“Post God Nation? How religion fell off the radar in Australia – and what might be done to get it back on.” – Roy Williams, ABCBooks, 2015.

Reviewed by Neil Wilkinson

Very dramatic changes have come in Australian society and the church during the lifetimes of most of us.  The census of 1901 had 96% of respondents identifying as Christian, with about half the population actually attending church services on a regular basis. In the nation-driving states of Victoria and NSW the church-goers were nearer 75%. So it was not surprising that Williams could point to the church links of our founding fathers and mothers, and see those connections shaping the democratic institutions and legal system they established in Australia.

But, says Williams, the Christian religion is no longer ‘socially significant’ in Australia. The 2011 census revealed only 61% as nominally Christian, with 30% claiming ‘no religion’ or not bothering to answer the question. Only 8% regularly attend worship. For Williams, a Christian layman and former prominent litigator turned author, Australia has not been taken over by aggressive atheists, or other faiths, or latter day spiritualists. For the most part Aussies are ignorant of, and indifferent to matters of faith which seem to have no relevance to their life.

Williams argues that the churches are largely to blame for the present dis-ease with religion because social justice and care for the neighbour in need has been sacrificed in a vain attempt to shore up church institutional position and power. The reaction to exposure of child abuse is an obvious example. War has also been too readily endorsed, while foreign aid, the treatment of refugees fleeing injustice and terror, and issues like climate change which affect the poorest of the world most severely, are not promoted as priorities.  Williams feels the churches have failed to encourage a broad education for life for all children irrespective of background.  Science, religion and values need to be taught as potentially complementary understandings rather than as competing life perspectives.  Embarrassingly, many church-established schools increasingly cater for the privileged.

Williams, as a lay Presbyterian, wisely steers clear of doctrinal minefields, preferring to bring reform through a more compassionate practical Christianity. Interestingly, Pope Francis has also tackled reform via an encyclical on climate change and symbolic acts of acceptance and inclusion for the hungry, homeless, and humiliated outcasts of society. To me, that seems the way of Jesus also.