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John Cleary: Today's program is mostly about the Dark side: sex, sin and Satan.

 MUSIC

 Adrian Van Leen: There is a notion with some people that Satan could entice people to do certain things, therefore he must do those things. And that's dangerous thinking.

 John Cleary: Adrian Van Leen; and we shall hear more of the devil and all his works shortly.

 Also in today's program a new twist on the brain drain from theological education: overseas study corrupts the Australian vision of God.

But first, have you noticed that recently a number of explicit connections are being made between violent crime and Satanic ritual. It occurred in a Queensland case where the stabbing of a woman in a park was linked to a pact with Satan allegedly entered into by two young women. And most spectacularly in Wollongong, where in a murder linked to accusations of paedophilia, the word 'Satan' was written close to the body of a victim.

 So what is going on? Are there Satanists in the suburbs, and do they carry out vile acts, particularly on little children? These were some of the issues which a recent inquiry of the New South Wales Upper House was called upon to investigate. The Chair of that inquiry into allegations made by Upper House M.P. Franca Arena, was Meredith Burgmann. I spoke to Meredith in her parliamentary office and asked her what sort of accusations came before the committee.

 Meredith Burgmann: Well obviously the ones that the media were interested in were the most sensational ones, and the judge A killing judge B in Lane Cove National Park in order to become the top international Satanist in Australia was the one that they tended to concentrate on. The fact that he used an axe and had done it in front of witnesses and that led to a very funny story in the 'Telegraph' where the 'Telegraph' actually rang up the Supreme Court to ask if any judges had gone missing, and they were told that not that they'd noticed.

 The other aspect was the incredible emphasis on body parts and blood, and the fact that this woman alleged that she'd been kept in a castle in Melbourne and had been forced to bathe in a bath full of blood and body parts and that there were people's bodies strung up on the wall. And it was those sort of actually macabre aspects that were concentrated on.

 John Cleary: These, I take it, were put forward in good faith. How did the committee handle them? I mean did you take them seriously, and how did you go about investigating them?

 Meredith Burgmann: We certainly got evidence which is on the public record, that the allegations that we thought were crucial to our terms of reference, that those particular allegations were untrue, and they included some of the allegations about Satanism. So we got not only police affirmation of what we felt, but quite seriously, the statements themselves were so internally inconsistent that you simply couldn't believe them.

 John Cleary: Leaving aside the question of its truth or not, what effect did this sort of material have on people as it was presented, particularly around the sort of legal and judicial and parliamentary circles?

 Meredith Burgmann: Well we only published an edited version of these allegations because we were trying to protect the person who had made them, and in actual fact when people from the legal fraternity came up to me at social functions and said 'Oh we know who Judge B is, ha, ha, ha' and it was just seen by them as an enormous joke. My response was often 'It's actually a lot madder than you think', because they had only seen the edited version. Certainly I think the educated community just saw them and ridiculed them; who knows what people out there in punterland actually believed. I am sure there are still people out there that believe that judges kill each other, and that much of what Franca said was right.

 John Cleary: I'm actually getting at whether or not it produced anything like the sort of Salem syndrome, in which the very fear of accusation caused a certain sense of paralysis.

 Meredith Burgmann: There was a climate of fear about who would be named, and that's why there was this emphasis amongst the media on 'Will you name names?' because that would be sensational and exciting for the media, and that's what they were after. But of course for the people whose names had been circulated in the rumour mill, it was just terrifying and nasty and frightening. There was no way they could come out and say, 'I'm not a paedophile' because it had never actually been put into the public sphere. So I felt enormously sorry for those people who were being subject to these terrible rumours, and certainly it is true that before we started our committee's inquiry there was an enormous climate of fear. It was real Salem witch trial stuff. I hope that our committee's deliberations helped to calm that down.

 John Cleary: Because also there's a fairly aggressive young pop culture that surrounds that too. To what extent does it play into myths that kids want to sensationalise anyway?

 Meredith Burgmann: Exactly. I mean if you're mad enough to think that judges kill each other with axes, so they can be the top international Satanists in Australia, then you're also going to believe two pop singers who say they worship Satan, and kill babies in rituals. I found a lack of commonsense was the major issue; people just simply didn't read the article in the Wollongong 'Mercury', or read certain allegations and say, 'This is daft', whereas when the committee looked at certain submissions they just couldn't believe them.

 John Cleary: Meredith Burgmann, MLC and chair of the New South Wales Legislative Council Inquiry.

 Well what's at issue here is the power of belief. And Burgmann's committee, notwithstanding its expertise, has done little it seems, to dent that power. So why do we continue to believe that Satan is in the suburbs?

 Tim Pollard and Julia Baird prepared this report.

 MUSIC

 Julia Baird: As we've heard, early in 1998 evidence was produced by New South Wales MPs Franca Arena to the Wood Royal Commission, which included allegations of judges slaying each other with axes in Sydney, and Satanic activity in dungeons in Melbourne. Since then, further crimes have been linked to Satanism.

 Baseless allegations, random events, or evidence of covert criminal Satanism? Richard Gilliat, journalist, and author of 'Talk of the Devil' argues that as the title of his book suggests, if you talk of the Devil, he will appear. And that, since the early 1990s in Australia, this is precisely what has happened.

 Richard Guilliatt what you had was people misinterpreting what psychotherapy patients and children were telling them as being actually true. And that's what fascinated me about the whole phenomenon, was that as the title of my book implies, once you start talking about this stuff it becomes a reality socially. And so people like Franca Arena jump on it and accept it as being true, because one of the reasons Franca Arena took this phenomenon seriously was because the government had done a report on it which said that it was true, and this report was written by the Sexual Assault Committee of New South Wales.

 Now that report has since been strongly criticised by the Wood Royal Commission, as being really unreliable. But it had a fairly significant effect on Franca, because in her view, this stuff must be true because the government says it is.

 Julia Baird: Richard Gilliat. So are these Satanic allegations unique to Australia? Michael Hill is Professor of Sociology at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

 Michael Hill: Satanic allegations have taken a different form in different societies. In the States for example, they're very much associated with allegations of what was happening in childcare facilities. In Britain it was very much the marginal poor who became the subject of allegations of Satanic abuse. Australia's really interesting because there, allegations about police activity, of prominent lawyers and judges, I think the cultural colouring of these accusations says quite a bit. I think perhaps in Australia there's a much greater suspicion of authority and a belief in corruption in high places, and that's why that's the target of the kind of allegations that you've had I think in the New South Wales Parliament, of a major involvement of prominent figures in this alleged Satanism. It is a quite distinct phenomenon in Australia, it's not happened in the same way in North America, Britain, and New Zealand for that matter.

 ...

 Julia Baird: Michael Hill, Professor of Sociology, Victoria University, Wellington.

 A number of recent crimes are alleged to have links to Satanism. The recent murder of David O'Hearn in Wollongong was accompanied by the scrawling of the word 'Satan' next to his body. The Illawarra region has long been the subject of suspicion for covert Satanic activity. In 1992, in what many regarded as a piece of tabloid sensationalism, the 'Illawarra Mercury' ran a series of articles under the headline 'Hearts of Darkness'. Editor-in-Chief, Peter Cullen, tells us why.

 Peter Cullen: Welfare workers and the police, they alleged to us that the criminal occult organisation was operating in the Illawarra, and I think if memory serves me right, it was part of the network controlled from Sydney. And the allegations were that the Sydney operation ran child prostitutes and made and distributed child pornography. There was some suggestion of sacrifices, and there was a further allegation made to us that the Sydney organisation operated a shuttle bus service which took street kids from Sydney to criminal occult groups up and down the south coast. That was whenever they were needed for ritual sacrifices.

 Julia Baird: Did you find a strong connection between these illegal activities and Satanism?

 Peter Cullen: Well that was the allegation, and certainly the police --

 Julia Baird: But could you substantiate it?

 Peter Cullen: Well we couldn't no. I mean if you're saying to me did we find covens, did we see Satanists, did we actually see rituals, the answer to that is No.

 Julia Baird: Some cynics could say by even saying 'Oh look, we've got the tip of the iceberg here, there seems to be so much going on. We can tell you a couple of stories' that that in itself contributes to fear in the community about what might be going on?

 Peter Cullen: Yes, that could well be it. We don't close our minds to those possibilities. And you can't when you decide to publish a series like this, you're always aware of the possibility that you might have been sold a few false ones along the way. I mean I guess that can apply to any form of publication of exposes like this. But if you're convinced that your sources, and the people you speak to, are basically good people who are sincere in what they are saying and what they were doing, like the SOZO worker, I think it's a fair thing to commit it to print.

 Richard Guilliatt: The police investigated all those allegations and basically found they were totally without any substance. There was no evidence at all of any Satanic child abuse, or any in fact Satanic crimes of any kind going on in Wollongong. But what there was in Wollongong at the time of course, was a true paedophile network which in fact had nothing to do with Satanism, but it involved prominent people in the town like Tony Bevan, the ex-Mayor, and Frank Arkell, the other ex-Mayor, and numerous other people in the town, and those people were actually exploiting and abusing young people. And I sort of see the Satanic allegations as a kind of symbolic sort of story, almost like a smokescreen that was created which was deflecting attention away from the real story that was going on. It was almost as if the real story in Wollongong was actually too horrific to contemplate, which was that it was the Mayor and the local councillors and the local business people and the local church leaders, the Principal of the local Catholic school, they were the child abusers. But people became fixated on this idea that it was these evil people in robes sacrificing children out in the mountains.

 ...

 Julia Baird: Journalist Richard Guilliatt, and before that, Editor-in-Chief of the 'Illawarra Mercury', Peter Cullen.

 Well these people in robes do exist, and they do operate in Wollongong. Although boasting only 100 to 200 members nationally, the Church of Satan believes itself to be a legitimate religion in its own right. However they expend a considerable amount of energy dissociating themselves from any criminal activity.

 The Sentinel of the Satanic Empire is a group based in Wollongong which claims to be Satanist. Jeisman Rubincante is the head of this church in Australia.

 Jeisman Rubincante: We don't kill people in blood rituals or anything like that, so it has nothing to do with authentic Satanism. If it's not a revenge killing for some paedophile activity that was done to them, it was perhaps motivated by horror movie watching, or something along those lines.

 Julia Baird: So it could then be a version of inauthentic Satanism, people doing things in the name of or for Satan, but while not perhaps practising the pure form that you yourself would advocate.

 Jeisman Rubincante: Well then again it wouldn't be Satanism, because to practice Satanism, you have to hold the religions beliefs and the religious philosophy to heart and practice it. If you're not practising it, you're not a Satanist.

 Julia Baird: So what is Satanism in a nutshell?

 Jeisman Rubincante: In a nutshell, hedonistic Satanism, well basically it's self preservation and hedonism and self-indulgence, as long as you don't harm those who don't deserve or wish to be harmed.

 Julia Baird: And this is where the circle of mythic belief is completed. For conservative Christians, Satan is the Prince of Lies, the embodiment and source of all evil, who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Satanism is then the antithesis of Christianity and Satanists are capable of anything.

 Reverend Fred Nile is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, and sat on the committee that investigated the conduct of his colleague, Franca Arena.

 Fred Nile: Well there's no doubt that there's evidence of paedophile activity involving Satanic cults and so on. There's also evidence that people who are involved with abusing children are very clever. This is my personal belief. That they often use outlandish costumes and other activities, so if ever they're caught, when a child says, 'Well the man who abused me was dressed up like a clown and did this and did that', or 'He was dressed up like the Devil', no-one believes the child. Now the man may have been dressed up as a Devil, he may not have been a Satanist though, but he could have been simply using certain outfits, so if ever the child was questioned or the child finally did tell their parents, or told some official, the child would never be believed because the evidence is just so outlandish, it can't be true.

 And so I think there's two elements: one is that there would be some genuine Satanic activity, two, there would be some that are using that as a cover up in case they're ever in danger of being exposed.

 Julia Baird: The Reverend Fred Nile.

 For some, that's the power of belief. Notwithstanding a lack of evidence, criminal Satanism is real, tangible and destructive. For others, that's the danger of belief. By conjuring a potent mythological symbol such as the Devil, we miss the banal nature of real evil in our midst.

 The Reverend Adrian Van Leen is the head of an organisation which counsels cult survivors.

 Adrian Van Leen: The whole concept has always been over-dramatised, and almost a glorification of evil and the dramatic parts of evil rather than the mundane things. And I think what's happened is that it's more exciting to talk about the dramatic and the gory things, and there is a notion with some people, that because Satan could entice people to do certain things, therefore he must do those things. And that's dangerous thinking.

 ...

 John Cleary: The Reverend Adrian Van Leen. And that report prepared by Julia Baird and Tim Pollard.

 Well now for a religious spin on the 'Brain Drain'. Australian church leaders who've earned their academic credentials in the United States are a dime a dozen, and global standards it seems are de rigeur. But what's it doing to our own religions imagination? Well, things are changing: one Melbourne theological college has decided to offer the Americans some serious competition, and it's going to measure up globally by being more local than ever.

 Lyn Gallacher explains.

 Lyn Gallacher: American theological colleges have been advertising their degrees in the Australian market for years. Fuller, one such pay up front school of theology in California, even has ritzy recruitment drives in Melbourne, much to the annoyance of the local opposition.

The Melbourne College of Divinity offers its own Doctorate of Ministry program, and they're encouraging church leaders to stay at home to study. Why? Because ministry is about being responsive to your local community, and what's appropriate in California may not be so appropriate in Spotswood. Well that's the argument being put forward by the Dean of the Melbourne College of Divinity, Harold Pidwell.

 He even suggests that understanding your local context can bring with it an understanding of global pluralism because the local community is a complex mixture of different backgrounds, attitudes and beliefs. So does this mean that the way theology is being taught is changing?

 Last week was the first seminar of the Melbourne College of Divinity's First Doctorate of Ministry program, and Professor Dorcas Gordon from the Toronto School of Theology, was the guest lecturer. Both Dorcas and Harold think that the way theology is being taught is changing.

Harold Pidwell: For a long time people have gone somewhere else to do their post graduate education, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but to do their professional advance ministry studies or their leadership studies in another context, is very dislocating. And it's very difficult for them to translate that experience into practice when they come back here. So Australians ought to be educated in Australia. Australian leadership needs to be educated, and we're not talking I think just about the church, I think we're talking about the difficulty that all religious traditions have in Australia about being able to train their leaders in an Australian setting. It doesn't matter whether you're Muslim or Christian, the issue is exactly the same, and until we grasp that difficult issue, and until the government grasps it sufficiently to try and take it seriously, we're not a truly multicultural society. The rhetoric is very different from the reality which says you still must go somewhere else.

 So this advance ministry studies program, this doctoral program, is really a big step forward.

 Lyn Gallacher: So Dorcas, that's the perfect opportunity for you to say what your role is.

 Dorcas Gordon: Well I do not know the context, coming from North America. And so what Doctorate of Ministry education does is spend a fair bit of time asking the students to bring forth who they are and the context within which they practice ministry. Because there are things about that that none of us know about the other, and so we are very deliberate in taking the time to understand each other's context so that we can begin to understand each other's questions about ministry.

 But let me say how exciting it is for someone from North America to be here and be part of the Australian Doctorate of Ministry. It's wonderful to see the program widening in a global way. It has been a North American degree, and now with Australia beginning its program, and hopefully other places in Europe as well, it really I think augurs well for the kinds of discussion that we're engaged in around theological education.

 Lyn Gallacher: And does this contextualising mean that there's no universal truth within theology?

 Dorcas Gordon: Well I think that's something that all disciplines within theology are struggling with, dealing with. What does it mean to work with integrity with local contexts and local interpretations, local constructions of reality in light of what traditionally has been a hierarchical model of moving towards The Truth of The Issue, whatever it might be. And I think we're much more reticent to speak in those terms, but to allow the unfolding of truth within local contexts and to share that. And then I think in dialogue we arrive at an understanding of truth that neither of us had before.

 Lyn Gallacher: Is that the way you'd put it?

 Harold Pidwell: Well yes, but I think one of the things that we have become very much aware of is that we are very conscious now of different theologies, not just one theology. And it might be too much to say that there's no universal truth, but it's much more elusive than it was, we're much more humble about claims I think, and we're much more willing, I think the church as a whole is much more willing to affirm diversity and context and therefore engage in dialogue and move towards a horizon, even though that horizon often seems to keep getting further and further away.

 Lyn Gallacher: Does that make it more difficult for religious leaders to communicate their message if they're not actually sure what the message is? If the message is something that is more malleable and you're more humble about it, does it mean that communication is different than it once was?

 Dorcas Gordon: Just off the top of my head, my answer would be that it has always been thus. I mean as a preacher, I preach say absolute truth, but if I have 150 parishioners, there are 150 versions of that truth that go out the door on any Sunday morning. Because people, in listening, will naturally connect it to their experience and their context. And as any preacher who stands on the steps and shakes hands on a Sunday morning, and hears the feedback of the sermon, begins to wonder what on earth she preached because that's part of what people do naturally, and I think we're just recognising that that's part of what happens in the act of preaching or the act of teaching.

 John Cleary: Dorcas Gordon, Director of the Doctorate of Ministry program at the Toronto School of Theology; and Harold Pidwell, Dean of the Melbourne College of Divinity, talking there with Lyn Gallacher.

 This week the once-a-decade Assembly of the leaders of World Anglicanism, the Lambeth Conference, is taking place in Britain. High on the agenda is a discussion that is straining the church's reputation for diversity. The issue? Sexuality.

 A few months ago a number of National Anglican churches in the Third World issued what's become known as the Kuala Lumpur declaration. The document took a firm stand against moves for reform on the issue of sexuality, particularly homosexuality. In doing so, these churches were not only aligning themselves with the traditional elements of the church, but with their own national cultural traditions.

 The opening rounds of what could be a tense debate took place overnight when the controversial Bishop John Shelby Spong of New Jersey, called for recognition of the ordination of practising gays, and a visitor to the conference, the Vatican's Cardinal Edward Cassidy, warned that the Universal church, sometimes had to 'say with firmness that a particular local practice or theory is incompatible with the Christian faith'.

 Lyn Gallacher asked Professor Paul Bradshaw, an Anglican who happens to teach theology at the London campus of the American Catholic University of Notre Dame, about the dilemmas confronting Lambeth.

 Paul Bradshaw: Well it's part of the bigger problem, at least problems as far as the European Christians are concerned, in recognising that they are not in a majority any more numerically or in any other way. We've been so used to seeing ourselves as the mother church and the one therefore who knows best because we're the grown-up Christians and the others are our children if I can use that sort of image. And I think it's quite difficult for Europeans in general, Anglo Saxons in particular perhaps, to come round to the idea that we need to take account of the churches throughout the world which are growing in number, and whose members are growing in number, and learn how to relate to what have become our grown-up children, with ideas of their own, rather than assuming that we're going to dictate and dominate. And I think we are adjusting to it, but it's a slow and painful process.

 Lyn Gallacher: So if an African Bishops' Conference or an Asian Bishops' Conference comes out and makes a statement against homosexuality that the western world doesn't like, what happens?

 Paul Bradshaw: Well if you're speaking about the Lambeth Conference in particular, an Anglicanism in particular, there's a particular character in Anglicanism that wants always to try and hold things together. From the outside it can often look like a rather rough cobbled-together compromise, but it's I think, part of our desire to remain in communion with one another at all costs. It leads us up some funny alleys, and its strange contradictions and systems where we allow some to go one way and others to go another. Anglicanism is so used to coping with diversity that it sometimes looks as though its lost a heart and a centre, because what is it that we have in common is sometimes very hard to find and see. But I think at the bottom is a desire if we can possibly avoid it, not to break communion with one another.

 And so I think what will happen, as has happened many times in the past, is that we'll find a way of living together with our diversity.

 John Cleary: Professor Paul Bradshaw.

 Well that's it for today. Thanks to Lyn Gallacher and John Diamond.

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The Religion Report is broadcast every Wednesday at 8.30am and 8.30pm on Radio National, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's national radio network of ideas.