgrounds, religious faiths, spiritual persuasions and world views, as a
place to be open to each other and to respect each other.
This could be what we mean by
‘Christian values’.
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