Collectively creating a Charter of Compassion

An article by Barney Zwartz in The Age drew my attention to an interesting and ambitious online project/experiment which aspires to “change the tenor of the conversation around religion.”  It’s a big task, but a worthwhile one.

The project seeks to bring together “the voices of people from all religions” from around the world to make online contributions and comments to develop a Charter of Compassion, to “remind the world that while all faiths are not the same, they all share the core principle of compassion and the Golden Rule.”

Using what they describe as “innovative group decision-making software”, people are able to contribute their words and stories and comment on other people’s.

People get one week to comment on the Preamble (ticking down through its last hours as I write), followed by a week on what they call the affirmations (“short descriptions of each of the eight core elements of compassion”), a week on some specific calls to action for various groups, and then on December 4th, there is time to work on the Final Declaration.

When you register to comment, it does provide a category for people who identify as atheists, agnostics or just of no categorisable religious beliefs and there is a mention or two across parts of the website which indicate a willingness to have input from such people, but it is still very heavily religion focused.  The group who will take all the contributions and craft the final document – called the Council of Sages – all seem to be religious people.  While I quite like the idea of an assertive Charter of Compassion, I think it would have greater inclusive value if there was a bit more effort to fold in non-religious people too.

I get annoyed at the way the notion of secularism is often wrongly interpreted as anti-religion and used as a cloak to attack religious beliefs or constitutions.  I am not religious so I obviously support people not following any religion, but I can’t see the benefit in attacking other people solely because they do.

While this project certainly doesn’t take the same divisve error of attacking non-religious people, it is unfortunate that something which seeks to highlight a common, core ethical belief which most non-religious people also share hasn’t done a bit more to try to fold in those people too. Maybe it would be stretching the intent – and the tent – of the project a bit too far.