Since 2014, when the first prayer breakfast was held, the Australian Catholic University has annually brought together representatives of different religions to pray together and discuss important topics. These meetings promote dialogue and mutual respect between parliamentarians, diplomats, and leaders of religious communities. Members of the National Executive of Religions for Peace Australia attended the 2024 Interfaith Parliamentary Breakfast.
In his welcoming speech, Vice-Chancellor and President of the Australian Catholic University, Professor Zlatko Skrbis, said: “Nearly ten years ago, when this event was first launched, we envisioned it as a space where leaders from across the religious and political spectrum could come together to celebrate the diversity and tolerance that holds our nation together. Since then, the Federal Parliamentary Interfaith Breakfast has become a cornerstone of our commitment to open dialogue—a platform where conversations could take place concerning our democracy, our community, our culture, and the role that faith plays in our everyday lives.”
This year’s interfaith breakfast was the eighth in a row. The parliamentarians were able to communicate with leaders of more than twenty religious communities, including Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and others. Here, we present the talk given by Dr. Rachael Kohn, AO, guest speaker.
Dr Rachael Kohn AO talks religion, democracy, and the individual at Australian Catholic University’s Interfaith breakfast
Award-winning journalist Dr Rachael Kohn says true democracy needs all Australians, regardless of religious belief, to “work together in common cause”.
Dr Kohn made her comments at the annual Federal Parliamentary Interfaith Breakfast co-hosted by Australian Catholic University and Speaker of the House of Representatives Milton Dick MP on 21 November, 2024. Addressing an audience of more than 200 people, including parliamentarians and faith and community leaders, Dr Kohn said Australian democracy relied on acknowledging the contributions of religion and history, not “distorting the past and pouring contempt on our faith traditions”.
“Yet, today’s ‘Vanguard of the New’ is eager to paint the recorded past in the darkest of terms, for how else to elevate new schemes and make them look full of promise?” Dr Kohn said. “The Vanguard of the New presents our history as a litany of failure, denies every virtue that our forebears upheld, and rubbishes every step of progress that they laboured to achieve in the most adverse circumstances.” Drawing from her own experience as a Jewish Canadian who emigrated to Australia in 1987, one of her first attempts to promote peaceful democracy was joining Jewish communal organisation B’nai B’rith. “It was the first group I joined when I came to Australia, because our chapter, The Anti-Defamation Unit, was devoted to interfaith dialogue and combatting prejudice and racism,” she said.
It was a different experience for her parents, who lived through the “horrors and loss” caused by Nazism and the “dictatorial and punitive regime of Communism” in their home country of Czechoslovakia. “My parents’ experience of totalitarianism, expropriation, murder of my father’s brothers, wives, children, cousins, aunts and uncles, all because they were Jewish, was of great significance to me,” Dr Kohn said. “It meant that I had little patience for any ideology that carried the whiff of totalitarianism.
“But neither did I have any sympathy for the proliferation of pseudo-religious cults, which robbed individuals of their civic freedoms, spelled the end of their individual human dignity, their agency and conscience. Cult practises of deceit, brainwashing, kidnapping, and sometimes murder and enforced suicide, is a phenomenon I have followed for decades.”
Instead, she saw the “nobler purpose and mission” of religion and how it could contribute positively to Australian society, firstly as an academic and then a journalist with the ABC, establishing herself as a household name for 26 years.
“And it was that story of religion’s contribution to Australia that I wanted to share with the public in my books, my talks and my programs on ABC Radio National,” Dr Kohn said.
“For example, Mary Mackillop established and ran her schools for destitute children, including Aboriginal children, and eventually founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph, which today runs hundreds of schools. When the church excommunicated her for a spell, and in desperate need of a place for her students, it was a Jewish businessman, Emanuel Solomon, in South Australia, who gave shelter to Mary and her charges.”
Across 1700 programs that she produced and presented, Dr Kohn interviewed thousands of highly respected religious leaders – from Archbishops, Chief rabbis, the Dalai Lama, local clerics, imams and lay people, professionals and scholars, to “unsung heroes” who found a greater purpose through faith.
These interviews, according to Dr Kohn, demonstrated the ways in which religion could encourage community, and therefore, strengthen Australian democracy.
“Democracy needs us all to work together in common cause,” she said.
“Religion has aided that effort by reminding us of our moral purpose and sharing the means by which we choose our ‘better selves’ and by which trust can be established and reinforced among disparate people.
© Australian Catholic University, 2024
