Seeking the Welfare of the City: Religious Literacy, Love of Neighbour and Social Cohesion
“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you… for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7)
For generations, evangelicals have wrestled with what it means to be faithful in societies that do not share their convictions. Jeremiah’s instruction to Israel in exile remains instructive. God’s people are not called to withdraw from the life of the city, nor to dominate it, but to seek its shalom - its peace, wholeness and flourishing. What might that look like in contemporary Australia?
In the months following the tragedy at Bondi, religion has once again returned to the centre of public conversation. Questions about extremism, belief and social cohesion have resurfaced with urgency. While investigations continue and public debate unfolds, one thing has become clear: Australians are grappling with how religion fits within our shared civic life.
In moments like these, immediate responses are necessary. Remediation, reassurance and action to quell fear and insecurity are essential in the present. Yet we must also ask a deeper question. Beyond today’s response, what longer term strategy are we investing in to shape the next generation of Australian school students to be better equipped in intercultural and interfaith understanding?
Moments of crisis often expose deeper currents. Beyond the headlines lies a quieter and more enduring challenge. Australia has become more religiously diverse and less religiously literate at the same time. We live in one of the most multicultural societies in the world. In our suburbs and classrooms, students encounter Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism, secular humanism and many other belief systems as part of ordinary daily life. Yet many lack even a basic understanding of what these traditions actually teach, how they shape identity, and why they matter so deeply to those who hold them.
In the absence of informed engagement, stereotypes and misunderstandings tend to fill the void. Religion is often encountered through headlines or moments of crisis rather than through careful explanation. As a result, rich and complex traditions that shape millions of lives are quickly reduced to simplistic narratives, and unfamiliar beliefs seem threatening rather than merely unfamiliar. This challenge is intensified by the role of social and mainstream media. Research into Australian media representation shows that religion is frequently framed through narrow institutional lenses and often associated with controversy or moral conflict.[i] Media processes do not merely report religion; they construct and sustain public perceptions of it. As religious literacy within journalism declines, complex faith traditions are easily reduced to simplified narratives. In an age of rapid communication, stereotypes can travel further than careful explanation.
As someone born in Australia to South Korean immigrants, I have long been aware of the complexity of belonging. Growing up between cultures sharpened my sensitivity to questions of identity, meaning and purpose, questions that many young Australians are now navigating in their own way. These challenges are not theoretical; they are lived daily in families, communities and classrooms.
Schools and classrooms are where this reality is most visible. Teachers recognise that religions and worldviews shape the lives of many of their students, yet many feel under-equipped to address these topics with confidence. With increasing curriculum demands, administrative pressures and complex behavioural challenges, engaging thoughtfully with religion can feel daunting. This is not limited to government schools. Across the education sector (Government, Independent and Catholic), leaders and educators are asking how best to prepare young Australians to live well in a religiously diverse society.
In this environment, the classroom becomes one of the few shared spaces where young people can engage religion critically, carefully and constructively, building bridges of intercultural and interfaith understanding.
How we address these challenges will have a lasting impact on how our young people and future leaders understand their place in the world and, just as importantly, how they engage with others for the common good.
These questions are not only external. Within Christianity in Australia, 24% of churchgoers speak a language other than English at home and 37% were born overseas, which highlights the rich cultural and linguistic diversity among Christians here.[ii] Our own diversity of language and culture prompts us to ask how well we have bridged differences within our own communities.
ILLITERACY, TRUST AND THE FRAGILITY OF FREEDOM
One such challenge for our educators and students is coming to terms with the reality that ‘nobody stands nowhere’.[iii] There is no neutral vantage point from which to observe religion as well as other non-religious worldviews. When religious literacy is absent, neutrality does not emerge. What emerges is stereotypes and misrepresentations of the ‘other’. This can leave our young people without the opportunity to critically examine the various worldviews that shape Australian society. It also can leave them without a framework to better understand their own personal worldviews as well as the worldviews of those around them.
Yet there is reason for encouragement.
Research into the religious literacy of Australia’s Generation Z suggests that many young people are not hostile to religion, but curious. They express openness to learning about diverse beliefs and recognise that such education can strengthen diversity and social inclusion.[iv] They are growing up in plural environments and are generally comfortable with difference.
Yet curiosity alone does not guarantee understanding. Openness creates the opportunity. Formation is what shapes the outcome.
The same national study found that students who had received General Religious Education (GRE) demonstrated significantly more positive views toward Australia’s religious minorities. By contrast, students who had received no GRE were approximately twice as likely to hold neutral or negative perceptions, even when controlling for age, gender, school type, socio-economic background and religious identity.[v] The findings suggest that structured engagement with religion in the classroom is associated with greater social inclusion and reduced prejudice.
If young Australians are to live well in a religiously diverse society, they must be formed not merely in tolerance, but in understanding. Generation Z’s openness suggests that such formation would not be imposed upon them, but welcomed.
Research into student wellbeing reinforces this. A strong sense of belonging is closely linked to academic success and mental health.[vi] When students feel seen and
respected, they flourish. Religious literacy, delivered with care and rigour, can contribute to that belonging by equipping students to navigate difference with confidence rather than fear. In other words, understanding appears to shape attitudes.
This matters because in a plural democracy, misunderstanding does more than create discomfort; it erodes trust. Trust is the fabric of social cohesion. It binds citizens to shared institutions and public norms. When trust weakens, suspicion hardens and division deepens.
In his 2025 Lowy Lecture, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess warned: “You cannot spy your way to greater cohesion or arrest your way to fewer grievances. It requires a whole of community, whole of society response… Every one of us has a role to play protecting our social cohesion. In an age with unprecedented avenues for communication, I fear we are losing our ability to converse — or at least losing the ability to converse with civility, debate with respect, disagree with restraint. To have an exchange of ideas rather than an exchange of diatribes or slogans or rhetorical blows. To be right without being righteous. To compromise.”[vii]
His warning is instructive. Social cohesion cannot be enforced. It must be cultivated through our interactions with one another, across tribal lines and throughout our institutions.
Religious freedom, in this context, is sustained not only by law but by understanding. Where understanding is thin, freedom becomes fragile.
LOVING GOD, LOVING NEIGHBOUR AND SEEKING SHALOM
For Christians, this moment is an opportunity for faithful engagement underpinned with theological clarity.
When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… and love your neighbour as yourself ” (Matthew 22:37–39). These twin commands shape not only private devotion, but public engagement.
To love God is to honour truth. To love our neighbour is to seek their good. In a diverse society, that includes pursuing understanding rather than stereotyping, and building trust rather than suspicion.
Jeremiah’s call to seek the shalom of the city reminds us that God’s people flourish when the society around them flourishes. Shalom is more than the absence of conflict; it is the presence of right relationships with God and with one another.
The apostle Paul offers a compelling example in Acts 17. In Athens, surrounded by unfamiliar beliefs and practices, Paul did not retreat in fear nor respond with hostility. He observed carefully. He reasoned thoughtfully. He quoted local poets. He began from shared understanding before proclaiming truth. His engagement was informed, attentive and confident. Careful study of other beliefs was not a compromise of faith; it was an expression of love and clarity.
Our confidence in such engagement rests in the Lordship of Christ. As Abraham Kuyper famously declared, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” Yet Christ’s Lordship is not a mandate for control, but a call to faithful service. If he is Lord over every sphere of life including education and public discourse, then our presence in those spheres should be marked not by domination, but by humility, integrity and love.
Every person bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27). To diminish another through stereotype or hostility is to forget that dignity. The virtues that sustain a healthy democracy such as humility, patience, courage and self restraint are not accidental social conventions. They are rooted in the Christian vision of shalom and are embodied in the life of Christ himself.
If misunderstanding erodes trust, and trust undergirds social cohesion, then investing in understanding is one practical way Christians can love their neighbour and seek the peace of the city.
A COLLABORATIVE RESPONSE: FAITH VALUES AND RWE
Faith Values is a Melbourne-based Christian not-for-profit organisation working with multifaith communities to help educators engage their students with diverse worldviews, beliefs and religions – strengthening community connections and social cohesion through informed, respectful dialogue. Our vision is to see every student in Australia provided quality curriculum-aligned Religions and Worldviews Education to contribute towards flourishing cohesive multicultural and multifaith society. For the past five years, Faith Values has served as the secretariat for the Multi-Faith Education Collaboration (MFEC), convening leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and other faith communities, alongside multicultural organisations. Auspiced by the Faith Communities Council of Victoria, Victoria’s peak multifaith body, this collaboration reflects a shared commitment to strengthening social cohesion through education.
Through sustained dialogue and trust-building, MFEC has worked to move beyond reactive debates about religion in schools toward constructive solutions grounded in educational best practice.
Out of this collaboration emerged the Religions and Worldviews Education (RWE) initiative.
RWE draws on a worldviews approach that recognises every individual, whether religious or not, interprets life through a framework of beliefs, values and assumptions. Rather than reducing religions to static doctrines, it invites students to explore the “big questions” of human existence: How do we see the world? What is life all about? What is right and what’s wrong? How do I right my wrongs? What responsibilities do I have? What do people believe about a spiritual world?
The pilot unit is aligned with the Australian and Victorian Curriculum, particularly Civics and Citizenship and the General Capabilities. At its heart is a pressing civic question: How do we get along well living in a diverse society?
Students are not merely asked to learn about religions. They are equipped to disagree well. to articulate convictions clearly, listen respectfully and engage difference without hostility. And the impact is already visible.
One teacher recently shared that after a lesson, a student from a Sikh background approached her quietly and said, “I saw myself for the first time in the classroom.” For that student, learning about worldviews was not abstract theory, it was recognition. It was belonging. Other students have said:
- “It made me think more critically about how media influences our beliefs.”
- “It made me think about how everyone sees things differently depending on their background or position.”
- “It helped me understand that our views are often shaped by where we come from.”
Teachers have responded similarly:
- “These resources are long overdue.”
- “I appreciated how each lesson was framed around a big question.”
- “The academic background underpinning the worldviews approach gives confidence.”
When education leads to belonging, something of shalom is glimpsed; not uniformity, but mutual recognition.
The RWE pilot is delivered in partnership with the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Education supporting independent evaluation. Support from Templeton World Charity Foundation, Collier Charitable Foundation and others has enabled pilot curriculum resource development, professional learning and structured research. Schools across sectors are now being invited to participate in the pilot phase.
This is not an attempt to privilege religion or blur theological distinctives. It is a response to a literacy gap. It recognises that students are already navigating complex questions of belief. The classroom can either leave those questions unexplored and silenced, or engage them with intellectual rigour and care.
A HOPEFUL INVITATION
Shalom does not emerge automatically. It must be pursued. If we desire an Australia where freedom is resilient, where disagreement does not devolve into division, and where communities flourish together, then investing in religious literacy is one way we obey Christ’s command to love God and love our neighbour.
So, I invite you pray for our schools. Pray for students navigating identity in a complex age. Pray for our educators as they navigate complex classrooms and carry the responsibility of shaping young minds. Pray for wisdom for those engaged in the work of RWE. Pray for openness and favour as Faith Values seeks to serve in this space.
To learn more about Faith Values and the Religions and Worldviews Education initiative, visit our websites and explore the pilot program underway. In seeking the welfare of the city, we trust that even small, faithful acts including investing in understanding will contribute to God’s larger work of shalom in our society.
Herbert Um is the CEO of Faith Values (faithvalues. org.au), a Melbourne-based Christian not-for-profit organisation committed to strengthening quality Religions and Worldviews Education in Australian schools. He is the Project Director of Religions and Worldviews Education (reworldviews.org.au) and serves as secretariat to the Multi-Faith Education Collaboration. He is currently undertaking a Master of Theological Studies at Ridley College.
[i] Enqi Weng, Media Perceptions of Religious Changes in Australia: Of Dominance and Diversity, 1st ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
[ii] NCLS Research, Australian Church Attendance Report (Sydney: NCLS Research, 2021).
[iii] Theos Think Tank, “Nobody Stands Nowhere,” YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFRxKF-Jdos.
[iv] Andrew Singleton et al., The Religious Literacy of Australia’s Gen Z Teens: Diversity and Social Inclusion (Melbourne: Monash University, 2020).
[v] Andrew Singleton et al., The Religious Literacy of Australia’s Gen Z Teens: Diversity and Social Inclusion (Melbourne: Monash University, 2020).
[vi] University of Technology Sydney, “Sense of Belonging Helps Students Thrive at School,” https://www.uts.edu.au/for-industry/ how-to-partner-with-uts/giving/impact-of-giving/sense-ofbelonging-helps-students-thrive-at-school.
[vii] Mike Burgess, “Lowy Lecture,” Lowy Institute, 2025. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/2025-lowy-lecture-delivered-directorgeneral-security-mike-burgess-am