The meaning of being alive
Speaking Their Minds: Intellectuals and the Public Culture in Australia
Edited by Robert Dessaix, ABC Books, 1998
Review by Jennifer Sinclair
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 64
Winter 1999

THERE MAY NOT BE many public intellectuals who are Christian, but the public intellectuals in Robert Dessaix's book have much of interest to say to Christians. In his introduction discussing the vexed question of what is a public intellectual, Dessaix quotes Edward Said: "The principal intellectual duty is independence from allegiances to institutions and worldly powers." This seems to me to a principal duty of a Christian also. Said cautions that intellectuals must "wage war against the guardians of sacred visions or texts, confronting orthodoxies and dogma". And again I say, amen. At the present time there is a great deal of this kind of intellectual work taking place in the area of biblical studies.

On the other hand, part of the reason that the names of Christian public intellectuals don't spring readily to mind may be that certain kinds of Christianity have become extremely privatised with much emphasis on the theology of God as personal saviour, rather than on God the creator. If Christianity is conceived of in this privatised way then it is not going to be concerned with the world at large. Mark Noll in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind describes the development of this kind of thinking in America and analyses its impact. The emphasis on a personal relationship with God has ignored the realities that humans live in society, culture and history and that these realities are part of the kind of world God created. To cut Christianity off from these realities is to have a very peculiar and unattractive variety of Christianity.

Privatised theology, however, can also be seen as a sign of the times. The characters in the television show Friends, for example, have no interest or notion of any kind of public world of society, culture, history or intellectual pursuit. Whether the Friends characters' pre-occupation with their private world bodes well or ill for society is the kind of question a public intellectual of a certain age might ask. Catharine Lumby, however, argues that television and the different worlds represented on it has enabled "a more genuinely democratic debate". Analysing the medium of television (and other media) and the way it interacts with society is as important, if not more so, than analysing the content to Lumby. Meaghan Morris, another cultural critic and contributor to Dessaix's book, has said elsewhere that culture has taken over from institutions-including the church-as the place where meaning and values are formed. Morris's definition of culture includes television, and not just the ABC and SBS, newspapers, mass market magazines and radio talk. Again, arguing over whether this is a good or a bad thing seems to me to be beside the point. If this is the way meanings and values are constructed and transmitted-and in the absence of faith in institutions, culture seems to be what's left-the question that's more interesting is, how then should society in general and Christians in particular respond.

Certainly magazines like Zadok Perspectives and Eureka Street have a crucial role to play by ensuring that there is a Christian presence in the cultural mix but also by being alert to what is going on in the culture. Eureka Street would not have a large readership but it does have an influential readership, it is a voice that is listened to and Eureka Street's editor, Morag Fraser, is a contributor to Dessaix's book.

Fraser links the role of the public intellectual with ideas about social responsibility and social justice. Here Tim Costello comes to mind as a Christian who has been able to secure a public role by tackling these kinds of issues and for some Costello is an exemplar of what a public Christian, for want of a better term, should be doing.

It seems to me however that while Christians have modest success in contributing to debates about social issues-unemployment, drugs, gambling and so on-the area where Christians are less articulate is in a broader understanding of society, one which Judith Brett describes as "anything to do with the meaning of being alive in this place at this time". One would expect Christians would have something to contribute to discussions about the meaning of being alive so it is puzzling that there is an absence of Christian voices. This may be because Christians are perceived to have arrived at the answer to the meaning of life and therefore not interested in discussion, only in pushing a party line. Anyone professing to have the answer is looked at askance in intellectual circles these days.

Christians have been regarded as suspect intellectually for another reason which is that scientific rationalism was, until recently, the official way of knowing. Christianity had a hard time staking a claim to any validity in the public debate under this regime. But now we have the fantastic spectacle of the high priests of rationalism, the physicists, suggesting the possibility of the existence of God. (Here is proof that it's a constantly surprising and marvellous world that we live in.) There's a growing recognition that rationalism cannot contain or describe the full range of human experience. Phillip Adams, for example, who opposes Christianity at most turns, is deeply interested in meaning and sensitive to the fact that there is an area of life unaccounted for by the god of intellect. What constitutes intellectual thought is itself in flux. There is a strand of feminist thought which wants to recognise emotion or the non-rational as a legitimate way of knowing rather than it being disregarded because it is 'female' and therefore inferior. As more women enter the public debate this will undoubtedly influence the way debate is shaped and conducted.

The people in this book are thoughtful, energetically alive to the world and what's going on around them and how they live within it. It's a book which left me feeling optimistic because, although they come from very different disciplines and starting point, what they have in common is that they care passionately about life and society.

Jennifer Sinclair is is a freelance writer and former literary agent. She is currently studying theology at Whitley College in Melbourne