This very readable small book (125 pages) is one that I strongly recommend to all religious and political leaders. One could say that it’s a book about attitude and attitudes. It’s certainly a book that has the reader, at each point, saying “a-ha” and/or “I must look into this further”.
Its author Ian Burama is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College north of New York.
Burama writes in an easy almost colloquial style. For such a short book he touches on and critiques a vast range of human thought - religious, philosophical, political and social ideas as well as popular movements and uprisings all of which have led to the various relationships we have between “church and state”/”religion and state” on three continents - Europe, North America and Asia.
As an Australian steeped in a very British heritage, I found this book to provide fascinating insight into why I, and others like me, hold the views we do. Looking at history and ideas, and also therefore this book, through the lens of my own Protestant Christian faith and also my proud identity as an Australian living in a stable democratic society I was fascinated to read of the interactions of thoughts and events which have had so much (previously unbeknown to me) influence on my life.
What Australians need to do in reading this book is to look at these ideas and adjust them to take into account our own peculiar history.
Also for Australians living in an increasingly ethnically and religiously diverse environment Burama’s book indirectly provides very useful insights into the range of thoughts and events that have influenced those who were here on this continent first, and those who have arrived from ethnic and religious groups other than the ones with which we are familiar. It provides us with language with which to communicate and converse. And it provides us with a more transparent understanding of where we’ve come from, who we are, and who we want to be as we work together in the ongoing shaping of communal democratic values by which we live.
In Christian terms, this book leads me to a greater understanding of “the other” and therefore many more skills in the practical realities of implementing Jesus’ command to “love your neighbour as yourself”.
by Heather Griffin