Condemnation of Protest evoked by Places of Worship

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Introduction

The Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has announced a series of measures to crack down on protests, following antisemitic attacks in Melbourne. As a part of those measures, the government of Victoria (Australia) has stated that it would consider legislating safe zones to block protests outside places of worship. (Victoria to ban face masks and certain flags at protests in response to antisemitic attacks, SBS News, 17 December 2024; Laws on masks, places of worship being considered to stop protesters spreading hate, The Age, 15 December 2024; Australian state proposes ban on protests at places of worship to fight rising antisemitism, AP News, 17 December 2024).

A relevant comment from "down under" has been made by Binoy Kampmark (The Strawman of Antisemitism: banning protests against Israel down under, Global Research, 19 December 2024). This cites a joint study by three Australian universities surveying 75 mosques which found that 58.2% had experienced violence between 2014 and 2019.

The Australian initiative is consistent with legislative measures against protest in a number of countries:

• Europe: Sweeping pattern of systematic attacks and restrictions undermine peaceful protest (Amnesty International, 8 July 2024)
• Europe: Urgent need to protect the right to protest (Article 19, 1 July 2024)
• Anti-Protest Laws in the United States (First Amendment Watch, 28 June 2024)
• Nora Benavidez, et al: Anti-Protest Proposals Index "Our Methodology" (PEN America)
• Gareth Hutchens: Australia leads the world in arresting climate and environment protesters (ABC News, 15 December 2024)

Of particular interest in the case of the new Australian initiative is the question it raises as to how "places of worship" are to be defined in light of the variety of possible understandings of "worship". As defined by Wikipedia:

Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity or God. For many, worship is not about an emotion, it is more about a recognition of a God. An act of worship may be performed individually, in an informal or formal group, or by a designated leader.

An obvious concern in formulating those legislative measures is how the definition of worship applies in the case of so-called "atheist churches" (Jacqui Frost, Church without God: How secular congregations fill a need for some nonreligious Americans, The Conversation, 19 January 2024; Brian Wheeler, What happens at an atheist church? BBC News, 4 February 2013; What are atheist churches? The Week, 21 May 2018). The latter notes that the number of "godless congregations" is growing across the Western world.

The matter is far from trivial in that a number of religions continue to encourage very strong measures against unbelievers (or infidels), namely those accused of unbelief in the central tenets of a religion. Each religion may well appropriate an understanding of "worship" to its own practices -- deprecating the practices of others as dangerously misguided, if not inherently "evil". Historically this has resulted in a systematic pattern of harassment and violence instigated by religions against those framed as heretics -- readily reminiscent of those currently held to be "terrorists". In modern literature, the term infidel includes in its scope atheists, polytheists, animists, heathens, and pagans. A willingness to identify other religious people as infidels corresponds to a preference for orthodoxy over pluralism. Such doctrinal beliefs are not subject to sanction by legislative measures notable for their promotion of freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Religions have long engaged in violence against those worshipping otherwise, and more specifically against their places of worship. India, for example, continues to be witness to acts of violence perpetrated by Hindus against Muslims, and by Muslims against Hindus. Christianity is remarkable for encouraging and ensuring the destruction of the places of worship of other faiths -- and resisting their construction. The process of "church planting" by Christians merits comparison with the protest evoked by proposals for mosque construction by Muslims.

Of particular interest with respect to the deprecation of one form of worship from the perspective of another is the degree to which any narrowly defined form of worship may well be displaced from a religious focus to some other focus entirely -- then "worshipped" quite otherwise. The term "worship" may well be used to describe it, and the focused cultivation of that activity may be recognized by others as a form of worship -- and possibly deprecated as such. From a more fundamental perspective, any form of worship -- as practiced by others -- may be perceived as a misleading indulgence in misplaced concreteness, readily deprecated as idolatry.

Whereas attention may be given to "interfaith worship", it remains unclear what "faiths" are included or excluded from the processes envisaged -- or the varieties of worship which might be appreciated in interfaith worship spaces. Examples include those envisaged by the Australian Consultation on Liturgy (Guidelines for Multi-Faith Worship, Catholic Australia) and the scouting community (A Guide to Running Inclusive Interfaith Services, Gamehaven, July 2023). Despite the initiative of the Parliament of the World's Religions to engender a Global Ethic, no effort seems to have been made to recognize the variety of forms of worship that such an ethic could imply -- an ecology of worship.

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