The Uniting Church promoting Violence or Peace?- An Interview with Reverent Ross Mackay

The Uniting Church promoting Violence or Peace?- An Interview with Reverent Ross Mackay

Today the topic of religious violence, and thus peace, is of continually growing importance and relevance to every person, especially considering the growing trend of terrorism claimed in the name of religion (Nepstad, 2004). In accordance to Nepstad (2004) religion can be a force of both violence and peace. To investigate this dichotomy I interviewed Reverent Ross Mackay, a Minister for the Uniting Church in Australia. The Uniting Church was established in 1977 through the union of three major Christian Churches in Australia. It is a church that prides itself on being multicultural and endorsing the rights of religious freedom, and equality. (Uniting Church Australia, 2011 & thetransitlounge, 2007). Reverent Mackay was thus chosen as an interview subject as I wished to investigate the topic of religious violence and peace from the perspective of the Uniting Church.
To begin with I wished to investigate Reverent Mackay motivation for joining the Uniting church, rather than some other Christian order. To him the Uniting Church, unlike many of her sister orders, is based on the fundamental premise that all people have a right to worship and fair treatment. This is supported by Hannah- Jones (2003) who found that previously unaccepted groups of individual, such as women, could be ordained by the Uniting Church. Similarly the Reverent gave a further example of this in says that a Uniting Churches in the city of Logan have excelled in promoting multicultural acceptance and acceptance of people with varied backgrounds. Reverent Mackay believes that these practices are essential to the Church’s goal of promoting social justice and equality (Uniting Church in Australia, 2011). He stated that “The uniting church allows for congregations to have a homosexual minister if that is their preference, this is a fantastic freedom that other churches don’t have.” Acceptance is importance to him as he believes that exposure to varied groups of individuals helps to teach those in the church community to be more open and accepting of diversity. This in turn prevents misunderstanding and discrimination, which in turn promotes peace within the community.
Insight had been gained into how the Uniting Church internally maintained social justice and equality, however a lot of religiously motivated violence occurs between different religious groups (Nepstad, 2004). I wished, therefore, to see how the church attempted to maintain equality and peace between themselves and other religious groups. One tool proposed to be useful for peace building is Interfaith dialogue (Smock, 2008). When asked to comment on the involvement of the church in interfaith dialogue, the Reverent stipulated that the Uniting Church regularly engages in interfaith talks as a means of increasing positive relations and identifying similarities between themselves and other religious groups. Reverent Mackay also believes that interfaith dialogue and interfaith cooperation in religious education in schools would be beneficial in preventing misunderstanding between youths of different religions. The reverent said that he “would love to have a rabbi and an Islamic Imam come to do RE with me.” He believes, however, that more conventional Christian dominations would not approve of this. The Uniting Church and its Ministers, more so than other Christian denominations, therefore appears to facilitate religious cooperation and understanding by endorsing interfaith dialogue and interaction. This, the Reverent believes is integral in preventing religiously motivated violence.
Forgivness and Justice was the next topic I asked the Reverent about. These concepts are one that have been strongly linked to religious violent conflict (Volf, 2000), usually in the form of retaliatory violence in the name of justice. The reverent stipulated a need for a distinction between God’s justice and man’s justice:

“Gods justice says that for me I need to judge myself against Jesus and try to come to that standard of forgiveness. Man’s justice would say I need to judge myself against someone else and come up to that level. So that is, if someone steals from me, they go to jail, that’s our justice. Jesus said to his disciples, take your coats with you, if someone needs it give them your coat and your tunic as well…I mean there has to be some form of go to jail thing, as otherwise people who were really selfish would run amuck totally. But at the same time, we seek to do god’s justice.”

He argues that when exacting justice Christians must attempt to emulate Christ and in doing so, be willing to place the needs of others before their own needs. He further proposes that forgiveness must be people’s primary objective, stating that “you can be a victim and be forgiving the person while they are still hurting you, Christ did that on the cross”. The biblical reference of Jesus on the Cross emphasises why forgiveness is of primary importance before justice can be sought. This is an interesting concept supported by the works of academics such as Volf (2000) and other religious leaders such as the Jewish Rabbi John Sacks (Fetzer Institute, 2009). They suggest that this structure of forgiveness than justice can be a means of preventing retaliatory violence. It can therefore be argued that this concept of forgiveness before seeking justice, taught by the Uniting Church, is helpful in preventing violence.
Religious violence and fundamental extremism is an ever present and controversial topic in today’s society. I asked the Reverent what his opinions where on religious fundamental extremists and their use of examples of violence within religious texts to motivate violent action by their followers. Religious fundamentalism and violent references within religious texts has been strongly associated to the use of violence (Post, 2005 & Omar, 2005). Despite this, religious leaders such as Imam Omar, (2005) and many academics (Post, 2005 & Rogers, Loewenthal, Lewis, Amlot, Cinnirella & Ansari, 2007) have argued that religion is rarely the primary cause for violence. They instead say that so called religious violence is usually motivated by the interplay of political, cultural and social factors, which individual attempt to resolve under the guise of religious conflict. Reverent Mackay agrees saying:

“you can always find something in there [religious texts] to justify what you do if you read a particular section. But read in its entirety in the understanding of Jesus, it is very hard to promote violence. So the people who are fundamental are pushing their own agenda, mostly out of fear.”

To him, religions in their essence are not violent. It is the interpretation of religious texts out of context and the interplay of other, non religious factors that result in violence occurring.
My interview with Reverent Mackays makes me believe that the Uniting Church may indeed be able to play a role in facilitating peace, social justice and preventing religiously motivated violence. The Uniting Churches doctrine of acceptance and equality serves to lesson discrimination and endorse social justice. Furthermore, the practice of interfaith dialogue and the Reverent’s desire to have interfaith interaction in schools, encourage interfaith cooperation. Furthermore the doctrine of forgiveness before justice is promising, I believe, for encouraging peace as it lessens the likelihood of retaliatory violence. It is true that religious texts can be used facilitate violent action, but it is argued that religion and religious doctrine is very rarely the root cause of supposed religious violence (Post, 2005 & Omar, 2005). Therefore, I believe that the Christian religious principles, taught by the Uniting Church, can be used to deter religious violence and facilitate peace building and social justice.

References
Fetzer Institute (Producer). (2009) Rabbi Jonathan Sacks - Consider Forgiveness. retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7zb4KgEaog&feature=relmfu
Hannah-Jones, A. (2003). Comepting claims for justice: Sexuality and race at the eighth assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, 1997. Journal od the History of Sexuality, 12(2).
Nepstad, S. E. (2004). Religion, Violence, and Peacemaking Journal of Scientific Study of Religion, 43(3), 297-301.
Omar, R. (2005). Overcoming religiously motivated violence Cross Currents, 55(1), 77-82.
Post, J. M. (2005). When hatred is bred in the bone: Psycho-cultural foundation of contemporary terrorism Political Psychology 26(4).
Rogers, B., Loewenthal, K., Lewis,C., Amlot, R., Cinnirella, M., & Ansari, H. (2007). The role of religious fundamentalism in terrorist violence: A social psychoology analysis. International Review of Psychiatry, 19(3).#
Smock. (2008). Religion in world affairs: Its role in conflict and peace. Washington: United States Institute of Peace.
thetransitlounge (Producer). (2007, 17th September 2011) The Uniting Church in Australia 30th Celebration. retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBn5KMTO9G8
Uniting Church Australia, (2011). About the Uniting Church Australia Retrieved 27th September 2011, from http://www.uca.org.au/about.htm