My Written Journey

Religion - Christianity   

Explanatory Introduction 
The religious domain has been my most enduring concern. I have been an active member of quite a few Christian churches. I have graduated from naive fundamentalism to a non-practising modernism. While I am sympathetic to a great deal of Christian teaching, I am a non-card-carrying member of the faith. 

At the age of 18 I began to collect copies of the major scriptures of world religions. At the age of 28 I convened a meeting with Donald Miller and John Dunham to discuss the possibility of developing a religion more suitable to the needs of Australia. This project was to pre-occupy my thoughts until well into my 70s.

  After surveying a myriad of Christian faiths I turned my thoughts to South-East Asia. I visited temples, mosques, and meeting places of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoist, Confucian, Tao Dai, Shinto, and Islamic faiths. They each had appealing aspects but, in most instances, they were too prescriptive and made little allowance for new ideas.   

The Evolution of my thinking on the Origins of Christianity 
My attempts to unravel the secrets of the origins of Christianity and the claims of the Christian churches are reflected in the volumes R1, R2, R3, R4 and R5. My years of studying the claims of the source, form and historical criticism had raised issues that could only be resolved by abandoning the historicity of Jesus and the understanding of his life as an allegory. While the teachings of Paul came from an historical character the representation of Jesus as a new Joshua was a creation of a Jewish Secret Society.

R1 - A Backpackers Journey into the Gospels 
This work examines the difficulties in harmonizing the synoptic gospels and the synoptic gospels with John's gospel.

R2 - A Critical Examiniation of Three Miracles Performed by Jesus in Three Distinct Regions According to the Gospel of John
The author of John's Gospel has deliberately chosen these three cultures to emphasise the fact that the new religion of Christianity is not simply a national or international religion. It is also a cosmic religion. He does this despite the ethnocentric Jesus portrayed in the Synoptists.

R3 - A Speculative Reflection on the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist
This work explored the awkwardness in assigning greater deference to Jesus than John the Baptist. Much of this is also recorded in R5.

R4 - A Backpackers Attempt to see beneath the Tapestry of the Gospel of Mark, or Decoding Four aspects of the Gospel of Mark
The four aspects
 i. The use of Parables by Jesus
ii. The Messianic Secret
 iii.  Jesus and Gentiles 
 iv. The Passion Narrative

R5 - Mysterium and Historia. The Blending of Two Streams in the History of the Early Christian Church. 
This work is an outgrowth of R1, R2, R3 and R4. It begins with the assumption that Saint Paul was probably the earliest creator of the Christian church. He taught that Christ was in you. His church was initially a secret society. In Jerusalem another Secret Society was seeking to ‘groom’ a new Joshua. This exemplar was later historicised into a real person whom we know as ‘Jesus’.

Religion - Comparative
My onsite investigations in comparative world religions began in Indonesia (Bali, Java, Sumatra) Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Japan, the Philippines, Macau and Hong Kong.

Indonesia (Java, Bali)
While Indonesia is principally an Islamic country it contains the majestic ruins of both Hindu and Buddhist temples. Balinese has over 20,000 temples and a bewildering number of shrines and monuments which are not of Islamic origin. The Istiqial Mosque in Jakarta is one of the largest mosques in the world. My three tours to Java were largely directed towards the archaeological remains of Hindu and Buddhist temples and palaces in Central and East Java.

The Cosmic Mountain Motif 

R6 - Its image in Temple and Palace, Central Java
Yogakarta Region 
The Keraton 
Borobudur
LoroJonggrang 

R7 - Its Image in East Java
Mojakerto and the Majapahit 
Major Buddhist and Hindu sites

R8 - Images of the Cosmic Mountain 
A selection of Temples in Australia, Bali, Java, Cambodia and Myanmar.