When I began in journalism more than 30 years ago, my colleagues (and I) were generally hostile to religion, which was seen entirely through the prism of Christianity. With today?s young journalists, that?s largely been replaced by a slightly shame-faced ignorance and an open-minded apathy, doubtless because it wasn?t rammed down their throats.
The under 30s largely grew up without Sunday school, while Catholic schools are far less staffed by nuns and brothers from religious orders. Christianity has a less visible presence in all sorts of ways.
So this is an enormous social change, right? Well, perhaps not. Australia has never been a particularly religious society, from European settlement till now, with a high point just after World War II, but nor has it ever been aggressively secular like, say, France. We have no constitutional separation of church and state.
What characterises religion in Australia is a certain reticence, a ?shy hope in the heart?, as sociologist of religion Gary Bouma observed two years ago in his book Australian Soul. We have made overt, ostentatious religiosity a form of bad manners rather than an offence against the state.
For Bouma, Australian religion is characterised by a serious but light touch, a quiet and even inarticulate reverence, a readiness to laugh at itself, a commitment to life here and now, and a live-and-let-live tolerance. Australians are wary of enthusiasm, of high-temperature and demanding religion, and of imported mass-culture. They dislike intolerance.
Nevertheless, institutional religion is retreating. The number of Australians identifying as Christian as the 2006 Census was 64% (down from 96% in 1901), with another 6% identifying with other religions. However, only about 10% of Australians attend worship on any given week. Somewhere between those two statistics is the real picture of Australian religious identity.
Naturally, the picture is complex. If young Anglo-Australians are less religious than their grandparents, the second and third generations of Muslims are more inclined to be devout than their parents. For many communities ? such as the post-war Greek migrants ? church has been an important part of preserving the home culture in a new country, including language and history. But non-mainstream denominations and religions, once in Australia, tend to adopt the same restrained profile.
Anglican Bishop Tom Frame ? from whose new book Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia this blog title is taken ? draws a distinction between disbelief as a positive rejection of God and unbelief as a neutral position which ranges from thoughtful doubters to the merely ignorant. He quotes Australian poet James McAuley who wrote of people ?who do not think or dream, deny or doubt, But simply don?t know what it?s all about?. Most Australians, according to Frame, are unbelievers.
Australia had a fairly irreligious beginning. Even today, as Catholic commentator Ronald Conway observed, the most common objection of ordinary Australians to religion is that it spoils their fun. Other studies show that they like Jesus but not the church, and they resent those who claim to speak for God ? or rather, what they say on God?s behalf. But it?s all rather low-key.
Frame writes: ?Apart from agitated, sometimes aggressive bloggers, most Australians seem to take a very casual and carefree attitude to religion. They are neither disinterested nor indifferent. When religion curtails their lifestyle or makes demands that exceed what is deemed reasonable, or when they require religious rites of passage or borrow religious ideas to regulate civil life, Australians can become very interested in religion. But the ever-increasing majority who describe themselves as ?not religious? without every saying what they mean by the phrase are still grateful that religion is available if ever they want it and thankful to the extent that what is on offer fulfils their social needs. Anzac Day commemorations are a good example of religion?s social utility.?
Even so, he concedes that belief is declining, and says it is for the same reasons as in Britain and Europe: the ideas that there is no evidence for God, that religion is dangerous, that religion belonged to humanity?s infancy, and that it?s just one possible explanation among many.
Australians tend to see religion as a personal pursuit to be practised in private, and do not criticise another person?s religion unless they make universal claims or try to impose their beliefs. The drift to unbelief has not been the result of deep reflection so much as that belief has gradually become implausible.
Meanwhile, what Christianity offers is no longer fashionable. Frame says it offers access to transcendent truths at a time when there are doubts about God and wariness about truth-claims. It offers forgiveness of sins at a time when personal moral failure is not a priority issue. It offers a glimpse into life?s purpose and destiny at a time when most Westerners are living longer with greater material abundance. It offers an approach to ethical living at a time when most people are more interested in maximising their pleasure and minimising their pain. It offers difficult truths about individual and institutional conduct at a time when most prefer easy political answers. In the face of this, many churches have lost their nerve and their distinctive message.
So what next? That is something we should worry about. The militant disbelievers ? the atheist equivalent of religious fundamentalists ? have a negative program to decry religious belief but not much of a positive one. As Frame says, they carefully ignore their lack of an articulated vision of what a godless world will look like.
?Although they profess few common values or shared virtues, have no comprehensive answers to the world?s problems and are offering no positive program of action to deal with greed and selfishness, betrayal and violence, they assert that a world without God is always and everywhere to be preferred. They ask that others trust their interpretations, receive their pledges and have faith in humanity. I believe that to accept such an invitation carries significant risk.?
Nor does Bouma think Australians will be much swayed. He has no doubt that Australia?s future features a significant role for religion and spirituality, because the needs they address are core to humanity: hope and meaning and connections. After two generations that seemingly deserted spirituality, it is on the rise among young people, he says. Modern forms will "neither be weak, insipid nor irrelevant; nor will they dominate the landscape . . . Hope will continue to be nurtured and quietly celebrated - a shy hope in the heart."
Over to you: Have you lost your religion (or spirituality), or found it? What sort of society will Australia be if religion is successfully marginalised? And how likely is that to happen?
