Does God Live in the Suburbs? What ordinary people believe. Myer Bloom, Indra Publishing, Briar Hill, RRP $34.95
When I think of people talking about religions, I see blokes in dark suits — Bishops of various persuasions, or more informal blokes like Dawkins or Hitchens. They may be for religion in general, or against all religions, or for their own religion and against others. But they are all dead earnest, and succeed in making religions seem both strange and incomprehensible to us amateurs. No wonder that when telly soapies home in on religion, they go for creepy spaces and tortured faces.
So this unpretentious collection of interviews is welcome in its simplicity and artlessness. The editor arranged to have adherents of many religious groups interviewed. They were asked to reply to simple questions about their beliefs, their religious practices and symbols, their ethical framework and their attitude to contemporary Australian society. They are amiable and leisurely in their replies.
The question posed in the title of this book — whether God lives in the burbs — remains hanging. But the language in which God is spoken of is definitely suburban. The participants, whether from mainline Churches, Eastern religious traditions or more modern beliefs, are articulate but use words that find common ground with readers unfamiliar with their beliefs. They invite others into a world in which their distinctive beliefs and practices are everyday, not strange. They do a much better job of communicating than most of the professionals in their groups.
Their descriptions are also ordinary and understated. As you read, you begin to understand how people can spend a hard day making money behind the office computer while living a life that contains seven times of prayer, 600 religious laws, a belief in the second coming and so on. The beliefs and practices of personal life and of the workplace are part of a single world.
These stories of ordinary believers are striking for two apparently conflicting reasons. First, they hang together. People's faith, religious symbols and daily lives appear to be part of a coherent whole. Whether or not their religious leaders would agree with the large picture they present, they find it persuasive and workable.
Perhaps this coherence explains why critics assume that derive all their convictions and attitudes from the authority of their sacred books or their religious leaders. But most striking in most of