This element of GNFL looks at the phenomenon of religion and society, as well as specific religions and societies, from a Christian theological perspective. This is not a secular sociological study of religion: it is an attempt to understand religion and society from the point of view of faith in God revealed in Jesus—it is part of religious education, which means it is done from a religious point of view. It therefore asks questions like: What does Jesus reveal about the nature of religion and society? What does faith in God as love mean in and for a world divided by social, religious, ideological and philosophical differences?

Part of the Christian, and more specifically Catholic, view of humanity (its “anthropology”) is that human beings are profoundly social beings. We need each other in order to exist and we need a shared method of holding together (which is what makes us religious, since that is what religion is there to do for us).

The word “religion” comes from the Latin re ligare, to bind up again, or to re-unify. Given that not all religions believe in God (as understood in classical theism), this “binding back” or “re-unifying” is not necessarily about connecting us with God, but with each other. It is about society.

Christianity both is and isn’t a religion; and this is true in different ways. According to some influential Christian thinkers, Christianity is more a revelation than a “religion”. In fact, it did not refer to itself as a religion for at least the first three hundred years of its existence. But it also is and is not a religion in the sense that it is not one homogenous phenomenon, “a” religion, since it is many, often incompatible religions (churches, communions and sects): Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Orthodox, Protestant, Quaker … and the list goes on.

The social role of religion in human violence is a hotly contested issue. Does religion cause violence, or does it overcome it? Is religion about peace and justice, or about power and privilege (or neither set of alternatives)? Would the world be better off if there were no religion? Is/was society better off where religion is/was banned? Can society function without religion?—for how long?

And how does Christianity respond to the growing cultural relativism of secular (post)modernity? Are all religions equally true/false, good/bad and/or admirable/deplorable?

In GNFL this understanding of the role that religion plays in society is developed in the following ways:

• The Christian Revelation, building on the Hebrew Revelation (principally the Old Testament), uncovers the deep structures of human social and religious ways of being.
• Social cohesion is one of humanity’s deepest needs; and social disintegration, one of our worst fears. The universal role of archaic/traditional religion was to manage social cohesion by managing social disintegration and its causes.
• The unveiling of the violent foundations of society, and the role of religion in its maintenance, began with the Hebrew Revelation and came to a head in Christ, namely that society is built on violence, using violence to contain violence; and religion is the mechanism by which it achieves this end.
• All religions have three things in common: ritual, myth and law. Each of these is to some extent a violent way of dealing with violence: ritual sacrifice of victims to angry gods; mythological stories that cover up human violence by projecting it onto the gods; using the threat of legal violence (law) against those who do things that cause violence (crime).
• Religion is the ancient, indeed primal, means by which violence was managed, contained, channelled and “sacralised”.
• The real cause of violence was and remains wanting what others have—envy, or what the Bible calls “coveting”.
• At the heart of Christianity is the image of a crucified outlaw revealing the truth about God and about humanity: that there is no violence in God; that the human condition is riddled with violence; and that its roots are in distorted desire.
• This creates a complex and often fraught relationship between Christianity and the world religions.
• Christianity has a unique relationship with Judaism, ancient and modern. Ancient Judaism is absolutely vital to a proper understanding of Christianity, since both Jesus and the early Church were Jewish, and belonged to the now extinct form of Judaism known as “Temple Judaism” or “Second Temple Judaism”. Christianity is, in some ways, as much a descendant of Second Temple Judaism as is modern Judaism, or “Rabbinic Judaism”. Christianity’s relationship with modern Judaism is the most important interreligious relationship for Christianity.
• Christianity also has an important relationship with Islam, or the various forms of Islam (many of which have complex and fraught relationships with each other). Historically the relationship was at least as strained and difficult as that with Judaism; and though the relationship is somewhat better, there is still much work to do (especially between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East).
• Christianity has been undergoing a massive change in its attitude to and relationship with the other world religions, especially Hinduism and the other religions of Asia, as well as the indigenous religions of Africa, Australia and elsewhere.
• There is a growing and widespread rise in anti-religious sentiment and policy throughout the (post)modern world; and Christianity is by far the most oppressed religious group in the world: it is oppressed by both other religions and the increasingly secularist ideologies, including in Australia, where religion is increasingly marginalised and excluded from the public forum, whether social, political, cultural, philosophical, or even spiritual or moral.

URL link to Theological Conversation chapter (PDF).