Authors note. This article was first published in July 2012. Updated comments from the ABS appear at the end further confirming the thrust of my thesis.

In his book “Losing My Religion” Bishop Tom Frame (He is the Priest that conducted the services after the Bali bombings.) concludes that “Unless there is a turnaround in the fortunes of all community organizations by 2025 the Christian Church will be a marginal player in Australian life with a few remaining remnants. When the Christian affiliation of the population drops below 50 per cent, projected to happen around 2030, those identifying as Christians will be found in four main clusters. The Roman Catholic Church will continue to exercise sufficient discipline among its people to resist the mutating of popular culture. The Pentecostal/Charismatic churches will flourish in the larger cities, form communities within communities and become more sect like.”

He goes on to say that. “Those churches that do not present an attractive and credible alternative to popular culture will disappear. Left leaning cause driven liberal Protestant Churches that lack doctrinal rigor and are preoccupied with the promotion of social justice and cultural inclusion will be the first to go.”

Conclusions


The conclusions he draws would appear to be backed up by the results of the recent five yearly Australian census, which showed a remarkable increase of 30% in unbelief. In fact, five of the eight states and territories now have more unbelievers than believers. In country areas, Christian churches are closing at a rapid rate and this is attributable to a number of factors including an ageing population. Much research has been done over many years into the decline of belief and church attendance in Australia.

Reasons


Early on, the motor car was thought to be a cause because it opened society to other forms of recreation. Later television and the advent of the Sunday night movie were blamed for the demise of Sunday evening services. Today only around 7% of the population regularly attends Sunday services. Of these many are what I call culture or recreational church goers who don’t have a particularly strong belief,but attend because it forms part of their social circle or they play (or sing) in a band where they get opportunities they would not otherwise. Therefore, when these people are deducted from the 7% there is very little real belief.

However, the main reason for the decline in belief I would suggest is the fact that children are now better educated than their parents. Today’s generation questions everything. Coupled with a simple access to information on the internet it is now easy too reason and question traditional problematic belief. Young people are able to type any question about biblical belief into Google and then apply with an inquiring mind their own reason and logic.

Enlightened Young


In addition, the problem for the enlightened young in a technology driven society is the lack of demonstrably hard evidence to corroborate the existence of a personal God. For example. If you were to type in “virgin birth” then do some research, you are likely after considering the evidence conclude that no such event took place or at best, it is highly unlikely that it did. Alternatively, you could type in “contradictions of the bible” and if you are a reasoned person, you could only conclude that the book is unreliable as history and is lacking in factual content. That is not to say that it is not an important work in terms of literature or philosophy.

The young have also become impatient with religions inability or failure to remedy human suffering and put an end to social equality. If anything, it tends to exacerbate these problems. Moreover, of course the young find it difficult to fathom how the moral problems of today can be solved by refereeing to a moral landscape thousands of a year old, which was written by humans with intellectually inferior brains than the advanced minds of today. They are being asked to accept a set of rules that assume that the world they live in has never progressed scientifically or socially. They conclude that religion (and its God) is a man- made concept and it has been an historical monumental failure.

So in Australia given that the census (taken every five years) continues on its downward spiral and Bishop Frame is correct in his assumptions we could expect that within 15 or 20 years the Christian church will no longer exist.

Although this piece focuses on Australian faith it is worth noting that recent surveys in the US see for the first time a decline in belief in people under 30. This also backs up my reasoning on the impact of education outside of traditional sources.

continue

People professing to have no religion have moved past Anglicans to become the second-largest grouping after Catholics in the 2011 Census.

Almost 4.8 million people said they had no religion, up 29 per cent from 2006, but the number of people not answering the question dropped by 2 per cent. This suggested that more people were claiming a religious identity (including no religion), said Monash University sociology professor Gary Bouma.

The total Christian population is 13.2 million, or 61 per cent, down three percentage points. Catholics have dropped half a percentage point to 25.3 or 5.4 million, Anglicans are down 1.6 percentage points to 3.7 million, while the Uniting Church is down to 5 per cent, or 1.1 million people.

Minority religions all showed strong growth, particularly Hindus, whose numbers nearly doubled to 276,000, from 0.7% to 1.3%. Buddhists have risen from 2.1 per cent to 2.5 per cent, Muslims from 1.7 per cent to 2.2 per cent. Professor Bouma said Hindu growth was due to migration, and the recent Muslim growth was due to continued migration from south Asia and a high birth rate.

‘‘The rise in ‘no religion’ continues its historic trend, even in the face of an apparent small rise in claiming a religious identity. So polarisation is increasing,’’ Professor Bouma said.

In five of eight states and territories, no religion provides the largest group. In Victoria and Queensland it is second, behind Catholics, and in NSW it is third, also behind Anglicans.

An interesting development is in the groups coming next in each state and capital city. In Sydney, Muslims have passed Eastern Orthodox into fourth place with 4.7 per cent, but for the state of NSW Islam is fifth, following the Uniting Church.

In Melbourne the Eastern Orthodox are fourth (5.5 per cent) and Buddhists fifth (4 per cent), while statewide in Victoria the Uniting Church leapfrogs the Orthodox into fourth.

In all other states and capital cities the Uniting Church is fourth. In Queensland and Brisbane, Presbyterians take fifth spot. In Western Australia undefined Christians have replaced Presbyterians in fifth position but in both Perth and Canberra it is Buddhists who have displaced Presbyterians. Presbyterians keep fifth place in Tasmania, including Hobart.

In Adelaide Orthodox Christians take fifth spot, while for the whole state Lutherans are fifth, as they are in Darwin and the Northern Territory.

UPDATED COMMENTS DECEMBER 2013



In the past 100 years, the number of Australians reporting on the national census that they have “no religion” has jumped from one in 250 in 1911 to more than one in five in 2011.

In addition, many of those who nominate a religious affiliation do not actively participate in religious activities.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics social trends report provides the first in-depth look at the 2011 census data on religion.

“Rates of reporting no religion have been steadily rising, and Australia is not alone in this – rates are also rising for countries like New Zealand, England and Wales, Canada, the United States and Ireland,” said ABS Director of Social and Progress Reporting Fiona Dowsley.

While 4.8 million, or 22 per cent, of Australians reported “no religion” in the 2011 census, 25 per cent nominated as Catholic, and 17 per cent as Anglicans.

On present trends, “no religion” will be the most popular response by the next census.

About half of those reporting no religious belief are less than 30 years old.

Almost a third of 22 to 24- year-olds reported no religion, and about one in five children under 15 live in a home where one or both parents reported no religion.

The ranks of non-believers also increases with higher education, with almost a third of those older than 19 with postgraduate qualifications reporting no religion compared with one in five of those with only a school education.

Since the specific instruction of writing “none” if a person has no religion was added to the census in 1971, the number of people reporting no religion has increased an average of four percentage points a decade, with the sharpest rise – 6.8 percentage points – taking place in the past decade.

The Atheist Foundation of Australia encouraged people to report “no religion” on their 2011 census forms.

But Australia’s rising rate of non-believers also reflects global trends.

The ABS report found that the rising numbers of non-believers mirrors a steady decline in people reporting Christian beliefs, while those professing other beliefs, including Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism, were on the rise.

The fall in Christian beliefs has driven an increase in civil marriages, with seven in 10 marriages now conducted by a civil celebrant.

The report found non-believers are slightly less likely to do volunteer work (17 per cent) than people with Christian beliefs (20 per cent) but more likely than those with other beliefs (14 per cent).

The 2010 General Social Survey found that only 15 per cent of men and 22 per cent of women had actively participated in a religious or spiritual group.

peter.mickelburough@news.com.au

http://theaimn.com/2013/12/31/the-future-of-christian-faith-in-australia-updated...

Christianity has been dying out in most Western countries for a while, particularity the North West and their cousin states. This isn't any secret or new news. But, the interesting thing is that Christianity is growing in the non-West. Particularly Africa, South America, and some Asian states.

Secularisation is a Western phenomenon and cannot be understood with understanding the Enlightenment and the growth of the empirical sciences.

I always have a soft spot for Roman Catholicism. (Well I married one). People like Father Bob Maguire provide inspiration by acting out their beliefs and inspiring people.

They make US evangelists look really shabby by comparison.

UnSubRocky wrote on Dec 31^st, 2013 at 3:02pm:


It seems to be working fine for Islam and Judaism.  But then, jews and muslims aren't selling themselves out.

Not religious myself.

I found this a good read:

http://alaindebotton.com/religion/

Do they have set times of when they pray? I was in the cinema a couple years ago, and I was on my way out of the restrooms there. Some guy was facing east, kneeling just outside the lavatory, and he finished up his pray with the usual "shoulders, head, it's good" signal with his hands. I walked a little quicker to the exit thinking that we might lose the cinema for the sake of his postmortem booty call. But it did get me wondering if he took time out to thank Allah during a session of a movie.

I think they call those moments "self-fulfilling prophesies".