New Zealand Listener - 09.07,2019

SEPTEMBER 7 2019 LISTENER 19

W

e ignore religion at our peril. In 2015,

expatriate Kiwi bar owner Philip

Blackwood was sentenced to two and a

half years’ imprisonment in Myanmar

for “insulting religion” after posting

on Facebook an image of a psychedelic

Buddha wearing headphones to promote

his drink specials (he was released a year later).

On the more violent end, says Douglas Pratt, an honorary

professor of theology at the University of Auckland,

religious naivety can suck people – young people in

particular – into more fundamentalist forms of religion,

“which become highly prejudicial and feed forms of

extremism”.

“So, you have increasing and competing polarisations

of extreme views, either saying this religion is the only

right religion and others saying all religion is wrong,

and any sense of a middle ground, seeing values within

Events such as the Christchurch massacre have sparked a

fresh conversation over religious studies in our school system.

AMAZING

GRACE

You should have

been safe here:

below, a drawing

by Wellington

artist Ruby Jones,

which was shared

internationally after

the Christchurch

mosque shootings.