“The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

~ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16, Point 3

There are few doctrinal issues about which the world’s major religions could more fully agree than the central importance of the family, youth, and education.

R20 Working Group 5 addresses the fundamental importance of strong families, well-formed youth, and effective character-based education to human flourishing, while simultaneously highlighting the vital role of religion in fortifying these essential building blocks of a healthy and prosperous society, and the shared future of humanity.

Despite a strongly materialist bias in mainstream economic analysis, growing evidence has emerged in recent decades that family, culture, education, and character formation are crucial determinants of human flourishing and economic prosperity. For example, the Harvard-Baylor Global Flourishing Study (profiled on the R20 WG-1 on Religion and Human Flourishing webpage) has found that strong family life and strong communities are among the most important “institutional or communal pathways” to human flourishing, with family and education showing significant effects across domains of flourishing.

Compared with many narrower factors, the Global Flourishing Study treats these relational and communal supports as especially important because they shape multiple domains at once — especially a sense of meaning and purpose, relationships, character, and even physical and mental health — rather than just one outcome. In other words, while strong family and community life are not the only drivers of flourishing, they are among the most consequential and cross-cutting ones, alongside spiritual and religious life.

At the same time, an extensive body of social-science research finds that stable families and the effective upbringing of children — so fundamental to human flourishing and global prosperity — are strengthened enormously by the unique contributions of religion and religious practice.

“As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.”

~ Pope Saint John Paul II
Homily Delivered in Perth, Australia on 30 November 1986

Research by distinguished University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox and others consistently finds that religious practice is associated with stronger marriages, greater marital stability, and better family life. Wilcox’s work on marriage and fatherhood emphasizes that religion often reinforces shared commitments, mutual sacrifice, and child-centered family habits. Related studies find that regular religious service attendance is linked to substantially lower divorce risk and higher marital satisfaction, while shared faith and worship are associated with better relationship quality. In the broader literature, family-oriented research also finds that children in stable, married-parent households tend, on average, to experience more security, more parental time and attention, and better educational and behavioral outcomes than children in more unstable arrangements.

As the Harvard-Baylor Global Flourishing Study suggests, family stability appears to matter well beyond the confines of the household. Research on socio-economic mobility and flourishing finds that strong marriages and intact families are associated with higher upward mobility, better child and adolescent flourishing, and stronger communities. Wilcox and others argue that these family patterns help produce more social trust, better human capital formation, and healthier neighborhoods, all of which, in turn, have positive consequences for economic dynamism and prosperity and the overall health and flourishing of society.

In short, the literature suggests a causal chain in which religious observance can strengthen marriages and families, and stronger families in turn contribute to the social, economic, and cultural well-being of society.

R20 Working Group 5 also explores how government policies can significantly enhance the contributions of family and religion to the formation of young people and their character. A notable example thereof involved a proposal developed by Indonesian students of State Middle School 1 in Magelang, Central Java (“Sekolah Menengah Pertama Negeri 1 Magelang,” or SMP 1 Magelang) during Indonesia’s 2023 Chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN.

Submitted to the ASEAN Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue Conference (IIDC) held in Jakarta in August 2023, the students’ proposal emerged from an ASEAN-wide competition organized by Singapore’s Ministry of Education, the Science Center Singapore, and the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organisation Secretariat (SEAMEO Secretariat).

Recognized and supported by Indonesia’s Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, H.E. Nadiem Anwar Makarim, key elements of the students’ proposal were incorporated into the ASEAN IIDC Jakarta Declaration and subsequently endorsed by the Chairman’s Statement of the 43rd ASEAN Summit, which reads, in part:

1.We, the Heads of State/Government of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), gathered in Jakarta, Indonesia, on 5 September 2023 for the 43rd ASEAN Summit under the Chairmanship of the Republic of Indonesia, with the theme “ASEAN Matters: Epicentrum of Growth.” The Summit was chaired by H.E. Joko Widodo, President of the Republic of Indonesia, and convened in accordance with the ASEAN Charter.

122. We reaffirmed the importance of fostering the values of an inclusive, sustainable, resilient, dynamic, and harmonious ASEAN Community through facilitating a greater understanding of shared civilisational values derived from the ASEAN region’s culture and religions, and commended the convening of the ASEAN Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue Conference 2023 with the theme ‘ASEAN Shared Civilizational Values: Building an Epicentrum of Harmony to Foster Peace, Security, and Economic Prosperity,’ in Jakarta on 7 August 2023, and recognised the values of its outcomes.

Tracing its heritage to a school for indigenous Javanese children established in 1912, SMP 1 Magelang has played a notable role in the history of Indonesia, including its independence movement. Three of its students were killed on 28 October 1945 while defending their teacher and resisting Japanese Kido Butai troops, who were assisting the return of Dutch colonial rule to Central Java. Situated less than four kilometers from Indonesia’s Military Academy, SMP 1 Magelang has long educated children of the nation’s military and governing elites.

Students of SMP 1 Magelang assemble for a flag-raising ceremony and to sing Indonesia’s national anthem. A multi-religious and pluralistic nation state, the Republic of Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, which embraces a beneficent form of religious nationalism and rejects extremist calls to establish an Islamic state and/or caliphate.

The students’ proposal stated:

“Strengthening Educational Curricula through Character Education, to Counter the Negative Effects of Globalization and Modernity Among ASEAN Youth” 

ASEAN youth are exposed daily to a vast array of negative influences associated with globalization and modernity, driven by the massive rise of internet penetration; pervasive social media; the lack of quality character education; and the breakdown of traditional cultural and religious values.

Youth are particularly vulnerable to detrimental aspects of these phenomena, which threaten the mental and physical health of ASEAN youth, and diminish their potential to shape the future of ASEAN in a positive direction.

Members of the team from SMP Negeri 1 Magelang are deeply concerned by this problem and its implications for the future well-being of society. For contemporary youth are often attracted by the glamorous aspects of modernity, including the culture of instant gratification, and become addicted to the internet without realizing its dangers. These dangers include socio-cultural dislocation; alienation from family and society; the risk of criminality and drug use; diminished educational attainment and/or failure; and the rise of psychological disturbances among youth.

The team from SMP Negeri 1 Magelang takes this opportunity to propose that adults in ASEAN and throughout the world — including those with positions in government and civil society organizations, who share our concern and have the means to help safeguard the younger generation from dangers posed by globalization and modernity — unite and help youth become strong and resilient.

SMP Negeri 1 Magelang has developed a unique curriculum called ASABUNGA, an acronym that stands for Agamais (values shared by all religions); SAins (science); BUdaya (culture); and linkuNGAn (social and physical environment).

The ASABUNGA curriculum represents an effort to address the challenges, and opportunities, posed by globalization and modernity. It contains elements closely related to what is known, in Indonesia, as “budi pekerti,” or character education.

Budi pekerti refers to the overall awareness, actions and behavior of an individual. The term “budi” means “consciousness,” “reason,” “mind,” or “mental character.” The term “pekerti” refers to one’s behavior, deeds, temperament, and objective moral character. Hence, the term “budi pekerti” refers to a state of mental and moral character that manifests in the form of behavior that is beneficial to oneself and others, performed by one who is fully aware of the consequences of his or her actions. [Emphasis added.]

Effective character education provides a holistic approach to addressing a myriad of social problems. This is because mature, responsible individuals generally contribute to the well-being of society, rather than detract from it. Proper character education inspires students and shapes their practical behaviour in various areas of life, i.e., individual, family, community, nation and the world at large, including our natural environment.

Reflecting upon their own experience — and aware of the need for sustainable development, resilient communities and the preservation of our planet, so that humanity may continue to thrive — the team of SMP Negeri 1 has resolved to offer a “big idea” to ASEAN and the world. This entails inviting major stakeholders to cooperate in identifying appropriate “big picture” solutions to the challenges posed by globalization and modernity, which solutions may be readily applied by the nations of ASEAN to create an “epicentrum of harmony and growth” that will serve as a model for the entire world.

The near-term solution we propose is to include this “big idea” in the upcoming “ASEAN Conference on Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue,” which Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) will host in cooperation with the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Nahdlatul Ulama, which has served the nation of Indonesia for over a century, has long implemented budi pekerti in its educational system. Last year, NU established the G20 Religion Forum (R20) in conjunction with Indonesia’s Presidency of the G20. 

Desired long-term outcomes include strengthening the educational systems of ASEAN Member States, by incorporating and/or improving character education as a core element of their respective educational curricula.

Minister of Education Nadiem Anwar Makarim poses for a selfie with the Principal of SMP 1 Magelang, Pak Budi Wahyono, and the proposal’s five young authors — Bridgette Liony Krisifu; Syafi Azzam Zulfahmi; Charles Bhagaskara Taylor; Eufrasia Gracia Ardyawati; and Livia Tina Wibowo. Reflecting Indonesia’s rich cultural and religious diversity, two of the students are Muslim, two Roman Catholic, and the fifth Protestant.

Following endorsement of the students’ proposal by Nahdlatul Ulama, the Minister of Education, and ASEAN, Indonesia’s Ministry of Education proceeded to facilitate its socialization to middle schools throughout the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation and democracy.

“ayaṃ nijaḥ paro veti gaṇanā laghucetasām
udāracaritānāṃ tu vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam”

“Discrimination saying, ‘This one is a relative, that [other one] a stranger,’ is only for the small-minded.
For the noble-minded, [who see with the eye of truth,] the whole world is a single family.”

~ Maha Upanishad, 6: 71-73

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons