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Reclaiming traditions that have been battered by history is not only the responsibility of individual believers, but it is also the task of the observer, the documenter, the historian and theologian, most of whom would be aware that their eyes and ears are trained on a moving target. For in reclaiming living faiths, all of which have had their detractors both within and outside them, one is quickly plunged into discovering religious traditions that have undergone revivals, reformations and refurbishments in the course of their history. This was precisely the world in which the academic discipline of religious studies aroused my interest and to which I brought my enthusiasm in the 1970s when it seemed the Western world was spiritually turned upside down.
The essays in this collection represent some of the themes that emerged during my lectureships in Religious Studies and Semitic Studies at the University of Sydney between 1987–1992 and beyond, when I continued to give papers at conferences and publish in academic journals. However, something significant occurred in my study of religion which, as a denizen of the university, I was not fully expecting when I joined the Religion Department of ABC Radio National in July 1992. The daily and weekly round of research, writing, and long form interviews of key religious figures, usually after reading their latest work, while keeping abreast of day to day religious developments, both in Australia and abroad, plunged me into the dynamic world of ‘lived religion’. This is a term coined by Harvard University Professor, David Hall, whom I interviewed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1999 after reading his World of Wonder, Days of Judgement: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England, and his edited volume Lived Religion: Toward a History of Practice. I realised that what he described as ‘lived religion’ precisely informed the central task of my work: in which the history of practices ‘encompasses the tensions, the ongoing struggle of definition, that are constituted within every religious tradition and that are always present in how people choose to act. Practice thus suggests that any synthesis is provisional.
‘Rachael Kohn understands the issues she writes about at the deepest level and as well as providing a way through the thorniest controversies always keeps a sense of the shape of the whole argument … This is a superb volume.’
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor The Australian and author of Christians, the urgent case for Jesus in our world.
‘Rachael Kohn’s insightful comments inform, inspire, and provoke; a lovely combination of scholarly research, journalistic clarity, and personal passion.’
Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt University.
‘The author’s passion is to celebrate, yet expose where necessary, the ramifications of religious belief on disciples and society… with her own inimitable blend of verve and insight.’
Stephen Mutch PhD LLB is a retired attorney, former MP and academic.
‘Her ability to penetrate so deeply into other people’s modes of religious expression and belief… is remarkable and unique.’
Rabbi Fred Morgan, AM Emeritus Rabbi, Temple Beth Israel, Melbourne; formerly Professorial Fellow, Australian Catholic University
‘Rachael Kohn is one of the nation’s foremost public intellectuals especially in the sphere of religious issues in which she is eminently well qualified.’
Professor John Moses Professorial Fellow, St Mark’s National Theological Centre, Canberra. Author of The Reluctant Revolutionary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Collision with Prusso-German History.
Dr Rachael Kohn AO, FRSN taught Religious Studies at universities in Canada, Britain and Australia, was the producer and presenter of programs on Religion for the ABC, Australia, for which she received multiple awards, and is the author of The New Believers: Reimagining God and Curious Obsessions in the History of Science and Spirituality.
