David Rutledge: Welcome to the program.

This morning we'll be hearing about a new book for inter-faith educators; we'll also be hearing about an ambitious new musical work that's been composed for the season of Advent.

But first, a story about what you won't be seeing on Australian buses over the new year.

SONG: 'It ain't necessarily so'

David Rutledge: Aretha Franklin with It Ain't Necessarily So, a song expressing the kind of scepticism towards religious truth claims that you'd think would be completely uncontroversial in secular Australian society today.

But, that ain't necessarily so either. Just ask the Atheist Foundation of Australia, who have been refused permission to buy advertising space on public transport.

You might have read in recent weeks that the British Humanist Association, assisted by crusading atheist Richard Dawkins, have been raising money to put their message on London buses. The ads, planned for January, will read, 'There's probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.'

And in Washington, buses are already trundling around with a Christmas message from the American Humanist Association: 'Why believe in a god? Just be good, for goodness' sake'.

Well the Atheist Foundation of Australia wants to mount its own campaign, and says that its members and supporters have pledged $16,000 to fund advertisements on buses in Australia. So they've approached APN Outdoor, the company that manages public transport advertising in most Australian capitals.

According to the Atheist Foundation's president, David Nicholls, APN Outdoor said that they had problems with the wording of the proposed message. But then after the Foundation made two sets of changes to the wording, APN Outdoor said they simply weren't able to accommodate them.

David Nicholls spoke to us from his home near Adelaide.

David Nicholls: It's very difficult to get atheists to agree to a bus slogan, but we started with 'Atheism, because there is no credible evidence'. We put that to the bus companies; they didn't like that and they said the wording wasn't to their acceptance, and then we changed that to 'Celebrate reason' - and we thought we'd make it a bit comical - 'Sleep in on Sunday mornings', but they refused that also. The end slogan that we've decided upon is 'Atheism - Celebrate reason' with a lot of smiley faces, and it's a very positive message.

David Rutledge: You've approached APN Outdoor, the company that looks after advertising on buses with these slogans one after the other. Have they given any reason why they don't like the wording?

David Nicholls: It has taken about three weeks to get any sort of answer at all. The end conversation I had was I asked why we were refused, and my answer to that was 'Well we'll have to refer this to our legal department' and the chappie hung up. Nearly immediately after that, he rang back with a message saying, 'Listen, this is all finished, we're not putting the signs on'.

David Rutledge: Can you speculate as to why they might be refusing to run this?

David Nicholls: Well it could be just cultural censorship. As Dawkins said, we're brought up to believe that religion has some sort of privileged status. To offer even a mild criticism of it is seen as something very strident, and that's out of bounds to do that. The Atheist Foundation is not a religion, we are not criticising religion, we are saying celebrate reason. So I think that there is a rejection of atheists having their name out there.

David Rutledge: Are you surprised by that? In a country like Australia, one of the most secular societies in the world, that this would happen?

David Nicholls: I'm disappointed, but not overly surprised. Religion has a very great hold on societies, even democratic societies and in fact it has too great a hold in democratic societies.

David Rutledge: The question about why you're doing this, as I said, Australia is a very secular society, atheism has raised its profile and you could say its respectability in recent years with very successful books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens among others. Why, in Australia, do you feel the need for a campaign? What is it in Australia that you're concerned about?

David Nicholls: In Australia, religion started off having a lot of breaks way back when we were starting our society, and those breaks have continued through: religions are tax exempt, they receive Council breaks, they're responsible for a $100-million chaplaincy program; taxpayers are paying for religious schools and 'Celebrate Reason' is a very appropriate message to be putting forward today.

David Rutledge: I guess atheism is popularly understood in terms of a kind of negative identification, the lack of any belief in God or a higher power. But one of the problems with organised atheism is that lack of belief in God isn't a great motivating force in getting people to come to meetings, raise money, raise support for each other. How strong a sense of community do you think there is among Australian atheists?

David Nicholls: In some quarters there's a very strong sense. But let me take you back. Atheism is not a lack of belief, atheism just doesn't see any evidence. Atheists see no evidence for any supernatural thing, and that's the only binding force they really have. They can have all sorts of views apart from that. Atheism throughout the world has grown because of the threat that religion poses for humanity.

David Rutledge: How concerned are you that in this campaign, if it goes forward, that you might be stocking the flames of some sort of conflict?

David Nicholls: I don't think that's even within the realms of possibility. Any criticism of religion, it doesn't matter how mild it is, creates controversy. Should we stop because of that? All we're asking is even for religious people to use reason and as Bertrand Russell said, if reason shows something to be true, have the courage to accept it.

David Rutledge: So what's your next move? Now that APN Outdoor have said that they can't accommodate a bus campaign, would you say it's dead in the water or do you have other options to pursue?

David Nicholls: Well there are a few options, there are billboards but APN controls them they haven't got back to us on that. Any company really has the right to refuse a service to a customer, but in this instance, you have to wonder. Just consider the proposed wording: Celebrate Reason. I mean is it vindictive, inflammatory, offensive? No, it's not, it's none of those, and I really have to ask, why have we been refused? It's not as though they're opposed to controversy. In Adelaide I believe, in the recent past, the APN buses had all across the back of a bus or some buses, the message, 'John 3:16' which is the most famous Biblical passage 'That God so loved the world that he gave his only son ...' Now atheists find that offensive, and there's lots of atheists in Australia, but we wouldn't prohibit its display.

David Rutledge: David Nicholls, President of the Atheist Foundation of Australia.

And I should mention that we approached APN Outdoor for their response, but that response was an official No Comment.

Well campaigns such as this one and the one in London have raised fears among religious groups that militant atheism is on the rise, fuelled by such figures as Richard Dawkins and his bestselling book 'The God Delusion'. But others feel that any vigorous debate about religion is preferable to indifference, and so they welcome the challenge.

One such willing contestant is Greg Clarke, Director of the Macquarie Christian Studies Institute and the Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney.

Greg Clarke: The problem for those who are interested in talking about religion is often just getting enough air time, so to see that God would be blazoned on the side of buses, even if it a sort of anti-God message, was actually very interesting. I actually think we must favour freedom of expression wherever we can, as long as it's done with a level of civility that means we actually do engage with the issues, rather than just fighting with each other.

David Rutledge: In Australia, one of the most secular societies in the world, are you surprised that an atheist message has been ruled out of court for public viewing?

Greg Clarke: I am a little surprised because I think the public's up for the discussion. It probably does indicate that religion and God are a really hot topic at the moment, and so you've got to be careful. I actually think they should be a hot topic and if you can stop and contemplate God while a bus rushes past, I mean your day's all the better for it.

David Rutledge: Well we hear a lot about the so-called New Atheism, which refers to the success of people like Richard Dawkins, high profile thinkers coming out very strongly against religion. How concerned are you that there could actually be a movement of atheist activism taking root in Australia?

Greg Clarke: It's as if atheists have looked at what happened say in the Christian religion and seen the people gather together and support each other in their belief system, and that's a really good thing. So in a way they're acknowledging the power of community. I'll be really interested to see whether it works, how well these communities hold together and what their priorities are and how they work. In terms of it being a social threat, the number of people who are atheists is very, very small. Maybe it's growing, but in terms of growing strength as a movement, it's a long way off I think having a major influence.

David Rutledge: So what should the response of Christians be to this development of atheism, or perhaps what should the response of Christians not be?

Greg Clarke: I don't think we should respond to Richard Dawkins in kind, but kindly. So the first thing is to respond as gently and with as much understanding as possible. That's the Christian way. Secondly, it's to actually engage your mind and say, 'OK, maybe I haven't thought about these issues for a while. Why do I believe there's a God? What do I understand the Christian message to be? Let's take that seriously for a while and explore it.' Christians need to not be afraid of taking seriously the intellectual challenge, but to be careful that this doesn't turn into a bunfight, because that doesn't edify anyone.

David Rutledge: What about the slogan that the Atheist Foundation of Australia wants to run? The one that they've settled on was 'Atheism: Celebrate Reason', what do you think of that?

Greg Clarke: Well again, you know, I'd like to plug in there, 'Christianity: Celebrate Reason'. I just think this claim that religion is anti-reason doesn't hold up. I mean the incredibly influential Christian thinkers like Aquinas, Augustine, through Luther, they gave a very high role to reason. There are people who practice religion in a very irrational way, but the basis of religion can be approached with your mind and does make sense.

David Rutledge: Don't the rationalists have a point though, and this is something I find really interesting: Dawkins sails pretty close to the wind of saying that Christianity and Christians are crazy, and of course we wouldn't follow him that far. But isn't it true that there is a core of irrationality and un-reason at the heart of Christianity? And that's something that you need to hold on to, not to sort of explain away.

Greg Clarke: I don't think it's true to say that there's a core of irrationality there. Reason is very significant to understanding God, but there's also the experience of life. Often Christians who have experienced the love of God, the goodness of God, only talk about that and they sound irrational. But when the two are married together properly, when the experience of knowing God through Jesus Christ is married to using your brain to understand why it makes sense to believe in God, you get a far more coherent picture of the Christian faith.

David Rutledge: But you mention there the story of Jesus' life and the sense that that makes. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm getting at. I mean you have Paul saying 'We preach Christ crucified, which is foolishness to the Greeks', this idea that the story of Jesus, what Jesus did, is something that confounds philosophy; it doesn't make good sense, it flies in the face of good sense.

Greg Clarke: Well I suspect Paul's point was more that it transcends philosophy, that those who think they're so smart that they've put God into their box, the Christian faith transcends that. Who would have thought that God would come into the world in human form and die on a cross for spiritual purposes? It transcends philosophy. But Paul himself was a great rhetorician and arguer; I mean he used reason really powerfully to argue his case.

David Rutledge: Back to the Atheist Foundation campaign in Australia. If they do manage to go ahead, would you expect a response from Christian organisations, and is that something that you would be involved in?

Greg Clarke: The Centre for Public Christianity sets itself up to promote understanding of Christianity using good scholarship and media, so that's what we want to do, we want to respond to something like the New Atheism, by saying, 'Well let's look at the ideas here. Can we examine them coolly, with cool heads?' So you probably won't see us putting our posters up on the side of buses or graffitiing the signs or anything like that. But you will hopefully see and hear all sorts of arguments about the actual ideas behind atheism, whether they work, or whether Christianity provides a better approach to life.

David Rutledge: Greg Clarke, Director of the Centre for Public Christianity.

February next year will see the launch of an important new book for teachers involved in interfaith education. The work of teaching students about different religious traditions is fraught with sensitivity, especially in schools or universities where students have diverse religious commitments that don't necessarily sit comfortably together.

Kath Engebretson is Associate Professor in the School of Religious Education at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, and she's the author of 'In Your Shoes: Interfaith Education for Australian Religious Educators'. It's a kind of handbook for teachers that sets out potential problems and looks at ways in which to address them in the classroom.

I spoke to Kath in our Melbourne studio, and asked her how early should students be involved in interfaith studies.

Kath Engebretson: Well I think it starts really from the very early years of primary school. Our key starting point is the fact of diversity, and difference among us, and that difference and diversity comes in all sorts of ways. It comes in the food we eat, for instance, it comes in the various family and ethnic histories that we have, and it comes in the different ways in which people express religious faith. So that's really where you start with very young children, just in the fact of diversity, and that diversity is a good thing, something that we can treasure.

And then of course, you will build up from there in helping them to know what some of the major religious traditions are, maybe bringing people into the classroom to talk about their experiences. In the book I've argued that for teachers who have Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Sikh children in their classrooms, that often their parents are very pleased to come to the classroom and to talk about the ways in which they practice their religion in their own home.

David Rutledge: And then when you get a little older, I guess things get a little bit more difficult, in that if you're doing interfaith education in high school for example, the first thing you're going to encounter is a class full of students, many of whom come from religious traditions that say My faith is the only true faith. Now how big a problem is that, and how do you tackle it?

Kath Engebretson: We see a lot less of that among young people now. It's now so much exclusivism that's a problem in our Catholic schools, but a general religious indifference and apathy. You can deal with exclusivism, and you can challenge that and help students to critique it, but the kind of society we live in now, and this is an affliction for many Christian students, is that religion is kind of irrelevant, and so again it really calls on the passion and the skill of the teacher to work to engage those students.

David Rutledge:You also talk about relativism, and this is a related malaise for you, is this idea that whatever works for you is OK, you know, this is my truth, that's your truth; you can't judge other faiths by your own standards. Now are you saying that this mindset doesn't promote good interfaith education, where from another perspective it might look as though that mindset is actually very tolerant and open, and inclusive. Why is relativism such a bad thing in interfaith education?

Kath Engebretson: Well I think it's lazy. A number of attitudes come from that, and postmodernity says that you can't really judge anything because everything's culturally and historically bound. Now when you take that attitude you never really have to do the hard intellectual work of sorting out what's good and what's bad. We need to take a critical attitude towards religions and relativism denies any kind of critical approach. If it's OK for you, well that's OK.

David Rutledge: You bring the Catholic theologian Hans Kung into the discussion, and his idea that a generous, tolerant inclusivism is the way to go about interfaith education. What is inclusivism, and what's the difference between inclusivism and relativism?

Kath Engebretson: Inclusivism I think means that I can still share in the goodness and truth of your religion, but coming from a committed stance in my own, and knowing what it is that attracts me and keeps me in my own religion, with an openness to learn how I can grow, through engagement with people in other traditions. So it's a very far cry from relativism.

David Rutledge: So for Catholic educators, this follows on from Pope John Paul II's idea that while salvation is from Christ alone, that the grace of Christ can be communicated to people of other faiths, through those other faiths. Now that's a very standard Catholic teaching. Isn't it though, in the inter-faith context, isn't that another way of saying for example to a Muslim, that 'You're a Christian, even though you don't know you are?' You know, 'the grace that comes through your faith is the grace of Christ'. And that's a very problematic point from which to do interfaith education.

Kath Engebretson: Yes and no. That is certainly the official Catholic way of seeing it, but that doesn't stop us from learning about and seeing the goodness in other religions. Any committed person has a particular love for their own religion, and will have various ways in which they express that. Look, Karl Rahner coined this phrase, 'the anonymous Christian'. It was really just what you said, that people are kind of Christians and they don't know it. I'm not mad on that idea, I think John Paul II put it much better when he said that 'The grace of Christ comes to people in their own life and circumstances'. And so for people who have been brought up in various religious traditions, that the redemptive grace of Christ in some mysterious way, comes through those traditions. Now if you'd be talking to a Muslim, I think they'd express a similar idea in a different way.

David Rutledge: Kath Engebretson, author and Associate Professor in Religious Education at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. And her book, 'In Your Shoes: Interfaith Education for Australian Religious Educators' will be available in February through Connor Court publishing.

MUSIC 'The Creation'

David Rutledge: 'The glorious heavenly hierarchy' from Haydn's oratorio 'The Creation' which was composed at the very end of the 18th century.

Well The Creation is getting a contemporary reinterpretation this weekend in Sydney when St Ives Uniting Church presents the Stations of Creation, a cycle of 15 pieces of music commissioned from 15 Australian composers that celebrates Advent and the miracle of birth.

Doug Purnell is the Minister at St Ives Uniting Church.

Doug Purnell: There is nothing written about birth as a mysterious celebration, so I wrote a document and we invited 15 composers to come up with the 15 Stations of Creation.

David Rutledge: And what are some of the Stations of Creation that we're looking at here?

Doug Purnell: Look, the first one is just creation itself, Genesis Chapter 1. The world is created somehow, how do we acknowledge that? The second one is the song. When you stand in front of an ocean or a mountain, you start to sing, and there's a song that responds to the creation. When a person becomes pregnant, is another part, and then there's a muteness, and that really is something about blokes. In the face of birth, once conception's happened, guys lose their voice in a way, which is what happened to Zachariah in the Bible, father of John the Baptist. The next bit's the birth moment. Moving from within the womb out of the womb, the first breath, the first noise, and then there are songs. Now The Song of the Mother, who rejoices in the birth of this child, and the Song of the Angels, because with the birth of a child almost the whole creation sings.

David Rutledge: It interests me that you've gone to composers for this who are not themselves religious. They don't have any particular religious interest or affiliation, in the same way that you went to non-religious artists for the Stations of the Cross earlier in the year. Any particular reason for that?

Doug Purnell: I think David, that we went to people who had the technical competence as artists, and the imaginative ability to address the questions that we asked. So often artists, visual and composers have said to me, 'I'm not religious you know'. And then have produced something that's absolutely extraordinary, and you think, How have they managed to do that? And it's because while they don't necessarily see themselves as religious which might be a stereotype, they have the extraordinary capacity of an imaginative human being to address religious questions with integrity. But the thing that's been anxious for me is the sense that often people's response to music is deeply emotional, and they like it because they're familiar with it and they've heard it lots of times. Hearing new music is going to be different, and the possibility is that they mightn't like it. But thinking on that, the whole birth process is new, uncertain, discordant, out of phase, loses its rhythm, stuffs your life up, turns you around, and then somehow still you celebrate. So I'm imagining that what will happen is that we will hear music that will reflect the birth process, because the creative process is a parallel, as it were, to the birth process.

David Rutledge: Well everybody focuses on Christmas, Christmas Day and Boxing Day for obvious reasons, Advent is not so well known to people unfamiliar with the liturgical cycle. Is this concert part of a conscious effort to mark advent as something important in itself, and perhaps in danger of being forgotten?

Doug Purnell: I think Christmas has got just taken over by the dominant culture, by the marketplace so much, that we lose a sense of the awe and the mystery that surrounds the birth of this child whom we call the Son of God. If at the beginning of Advent, which is this five weeks, is it, before Christmas, the period of preparation, a period of thinking into, of getting ready for, if we can offer to people an experience which says, Slow down, experience something new, reflect on this whole process of birthing and what birthing means for us, and the hope that it offers us, perhaps just a little bit under the surface of the dominant culture in the marketplace, we'll give people a way to come to Christmas with a fresh appreciation of that mysterious other birth.

David Rutledge: Well it looks like the marketplace is going to be a little subdued this Christmas, maybe it's going to give us more room for the awe and the mystery.

Doug Purnell: Well that would be very nice.

David Rutledge: Doug Purnell, Minister at St Ives Uniting Church in Sydney.

MUSIC

David Rutledge: Well at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the ensemble is in rehearsal, and I'm speaking with Dan Walker, one of the composers involved in the Stations of Creation, and he's also musical co-ordinator of the project.

Dan Walker: I was initially very sceptical about whether or not it would work in that it's quite a big undertaking to have 15 new works by composers where there really isn't a lot of money to bankroll commission fees for them, and to get a receptive audience to make it work I think is quite difficult. But Doug was absolutely convinced that it would work, and so we hunted down 15 composers, about 8 or so from Sydney and 7 from Melbourne, and they've all been working with the one ensemble corps, which is we've got 4 singers, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, of which I am one; and then we've got a flute, a horn, a 'cello and a harp. So it's a very eclectic sort of ensemble. I guess the carrot for these composers in that they're not getting paid, is that we can actually have enough money to pay performers and also a recording engineer to come in, and so they've got something at the end of the day to show for it. And it's a great opportunity, it's not very often that you get carte blanche to write whatever you like, you know, with this very strange instrument ensemble. So I can see the benefits.

David Rutledge: Have you been concerned with stylistic continuity in this, or does it come across as 15 short pieces?

Dan Walker: Aah...I was. All of the composers write very differently, and you can really see actually the composition or stylistic differences between what the Sydney people are writing and what the Melbourne people are writing. I think that comes from teachers and the institutions where they're studying. I think it's such a pastiche idea that you couldn't worry too much about how the overall structure was going to work. I think it is so different from piece to piece. It is quite nice that there's some very angular and not necessarily immediately accessible pieces scattered through the program, that are interspersed by some more tonal I guess, oral sorbet if you like, which I think is absolutely necessary because the last thing you want to do is sit through an hour and a half of very spiky sort of music. But we didn't give the composers any brief at all in terms of what stylistically they had to come up with, and I think a lot of them have tried, explored something a little different, because they've had that opportunity to do so.

MUSIC

David Rutledge: Dan Walker, musical co-ordinator of the Stations of Creation. And having talked about, let's hear a quick preview from the rehearsal.

MUSIC

David Rutledge: And the Stations of Creation, a 15-part Advent cycle, will be performed at St Ives Uniting Church in Sydney this Friday and Saturday evening at 8pm. If you're interested in going along, we'll have all the details on The Religion Report website.

Thanks this week to Jacinta Patterson and John Diamond.