GAZETTE - Adm.monash.edu.au - Monash University

MONASH UNIVERSITY GAZbTTEkind of way what religion means and has meant to somemen.Nor would anyone quarrel with the proposition thatthe more direct study of comparative religions, forexample, could form a perfectly acceptable componentof, say, an Arts degree. Indeed, the Professorial Boardof this University so resolved as long ago as 1961,although it added the normal academic rider that theappointments necessary to make this possible would haveto be considered in competition with other developments.But the academic study of the effects of religion isquite different from the practice of religion by convincedadherents to a faith, from the acts of worship andprayer by involved and committed participants in theservices of particular churches. Is this appropriate to auniversity? Less than a century ago the University ofOxford was quite clear on the answer and, because hewas not a member of the Church of England, SamuelAlexander, the great philosopher, was denied a fellowship.The founders of the University of Melbourne tookthe opposite view and, to this day, there is no church orchapel in the University itself, a deficiency which led tothe establishment of the denominational colleges.Some members of this University would hold stronglyto the view that practices which involve belief, as an actof faith, in phenomena or propositions that cannot bededuced by logical argument from known facts ordemonstrated in a laboratory have no place in a university.I do not share this view and, with the help of ananalogy, [ want to explain why.It is a respectable academic exercise to study harmony,counterpoint, the acoustics of musical instruments orthe biography of composers but these things have verylittle to do with the actual experience of performing orlistening to music oneself. Every Monday, during termtime, the Alexander Theatre is crowded with five or sixhundred young people listening: to a lunch-time concert.They come and sit quietly, perhaps munching a sandwich,and then go back to an afternoon's work havingenjoyed an experience which is really rather hard toexplain by logic or experiment.My mind goes back more than forty years to the daywhen, as a boy at school, [ first heard "The Messiah" inYork Minster; indeed [ still never hear that marvellousopening phrase of the prophet--"Comfort ye, cornfortye my people" without remembering the effect uponone small boy of the high, clear tenor voice ringingthrough the great cathedral. [ find it hard to decidewhether this was a musical or a religious experience butit was certainly almost overwhelming both at the timeand in retrospect.The population of this University is likely to includepeople with every shade of religious belief and unbeliefalthough in unknown proportions. Some are undoubt­The Religions Centre26