Like many people I am ambivalent about honours. I do not believe in them — our lives are best received and given simply as gift without need for institutional reward — but I happily rejoice with friends who receive honours. Accordingly, on Australia Day, with nothing better to do and bravely running the risk of eye strain, I trawled through the list in search of friends and acquaintances and their citations.
Reading through the list I was struck by changes from, say, thirty years ago. In particular, there were far fewer people identified with churches. In the Catholic Church, no bishops nor priests, and two or three members of religious congregations, and one or two lay people cited for their contribution to the Church. The same parsimony was true for other churches.
If this conclusion, based on amateur perusal and unreliable memory, is correct, what might we make of this change? It is always tempting to read such changes as evidence of enemy action. Lest anyone claim it is due to anti-Christian or anti-religious bias, I should add that I also noticed the diminished numbers of bankers and members of the rich on the list. The honours system is now weighted in favour of people whose contribution to the community is more local and personal. That change of emphasis is surely right.
It would be difficult, too, for any Christian to claim anti-Christian bias as a reason for their Church’s diminished haul of honours. If Christians were specifically targeted, that would surely not be out of contempt but rather out of respect for their adherence to the Lord who warned them against seeking prominent places at the table and high places in heaven. To refrain from honouring them might reflect a delicate sensitivity to their desire to live a life consistent with their religious convictions.
The great significance of the change may lie in its confirmation that the churches no longer have the central place in Australian society they once enjoyed. This is now being reflected in public ceremonial. Church news, unless it be of scandals, is not of public interest. Theology is read by specialists and not by the general public. People who by virtue of their position have a privileged standing in churches do not have the same standing in public life. The public sphere is now more thoroughly secular and loosed from the moorings of its historical traditions.
The churches are now among many groups in society — think tanks, industry and union groups, media proprietors, community organisations and individuals among them — which have positions on human well being and public policy. They all enter public conversation to persuade their own members and others of their views and so to shape public policy.
'I welcome the loss of privilege given to churches in Australian society. A properly secular society is a good place for churches to occupy. It enables them to free themselves from the burden of acting as unquestioned authorities.'
This field of conversation is contested, and some participants claim that others have no right to participate in it. In particular, some argue that, because church beliefs are unreasonable and their influence in society is destructive, they have no place in public life. That secularist conviction is one of the many ideologies competing for space in a secular society. They should be free to represent their views and even to be honoured for them, but not to win the exclusion of the groups they criticise.
I welcome the loss of privilege given to churches in Australian society. A properly secular society is a good place for churches to occupy. It enables them to free themselves from the burden of acting as unquestioned authorities. As a result they are freed to attract people to their beliefs and view of society by open and exploratory conversation with others and by the attractiveness of the match between their lives and their beliefs.
There is a wider question raised by the reduced credit given in the awards to institutions, including judiciary, schools, hospitals and community organisations. The emphasis is on individuals, many of whom have worked in institutions. In earlier years the awards more explicitly mentioned institutions, which in turn felt recognised by them.
This change reflects the increased emphasis in our society on individuals, their life choices and their achievements, with a corresponding focus on the failings of institutions. News stories about them concentrate on greed and evasiveness in financial organisations, bullying and corruption in big business, hypocrisy in churches and self-interested myopia in political parties. All are seen to talk virtue but to walk vice.
But without a variety of energetic institutions with an eye for the common good despite the human frailties of the people in them, nothing stands between individuals and the state. The cult of individual choice ends in mass control. The emphasis on the value and initiative of each person is healthy, but the distrust of institutions is potentially dangerous.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Main image: Woman in black dress holding box for a medal (Getty images)