Re-Enchantment
By David Tacey

Introduction
The Rise of Spirituality in Australia

Australian attitudes towards spirituality appear to be undergoing a profound and dramatic change. Not long ago, many of us in this country thought of spirituality in negative terms, as antisocial, irrational or unscientific, perhaps even as morbid. Spirituality received bad press, and consequently we have lived in a culture in which it was suppressed or ignored. “Until the last decade or so,” Maryanne Confoy wrote recently, “most people thought of spirituality, if they thought of it at all, as something for other people”. Spirituality was rejected in favour of ‘common sense’, social reality, and an extraverted attitude to life; in other words it was regarded as ‘otherworldly’. Almost all radical theories of human liberation in recent times (Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis) have been reductively materialistic and antispiritual in character. Some of these theories are beginning to restate their basic arguments, with a view to including the transformative potentials of the sacred. But for the most part, Australian intellectual culture has remained steadfastly secular, and this has driven a wedge between those who think about ‘this’ world and long to change it (the social reformers) and those who reflect on the ‘other’ world and long for redemption.

This typical dualism between spiritual and social worlds is false, and it has a debilitating effect on our revolutionary zeal — our desire to change the world quickly runs out of steam, because it is not being replenished or directed by the spirit. We do not have the mental capacity to bring about lasting change in this world until we have opened ourselves and our culture to the transformative possibilities of the sacred. The rational part of us lacks the resources to initiate real change, even as it seems to be motivated by pragmatic ideals. Nothing great or lasting can be achieved with purely secular motivations.
Yet many of our progressive thinkers remain terrified of religion because they associate it, often with good reason historically, with fundamentalism, fascism or destructive emotionalism. It is a habit of the secular mind to constantly point to the negative and abusive expressions of the religious instinct, and having our noses rubbed in these negative expressions is supposed to cure us of the desire for a religious life. But although the religious instinct can be manipulated to serve evil purposes, it is nevertheless a powerful force that must be aroused if any society is to achieve greatness. The transformative energy in self and society comes not from positive thinking, social legislation or secular politics, but from our discovery of the spiritual dimension of life, which gives us the courage to change, trusting in a deeply secure foundation.

The sites of spiritual renewal
Spirituality is making a comeback, although it is still too early to track this development in great detail. Every now and then, we hear prophetic comments about this cultural change, such as this from Hugh Mackay:
Caroline Jones’ An Authentic Life is a disarmingly intimate chronicle of the culture-shifts taking place in our society, as many Australians switch from the twentieth century’s rationalist focus on ‘seeing is believing’ to a more ancient, essentially religious position that ‘believing is seeing’.

This shift is certainly taking place, but it is so diffuse that it is difficult to define or name, especially in view of this culture’s continued official protest that it is secular and non-religious. Broadly, the areas that appear to be giving rise to a new spirituality in Australia include the experience of nature and landscape, the environmental emergency, Aboriginal reconciliation, the visual arts, popular life-history and story-telling, biography, autobiography, public interest in Eastern religions, contemporary youth culture, progressives in the churches, the therapeutic and menta lhealth professions, workplace relations, human resources and industry leadership, social analysis, the naturalhealth movement and the re-enchantment of gardens and herbs, the popular men’s movement, the spiritual women’s movement, and a kind of generalised hunger for personal and cultural renewal.

In other fields, spirituality is becoming an important issue in theory of culture and society, education theory, theory of personality, theoretical physics, anthropology, Australian theology, feminist theology, postmodern theory, Aboriginal cultural studies, outdoor education, and nursing and health studies. (The references provided in the notes for these sites of spiritual renewal are highly selective; their purpose is to indicate activity taking place in the field, not to provide comprehensive listings. Some overseas titles have been included, to point to international sources that are now influencing debates here in Australia. But also note that some overseas titles on spirituality are written by Australian authors.) It would be wonderful to discover a thorough, non-sectarian study of the spiritual renewal taking place in Australian public and professional life, but no such study yet exists. It is still too early, and the renewal is too vast and covers too many disciplinary fields to be encompassed by any single researcher. But there are interdisciplinary postgraduates working on certain aspects of the bigger picture, including Simon Harvey and John Fisher, who are mapping parts of the new public story that is emerging.

The cartoons, drawings and prayers of the artist Michael Leunig have, almost single-handedly, whetted the nation’s appetite for spiritual exploration. Leunig deserves to have an entire book written about his long career, its influence upon the arts and social attitudes, and his momentous lifting of the bans and repressions on Australia’s hidden spirituality. The creative arts and literature in this country have always been concerned with spiritual themes and interests, and we need only mention the names of Leunig, Arthur Boyd, Peter Sculthorpe, Patrick White, Les Murray, Judith Wright and Tim Winton to confirm this point. But it remains a curious problem, and a symptom of the divided nature of the Australian psyche, that the spiritual themes of our artists have been ignored, denied or repressed by the intellectual-critical culture that pretends to interpret the arts for the nation and for its educational institutions. The art historian Jane Magon is attempting to unravel and redeem the lost spiritual dimension of Australian art.

I will explore later in this book the problems that arise when an ostensibly secular society, led by sophisticated and non-religious ruling elites, is confronted by the fact that most of its important artists are visionary or spiritual in character. The work of our major artists subverts the pose of secularism that governs the nation’s outward style, so that the arts constantly put forward a challenge to our society, a challenge that is rarely integrated by society. This creates a deep-seated tension in Australia between the artists and the intellectuals, since the artists are advocating (re)enchantment from the depths of a prophetic imagination, while the intellectuals are promoting disenchantment and an ironic vision of the world. Tensions and frictions abound in Australian cultural history, where the artist’s vision of a deeply spiritual inner life comes into collision with the official national persona: young, free, aggressively secular and postreligious. Veronica Brady deserves special mention for her relentless struggle to bring forward the repressed spirituality of the arts in Australia, and to expose the systematic denial of the sacred that takes place in secular high culture. In the realm of broadcasting and media, Geraldine Doogue and Caroline Jones have worked extremely hard to lift the bans on the sacred and to introduce this subject into ‘normal’ public discussion. One is no longer dubbed a freak or a clown if one talks about spirituality.

Australia dislodged from the comfort zone
Those who have recognised the presence of spirituality in Australian life in the past have often argued that it is un-Australian to talk about it. Even today, some people argue that Australians are naturally reticent about religious matters, that we are shy about spirituality, and such people often hope we shall remain that way. Behind this attitude, I think, is a fear that too much talk about religion will prove to be socially divisive and that our democratic life might be unsettled by outpourings of religious emotion. However, our social conditions have dramatically shifted in recent years. There is a real crisis of meaning in the community, and the problems associated with constant social change — the erosion of the old public morality, the breakdown of family structures, high levels of unemployment and instability in the workplace, and the public emergencies created by drugs, alcohol, crime and increasing suicide — have shaken this country out of its former innocence and urged us to take stock of ‘what really matters’.

©2000 David Tacey