Teaching or preaching — Max Charlesworth and religious education

In this essay I elaborate on the theoretical framework – that of Millian liberalism – that Max Charlesworth brought to many public issues, including that of the relation between education and religion. I will then apply this framework to a debate in which I have been recently involved myself: a debate around the provision of religious instruction in public schools. In the first section I expound Charlesworth’s rejection of secularism in education in a liberal pluralist state and his defence of faith-based schooling. In the second section I uncover the religious motivations behind the Victorian government’s 1950 amendments to the apparently secularist Victorian Education Act of 1872. In section three, I explore the notion of secularism more fully and suggest that the struggle between those who espouse religious instruction in state schools and those who oppose it while advocating a more general form of education about religion is a symptom of a deeper tension between liberalism and communitarianism within the culture of modernist, liberal states.

Preaching to the converted? Designing wildlife gardening programs to engage the unengaged

If wildlife gardening programs wish to maximize their contribution to the biodiversity of their area, they need to be recruiting individuals who would not have undertaken wildlife activities of their own accord. This study sought to assess which program features equate to the most success in recruiting previously unengaged members. Providing site assessments and native/indigenous plants or vouchers to members were features shown to increase the likelihood of recruiting individuals who were not planning on creating a wildlife garden; however, these are not currently recruiting unengaged participants on a large scale and there is a need to develop other strategies to attract more previously unengaged individuals to the wildlife gardening cause.

Development amidst communal conflict: case study of a Christian FBO in a Buddhist–Muslim conflict region in Myanmar

Faith can be a powerful force for positive development and social change, but as James (2011) notes, it is a highly flammable fuel that can also easily result in negative outcomes. The pervasive influence of religion in the lives of many gives it a unique ability to shape both individual and communal identities (perceptions of self and others). While religious identities can be an extremely positive force, they can also be used as a source for exclusive and intolerant attitudes, with a potential to feed nationalisms that become motivators or justifications for conflict. This is particularly true in tense multi-religious contexts where competing ethnoreligious nationalistic identities and historical claims are forced to coexist – especially for faith-based development agencies that relate to one of those identities.This chapter explores the work of a small local Christian faith-based organisation (FBO) working in Buddhist communities in a region of significant Buddhist–Muslim tension and recent violent communal conflict, as a case study of development across complex faith boundaries. Local FBO Bethel works in partnership with the international FBO GraceWorks Myanmar (GWM). Making this case particularly interesting, Bethel has evolved out of a related religious organisation that still maintains a mandate for preaching a contextual Christian message to Buddhists, and most of the local workers are converts from Buddhism. Given the most inflammatory religious sparks for worsening conflicts are widely regarded to be discriminatory practices and proselytism – or perceptions of proselytism (e.g. Clarke and Jennings 2008; Flanigan 2010) – this case study is interesting for the way these issues are handled. This chapter includes new research examining whether and how this FBO has been able to avoid inflaming tensions and has been broadly granted a social mandate to operate in Buddhist communities, even though it constitutes a third religious actor in a context of vitriolic interreligious conflict.