Australia is an ancient country with enduring expressions of Indigenous spirituality, usually derived from a sense of belonging-to the land, to the sea, to other people or to one’s culture. In recent centuries spirituality in Australia has been influenced by the religions of colonial peoples, predominantly Christianity. Christian spirituality itself has evolved and diversified through the centuries, strikingly evident in Australia’s multicultural and increasingly secular society. But are Australians spiritual people? Are Australians any more sensitive to the spirit of the land? What is “spirituality”? Is there such a thing as an Australian spirituality?
In his 1981 book, The Sunburnt Soul: Christianity in Search of an Australian Identity, based on the ABC TV series, David Millikan said there were many people who shared his experience of being committed to but frustrated by the religious life the churches offered.
Toward the end of the book he referred to the frustration of rock musician Ross Nobel, operating outside the perimeters of the churches. Nobel believed there was a feeling for “serious” or “religious” things in Australians. “We keep going because quite often we come across people who do sense something beyond the daily grind … Australians are full of depth. I’m just sorry the churches are not open to getting into the sorts of places where they can talk about it.”
Millikan’s general point was that the Australian experience had produced a unique form of expressing matters of ultimate concern and that worship and ministry needed to be expressed with a distinctively Australian voice.
“It is impossible to live in this vast continent and not be affected. We recent arrivals are not so much lords of the world that we are not in significant ways shaped by its spirit.”
He quoted Manning Clark’s Boyer lectures: “The climate and environment gradually made us accept the values of the Aborigines — become fatalists, accepters and sceptics about the fruits of human endeavour. The spirit of the place had contributed to the Australian understanding of failure — to our conviction that no matter how hard a man might try he was bound to fail — that in Australia the spirit of the place makes a man aware of his insignificance, of his impatience in the presence of such a harsh environment.”
Millikan continued, “We huddle around the edges, creating one of the many Australian paradoxes. Though Australia is the most sparsely populated continent, we Australians are one of the most urbanised nations in the world. The silence and paralysing vastness of the interior seems too much for us. The Israelites looked back on their days in the desert as a time of purity. The later complexities of politics, international affairs and cultural change made the desert experience seem to the children of Israel an ideal time of simplicity and insight.”
A photo caption in The Sunburnt Soul notes, “Sixty-five per cent of Australia is technically desert but the desert experience has not yet become part of our culture.”
Millikan said, “I think we are still looking for a form of religious expression which is sensitive to the spirit this land has within it. Australia has a vast and silent spiritual heart. Its capacity to make itself felt has been experienced by almost everyone who has been there. But somehow we have not in our religious life yet been able to tune our ears to the sound of its voice. It ought to be easy for Australians to believe in an eternal creator spirit but something within our perceptions of what God is like has not prepared us to see that He is already here.”
Searching for spirituality in Australia
At its inception in August 1982, in the year after The Sunburnt Soul was published, the Eremos Institute expressed its aims in two simple slogans: deepening Christian spirituality and helping Christians to understand and contribute to Australian society.
Eremos described itself as an ecumenical association with its roots in Christianity. Taking its name from the Greek word for “wilderness” or “desert place”, a major source of spiritual inspiration in the Bible, Eremos was founded as a result of the work of Anglican priest (later bishop) Bruce Wilson and his vision for a new spiritual movement. (An added factor in the choice of name was recollection of a line from the poem “Australia” by A. D. Hope, “Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come”, also mentioned by Millikan.)
The first occasional essay published as a supplement to the Eremos Newsletter was Bruce Wilson’s “Keeping the Rumour of God Alive”. Wilson thought a “second wave of renewal” had begun with the worldwide revival of the Christian mystic and spiritual tradition. He said the Eremos Institute was just a small part of something that was happening everywhere in the universal Church.
“Of primary significance is the fact that in the Christian mystical and spiritual tradition we have an expression of spiritual experience just as precise and refined as the great intellectual compendia of the Faith such as Calvin’s Institutes or Thomas’s Summa. If those intellectual compendia may be called the theology and philosophy of the Christian Faith then the mystical and spiritual compendia are its music.”
Speaking of the challenge for evangelism, he said, “What is really needed is not technique but a deepening of Christian joy in the Holy Spirit such that our ordinary lives and conversations automatically become a constant witness to the faith of Christ within us. This is why Eremos, by teaching about the Holy Spirit, by exploring the Christian mystical and spiritual tradition, by conducting retreats, teaching methods of prayer and meditation, encouraging the art of silent listening to God and by studying scripture for its spiritual not just historical and linguistic meaning, seeks to promote spiritual growth.”
Three decades later, EREMOS magazine editor Frances MacKay, writing about a recent Eremos event, “Breaking the Silence on Spirituality in Australia”, reflected on the work of David Tacey.
Tacey, a professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, teaches courses on spirituality and cultural studies, analytical psychology, and literature. His contributions to EREMOS magazine in 1997 and 1998 led MacKay to read Tacey’s Edge of the Sacred: Transformation in Australia, first published in 1995, and his other “popular” books.
“David’s interdisciplinary and holistic approach (he draws on the psychology of C. G. Jung, theology, literature, history and social and cultural studies) makes him a godsend for those of us who are seeking an authentic spirituality with roots in the tradition, but also addressing contemporary issues and popular culture. What I find particularly valuable is his emphasis on the importance of the metaphoric and the poetic if we are to avoid fundamentalism.”
Tacey, speaking on “The Rising Interest in Spirituality Today” to The Theosophical Society in Australia Convention, January 2002, said, “We may not be traditional in our spiritual tastes, but this should not lead us to conclude that we have become identified with worldliness or that Australians have somehow turned away from spirit. It is important to recognise that ‘secular’ does not mean ‘profane’, and that the secular condition is one in which spirit continues to exist, although in forms that tradition might find hard to recognise.
“From where I stand, it looks like Australia is going through a spirituality revolution, and there has never been more longing for the spirit and therefore more hope for the future.”
In the book Shaping Australia’s Spirituality: A Review of Christian Ministry in the Australian Context, by Philip Hughes, Stephen Reid and Claire Pickering (Christian Research Association, 2010), Hughes said, “To look at the spirit of Australia is to look at the inner life and people’s relationships. The inner sense of peace and purpose, the quality of family life and friendships, the quality of love in our broader social relationships are indicators of the spirit of Australians. My own rough schema is to condense those relationships into five types. In each of these we can ask about the quality of the relationship with self, close others, the wider society, the natural environment and God.”