Patient: I am feeling much better today doctor.

Psychiatrist: That is wonderful Roger.

Patient: Yes doctor, I’m having a relationship with a beautiful woman.

Psychiatrist: That is wonderful Roger.

Patient: Yes doctor, in fact she is coming over to my place this evening to stay the night with me.

Psychiatrist: That is wonderful Roger.

Patient: She is a very vivacious and sexy woman doctor.

Psychiatrist: That is wonderful Roger.

Patient: Her name is Victoria, doctor.

Psychiatrist: That is wonderful Roger. Victoria is a lovely name. My wife is called Victoria.

Patient: She is your wife doctor.

Psychiatrist: That is wonderful Roger. My wife is a wonderful woman.

A caricature? Barely, according to psycho-therapist Neville Symington, arguably Australia’s leading psychotherapeutic thinker and author.

In one of his many books Symington cites an actual case study almost identical to this old-style Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sendup.

For years Symington has complained that the whole mental-health profession is bereft of any values beyond "make no judgements', "be accepting', "tolerate'.

He constantly challenges his copractitioners to re-find their ethical roots in religion, but in what he terms "mature' not "primitive' religion.
One hardly needs to introduce the Jensen brothers to any Australian Anglican, nor to any media aware Australian as such.

Peter is the Archbishop of Sydney, Australia's mother diocese.

Phillip is the Dean of Australian Anglicanism's mother church, St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney.

Titters and tut-tuts in Anglican dry sherry circles frequently infer that something is amiss about two brothers holding such important positions.

Sometimes the gossip descends into silly matters such as choirs, church music, and the names you call bits of church furniture.

One expects that the same sort of circles tittered and tut-tutted in times gone by about the enormous talent and success of John and Charles Wesley.

Tragically, those old sherry circles failed to take the Wesley brothers seriously, eventually forcing their movement out of the Anglican fold and to the creation of Wesleyanism.

The parallels are striking. The question is - will the outcome be parallel too?

Frequently, the Jensen brothers, their friends, associates and followers, refer to their kind of Christianity as a counter-cultural movement.

And it is certainly counter-cultural in secular-humanist Australia to oppose the ordination of women as priests and bishops, and to oppose the approval of sexual relations between same-sex, consenting adults.

The mass media is fascinated with internal Anglican debates about these matters not just because religious conflict makes for a good story, but precisely because Jensenism challenges the embedded assumptions of the major culture.

In the majority secular-humanist culture relationships between women and men are far from harmonious or agreed upon.

So a slogan such as "equal but different' (Peter at the recent national synod) will arouse at least a modicum of anxiety while ever women produce children from their wombs and men don't.

And while ever there are young students in Australian universities advocating such beliefs as LUGs (Lesbians Until Graduation) - i.e. heterosexuals deliberately experimenting with same sex relationships just because they can - countercultural claims that homosexual relations transgress the Divine order will, likewise, stir at least some anxiety
in the major culture.

But it would be a grave mistake to equate Jensenism with just these kinds of so-called conservative stances.

There is something much more profoundly counter-cultural about Jensenism.

At its core Jensenism is about God and about God and human culture. More particularly, it is about living a life committed to God in an Australian culture that is profoundly this-worldly (secular) and human centred (humanist).

By contrast with the public and media talk of most Anglican bishops and leaders, the Jensen brothers constantly use words such as God, sin, salvation, bible, Jesus, Satan, evil, resurrection, heaven and hell.

Consciously or unconsciously (one suspects "consciously') they recognise that religion must maintain and use its own language if it is to give meaning to religious/metaphysical realities.

To speak of Christianity using only everyday language, for example "life force' for God or "spiritual' for Holy Spirit - supposedly for reasons of good communication - in reality is to accede to a secularhumanist, non-religious worldview.

A centrepiece of Jensensim is the authority of the bible.

But behind that centrepiece is the centrepiece of Jensenism - the authority of God. It would be another grave misunderstanding of Jensenism not to see the difference between the two (though at times one feels the Jensen
brothers themselves come close to creating such a misunderstanding).

That God has claim on me, on my life and the whole universe is extraordinarily counter- cultural in today's secular-humanist Australia where, supposedly, I am free to choose my own identity, my own moral values, and to understand
everything in the world, including my own mind and brain, using reason/science.

Psychotherapist, Neville Symington is acutely aware that the crisis of moral values in the mental therapy industry - a world only of acceptance and tolerance - simply reflects the moral relativism/vacuum of the wider society itself.

By recognising mental health's need for "mature religion' (surely better to simply say "God') Symington is acknowledging that unless human beings get outside of themselves they have no bearings and are lost.

Anglicanism ultimately derives from the Christian reform movement of the 16th century of which Martin Luther was the key figure.

Even down to today, most people are not aware of the central issue and energy that fuelled Luther's counter-cultural success.

Just as Jensenism is pigeon-holed by critics around issues such as female or gay rights, or a particular view of biblical interpretation or authority, Luther was pigeon-holed around opposition to matters as a pompous and corrupt Papacy,
unbiblical belief in purgatory and the sale of indulgences ("tickets' to get one out of purgatory into heaven).

For Luther, only his Catholic humanist critic Erasmus understood what he was really on about, an issue that went right to the core viz God or Man (we might say today "Christianity or Secular Humanism').

Luther wrote to Erasmus: “You alone, in contrast with all the others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue. You have not wearied me with all those extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences and such like - trifles, rather than issues - in respect of which almost all to date have sought my blood (though without success); you, and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot.”

The vital spot is the question of our relationship to God, whether we are free to create our own meaning and morality or whether these come only from God.

Luther saw clearly that the former course would end in a vacuum, in nothingness. That is why he said of his great Catholic critic Erasmus "you are not devout'.

For Luther, Erasmus's Catholic humanist belief that, within limits, humans are free under God to create themselves is the beginning of a human not God centred life and world.

Symington calls for a rediscovery of religion for the sake of morality but for Luther and the Jensen brothers there is a deeper, more counter-cultural issue even than morality i.e. salvation.

Secular-humanism delights in debating whether one can have morality without God. But the deeper malaise of secular-
humanist society is its lack of hope, and therefore of meaning as well as morality, in the face of death.

For Jensenism, as for Luther, salvation comes through grace by (the darkness of) faith not by human reason, effort or science.

Only God can kill death.

Whatever the reader may think about any particular Jensenist stance, on gender or sexuality or the bible - or even whether it represents the "mature religion' that Symington seeks - one could never say "it is not devout'. Because it is so devout it is profoundly counter-cultural.

The question those Anglicans who so vehemently oppose Jensenism - usually by gossipping with friends behind closed doors about the peripheral issues - might ask themselves is "am I devout, or am I a secular-humanist coated with a nostalgic Christian veneer?'

If your answer is "I am devout', when was the last time your devotion made someone hostile?