4. Developing a new understanding.
We all have our sustaining fantasy, Martin Cohen said once. We know it’s not real, but it’s what keeps us going. . because it explains the universal process we all are in. The irrational hope we all in some way embrace, the light at the tunnel’s end. The sustaining fantasy, believed and yet not quite. The star of hope. The town called Hope, as President Clinton says, in his happy, weepy way.
The sustaining fantasy is a needed state of mind. Like vitamin C or mother’s love or marital sex, we need it daily. It’s the fuel that moves us down our days. Perhaps we shouldn’t question its details. Perhaps it is the answer. The only answer to this vale of tears. I half believe it, I really do.
Bob Ellis
The Sydney Morning Herald, December 1996.1
There is I believe, much more to nominalism in the Australian Protestant church than an analysis of attendance figures. People throughout the ages have repeatedly adhered to institutional religious expectations while maintaining a personal ontological state that was inconsistent with the requirements of the religious institution. As such the issue of nominalism strikes at the core of the way in which individuals construct meaning in their lives and the way in which they subsequently seek out their ultimate concerns.
The Old Testament tells of Adam’s son Cain, who brought an offering to God that was rejected on the grounds that he lacked the right underlying disposition towards God.2 Likewise, while Plato publicly subscribed to the sacrificial requirements of his indigenous gods, his adherence to the local religion could be classified as nominal. He doubted many of the religious propositions of his time, holding that such theology served as a model for the ‘untrue stories told to little children and grown up citizens of the good city’.3 Under our centred theory, his active incorporation of foreign religious systems such as Orphism into his religious philosophy4 suggests that he was strongly nominal towards his Greek religion. Rather than looking towards his religion, he was actively looking in another direction. While both Plato and Cain are reported as fulfilling their prescribed religious duties, they did so in a way that was detached from what we can perceive to be the underlying attitudes and beliefs they held.
In seeking a new understanding of nominalism, my first proposition is that when we have a broad comprehension of what constitutes human faith, we can understand such faith as being a fundamental universal characteristic within the human framework. The first definition of faith in the Oxford dictionary describes faith as a ‘complete trust or confidence in someone or something.’5 This primary understanding of faith is often overshadowed by the second definition offered by the dictionary, where faith is viewed as a ‘strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on a spiritual apprehension rather than proof.’6
This second definition does not lend itself to the concept of faith as a universal characteristic, for under it human faith would be a characteristic reserved for those who at least lean towards a religious worldview. It would also exclude those whose cognitive development had not reached a level where they were able to process the elements that constitute religious beliefs. However, the first definition opens up the experience of faith to everyone who has ever been conscious of his or her own existence in the world. That is, to exist without a complete trust in anything would lead to a severe psychological breakdown. No activity of the mind or body would be possible, as the consequences of even the minutest physical action would be racked with such a degree of uncertainty that the action would not be undertaken due to a lack of faith in the consistency of the physical laws governing the universe. For example, if we did not have faith that the process of placing one foot in front of another would enable us to both remain upright and move forward, we would not undertake it as we would be unsure of what the result of such a process would be. However, as we both observe others undertaking the action and experience such movement ourselves, we come to have a faith in this mode of physical activity.
It is important to understand that faith may or may not take on the form of a religious belief. Rather, faith is the method by which an individual extracts meaning in their lives. Developmental psychologist James Fowler takes the concept of faith away from the realm of theology, suggesting that faith is more of a;
‘person’s or group’s way of moving into the force field of life. It is our way of finding coherence in and giving meaning to the multiple forces and relations that make up our lives . . . it is a way of seeing oneself in relation to others against a background of shared meaning and purpose.’7
Faith stands above and separate to concepts such as belief and religion as the primary category in the human quest for meaning. It is a process that is at work throughout all human endeavours. However, for human faith to be actual in all of life’s processes, it needs to transcend religious boundaries and flow into all the areas of life in which the individual constructs meaning. Theologian Paul Tillich believes that those things that are of ‘ultimate concern’ have a stronger influence than any doctrines or ideologies that an individual may claim to personally hold. That which is of ultimate concern drives the individual in everything they do. On a formal level, faith represents a ‘state of being grasped by that toward which self-transcendence aspires, the ultimate in being and meaning’8 As such, that which constitutes a person’s real worship is more directed to the objects of their ultimate concern. It is important to note that this driving direction is not necessarily towards a transcendent theistic being. Neither does it imply, as J. Milton Yinger would argue, that ultimate concerns can always be reduced to an empirical, functional definition of religion.9
Everyone has these ultimate set of concerns, which may or may not be religious in nature. For example, the non-religious westerner may find that their ultimate concern finds an expression in a faith that money has the power to lead to personal satisfaction. For the Buddhist, it may be to break free of the cycle of rebirth. If one did not have faith in that object of ultimate concern, they would not seek it as an ultimate objective. The essence of faith says ‘there is a way in which I can construct meaning in my life’. This desire is representative of a faith pattern within each individual.
Faith as a state of being ‘ultimately concerned’ precedes either religious or irreligious beliefs. It occurs within the structure, functions, and dynamics of the human spirit. In the end, such faith may or may not find an expression in institutional or cultic religious forms. Rather, its role is in the conquering of life’s ambiguities10. Richard Niebuhr finds that human faith can be derived from two aspects of history; an outer aspect that involves a reflection on the objective events of history, and a inner history consisting of the personal stories of the individual and the relationships that they form. 11 It is from the inner history that an interpretive basis is constructed in which all events are understood. From this Niebuhr then seeks to trace faith back to the development of those earliest relationships that an infant forms with their respective care givers. He argues that the modelling of trust and faithfulness towards the infant gives the child a centre of value and power sufficiently worthy to give its life unity and meaning.12 This sense is developed in a way that the trust and loyalty given and received by the individual and those around him or her are deepened and sanctioned by the shared trusts in and loyalty to transcendent centres of values and power.13 That is, faith should be understood primarily as a deeply relational matter rather than a religious one. This is an extension of Smith’s understanding of the development of faith and religion, where human faith and religious concepts are changed and renewed by mutual interaction.14 This can be represented by Fowler’s Intuitive-Projective stage of faith, where children work out through instinct an image of God through their primary care givers.15 The relational interactions come to mould a sense of internal history.
Despite the process of secularisation and religious fragmentation, society continues to function in a manner where ‘virtually no child reaches school age without having constructed – with or without religious instruction – an image or images of God.’16 It is through the sharing of stories and images that faith is developed. When faith is defined in the context of ultimate concerns, myths are able to address these ultimate issues without taking on a theological nature. They may seek to conceptually define God as a ‘divinely personal significant other’ or they may talk of the;
‘personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe, incorporating the power of your own body and of nature.’17
The general thesis of Campbell in The Power of Myth is in agreement with Tillich’s view of faith. While Tillich views ultimate concerns as a broader category than that of religious beliefs, Campbell finds that people are not necessarily seeking to answer questions on the meaning of life. Rather, he finds that;
‘We’re seeking an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.’18
If people are seeking to understand not only the meaning of life, but also the experience of life itself, then this will have implications on how individuals relate to religious bodies. If religious organisations busy themselves with the big metaphysical meaning of life questions without seeking to understand the experiences of interacting with the world on both natural and sociological levels, then we can see that religious organisations will be promoting a philosophy that fails to address real issues in the lives of people. They may be answering questions that are not being asked, or they may not be addressing the very issues that face society. As such, the ontological nature that the religious elite expects of its membership may be in stark contrast to the operative paradigm from which its membership is drawn. If a religious body is unable to philosophically adjust to the cultural paradigm in which it operates, its membership will find it increasingly difficult to adhere to the elements of religiosity that validate their membership as being reflective of their underlying ontological reality.
Throughout this paper, the term ‘institution’ has played a central role in the sociological analysis of religion and nominality. I propose that having recognised human faith as a universal characteristic, it is then in the understanding of how and why religious institutions exist that we can formulate a theory on the origins of nominalism as a social and religious phenomenon.
The Oxford dictionary defines an institution primarily as ‘a society or organisation founded for a religious, educational, social, or similar purpose.’19 The secondary definition of an institution being ‘an established law or practice, or custom’20 suggests that there exists within the concept of institutions, a link between the organisation and the way in which elements associated with the institution become established. However, as bodies that control and structure human interaction, they are by their nature, in a constant process of evolution.21 It is in this tension between establishment and evolution that nominal adherence to religious denominations can be traced.’
Benedict Anderson argues in Imagined Communities that when we examine groups within society, we find that the existence of the group extends beyond that of a physical entity that meets in a particular time and place within history. Rather, such groups continually exist beyond their physical gathering in the minds and identity sense of the group’s membership. As such, Anderson argues that the continuing community exists as an ‘imagined community’. A community is imagined in as much as it’s members will ‘never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of the community’.22 The community exists primarily because people believe that it exists and act in a way that brings about a physical existence from time to time.
This theory of imagined community, through primarily worked through as a theory on nationalism, contains important principles in the understanding of religious institutions and the way in which they are perceived within Australian society. The Australian community has been traditionally good at the way in which it is capable of imagining a collective group identity. This strength is best displayed in the way in which a generation was prepared to sacrifice itself in the name of the British Empire during World War I, despite the majority of Australians never having set foot on British turf.23 This understanding of identity occurred irrespective of its validity. In the same way, Anderson’s proposal that much of the imagery used in nationalistic imagining contains religious symbolism, particularly towards death,24 concurs with the way in which Australians have adopted images of war and turned them into religious symbols. This can be seen in the way Simpson and his donkey has been adopted as a Christian symbol of sacrifice,25 and the way in which Anzac Day is celebrated with all the fervour of a national religious festival.
Community and institutional identity is not marked by the genuineness or otherwise of the group’s identity, but the way in which and strength with which it is imagined. Within this, it is important to understand that community identity will always be contested within institutions. In the same way that institutions differ from each other by certain defining characteristics, those within a particular institution will also possess characteristics that are not uniform amongst the group’s membership. The identity of the group is then deeply affected by the interplay between these internal differences.26 Therefore, even the simplest of attempts to define a community finds difficulties in that such activities will always touch on questions of power and identity,27 as ‘what is at stake are questions of meaning, of direction and of decisions, and decisions often involve by implication resources, personal action and obligation.’28 Tillich would say that this represents a situation of competing ‘ultimate concerns’ were two or more ultimate concerns lay claim to being an authentic or legitimate direction in which the community should head. The seriousness with which such internal issues are considered can be seen in how these identity questions are occasionally taken out of the internal workings of the religious institution and into the secular court system. Examples of this can be seen in the 1948 High Court case regarding Anglican Church liturgy and the Supreme Court action taken against the Anglican Bishop of Canberra-Goulburn regarding women’s ordination.29
This points towards the centrality of institutions in the lives of people. If institutions are the mechanism by which people relate to the world, they will then serve to mediate the ultimate moral and religious commitments of humanity.30 Institutions are the primary bearers of ideals and meaning. Bellah finds that they will provide a framework for moral and religious understanding by the way in which they provide;
‘patterns of social activity that give shape to collective and individual experience . . . a complex whole that guides and sustains individual identity. . . . They shape character by assigning responsibility, demanding accountability, and providing the standards in terms of which each person recognises the excellence of their achievements.’31
The issue of nominalism has arisen in Australia due to the central role the institutional churches have come to play within Australian society. Hughes identifies two primary ways in which religion functions in Australia. Firstly, a relationship with a spiritual power, and secondly through the provision of values. He states that the Christian Church has historically provided ‘a way of thinking about life, and in particular, a way of determining what is right and good.’32 However, as demonstrated by the NSSS analysis, this moral function has overtaken the spiritual function as the prime role of religion in the minds of many people. The Australian attitude towards religion has become one of;
‘a predominant concern for its outcome in morality and a lack of patience with the esoteric, essential as the latter may be to distinguish religion from moralism’33
We could describe this as the sociological functionalism put forward by Bellah. He finds that religious institutions have come to be deemed as having a role providing ‘social cement’ without any real regard to the validity of the institution’s underlying system of meaning.34 Having examined NSSS data, I would suggest that many Australians tend to have a non-cognitive or non-propositional view of religion. That is, they believe that religion is an issue of fundamental moral attitudes to life rather than a belief structure encompassing propositions or doctrines concerning the supernatural. When this is contrasted to denominational membership expectations, we have a situation where many in the population have an overriding attitude towards religion that is incompatible with the desired levels of religiosity put forward by the denominations themselves.
However, it would be wrong to suggest that the issue of nominalism simply arises because people are unable to live up to religiosity expectations. If you were to remove much of the language used in religion, chances are that you would find that religion would become indistinguishable from the ideals espoused by those with a very different philosophical basis.
This suggests a strong process of interaction between faith and Christianity in its various denominational forms. Such an interaction impacts both Australian society and the various denominations that exist within that society. The varying degrees of attendance based nominalism suggests that the way in which each denomination both exerts influence on society and is impacted will impact on the way in which people relate to that institution. Institutionally, Australian Pentecostalism has, like their American counterparts, ‘moved towards the center as they get smarter and better institutionalized.’35 We could say that they have by their style and theological tone responded in a way that minimises attendance-related nominalism. On the other hand, the gradual reduction in membership expectations within many other Protestant denominations36 has lead to an increase in nominalism. This is most apparent in Anglicanism, which has moved from a position of religious monopoly with its accompanying social and political influence, to being one of a number of contributors to Australian society.37 The statistical evidence leads us to conclude with Bentley, that as a generalisation, denominations with strict membership requirements tend to have lower rates of nominalism38
This finding is also in line with Anderson’s theory of the imagined community. The underlying issue is that not all people imagine the same thing when thinking about Christian denominations. There is often no real sense of that stage where one crosses over from non-membership to membership. If a community’s strength is in the way in which it is imagined, then it is likely that a community with high degrees of nominalism has fundamental problems in the way that it is being imagined by either the membership, or the ruling elite within the group. I would conclude that those who consider themselves to be group members, but are considered nominal by the elite are in fact imagining the nature of the group and its underlying character as being different to what the general membership does. Those denominations with stricter membership requirements leave less to the imagination. This understanding is in stark contrast to the theories put forward by those who tend to view attendance as a sole indicator of nominalism. Focusing on attendance patterns reduces the cause of nominalism to that of competing time commitments or competing ultimate concerns. It is the concept that ‘we would be involved but we don’t have the time.’
Sociologically, to understand the place of religion within the lives of Australians, there is a need to go beyond looking at the aggregation of the institutions, as neither the levels of church attendance or the degree in which the church exerts a social influence can be considered a reasonable representation of the beliefs or ideas held by people within the community.39 What is needed is an understanding of what people imagine as being sacred or of ultimate concern.
It has been demonstrated that Australians view a common religious ethic as a matter to be concerned about. Bernadette Hayes found in her 1991 report on ‘Religious identification and marriage patterns in Australia’40 that despite declining church attendance levels and the decreasing influence of traditional religious constraints, ‘marital homogamy along religious lines still remains the norm for conjugal couples within Australian Society’.41 Over 60% of married Australians have spouses of the same faith identification.42 This would suggest that traditional group identities continue to hold a strong position in the minds of Australians. If nominalism represents a false classification by the individual, do these figures negate the concept? My answer would be no, as this represents a differing understanding of denominational expectations between the religious elite and the general population. Denominational affiliation acts more as a distinguishing device than a label for religiosity. This is consistent with our model of Australian history, where denominational affiliation served as a sociological marker for such distinguishing features as ethnicity and class, rather than acting as a tool for religious expression.
Another approach is to look at how individuals isolate that which they consider sacred within their day to day lives. This will tell us what people imagine as being of ultimate concern. As demonstrated, the Australian tendency to treat Christianity as not much more than an ethical system has resulted in a blur between the sacred and the secular. In the same way that institutions make distinctions between core and periphery matters, so religious institutions make, on the formal level, a distinction between the secular and the sacred. This has seen the development of an Australian version of civil religion, or what poet Les Murray describes as a ‘Strine Shinto’.43 This religious worldview demonstrates a ‘devotion to a nation and its leaders, its ideals and gods, as these are expressed in words, such as speeches, songs, and documents, and in deeds, such as ceremonies, wars, and monuments.’44
This leads us to the question posed by Hughes; Why then do people continue to label themselves as belonging to a religious institution? Perhaps the question should be more along the lines of; Are religious institutions a sociological necessity, or are they historically contingent? The final answer to this depends on the approach taken to the question. Within orthodox theology, institutions are necessary to maintain a strong structure of belief on both individual and social levels. Sociologically, Bellah finds that institutions are historically contingent requiring both a degree of critical reflection and significant reform.45 This general finding by Bellah is in line with the Australian experience of changing attitudes towards religion. The sphere of religion has moved from a community expression to religion as individual. The result of this is that Australians have come to view religion less on an institutional level. However, despite this, a majority of Australians are still drawn to an institutional label as an expression of faith development. This was demonstrated in Bellamy's study of how Australians cope in situations of bereavement and national tragedy He found that a majority of Australians still looked to 'time honored and proven ways of coping.'46 This was expressed by a connection with various religious symbols and ceremonies, such as public memorial services. This was also my personal experience working in St Andrew's Anglican Cathedral Sydney the week Michael Hutchance died (former INXS lead singer). Many young people were drawn to the institution where the funeral was held for days after the event. It was a time where those who felt a sense of loss were able to mourn within a traditional institutional context. They were drawn to a religious institution which would have been foreign to their general experience, rather than the local record shops as the place to express their emotions.
If human faith is a universal characteristic, and people are drawn to institutions to express and develop such faith, then there will be a number of issues raised by the concept of religious nominalism within the Australian protestant church. Will there be a need to expand the realm of institutions available for faith development? It may be that the nominal community has already developed alternative institutional structures with their own symbols and functionaries. If the rite of confirmation was largely a social rite of passage for past generations rather than a confirmation of religious beliefs, does a new rite need to be developed within the framework of a faith institution? Will these institutions be religious in nature? Many registered marriage celebrants have seen such a need, and have taken to performing functions previously monopolised by the church, such as naming ceremonies instead of baptisms, and rites of passage where a simple confirmation service would have performed the same function.
Hughes makes a note that Australians today have 'few of the secular hangups that were the rationalisations in the 1970s for not having anything to do with the church.'47 Rather, the purported interest in spiritual matters is explored in a way that does not conform to existing institutional patterns. Spirituality is able to be explored in as many ways as the individual is capable of imagining.
The model institutional religious body embodies all the positive characteristics of institutions. However, religious bodies are not exempt from the pressures and challenges faced by and built into normative institutional life. Kaye suggests that the church needs to understand itself as a community with porous borders.48 People will continue to be drawn to institutions to express and develop their modes of faith. Nominalism will cease to be present when society offers the full range of institutions that cater to the variety of ultimate concerns that are held by people in society. Then there will be no need, real or percieved, for a person to attach themselves to a religious denomination that does not reflect their underlying reality. I am not suggesting that this is a task restricted to current religious institutions. The mainline church lost its monopoly on things religious some time ago. Rather, it involves a process of reform such as that modeled by Niebuhr49 that may or may not result in the formation of the 'traditional' religious institution as understood today.