Christianity is dwindling in Australia and America*

by Julian White
Article from Christian Today:
Posted: Thursday, June 18, 2009, 9:36 (EST)

There is a general understanding and even you must have heard about it;
it’s about the way religion is viewed in Australia and America, it’s a
popular belief that ‘USA is a very Christian country, whereas Australia
is very secular’; ‘Americans flash their religion openly, whereas
Australians have a natural aversion to public displays of religion, and
to religion in politics.’

But under Rudd and Obama’s leadership era there are new parallels and
convergences being drawn with regard to religion in the two countries.
Firstly, both of them are publicly practicing Christians, and
acknowledge the place of Christianity in forming their center-left
political views. Secondly, Rudd who is the first Labor leader since the
bitter split in the 1950s has defied the party's aggressively secular
tradition, and openly accepted the role of Christianity in his thinking.

In a 2005 interview with ABC TV's Compass, Rudd, who was still in
opposition, said that his views came at the risk of being seen by his
Labor party colleagues as some slightly besotted “God botherer”, but he
didn't want God to become a “fully owned ancillary of political
conservatism in this country.” Rudd who has described himself as a
Christian socialist, has said that it is important for “Christians in
politics not to cherry-pick the gospel, but have a full understanding of
it, including its social dimension”. He added that keeping in view
what's happening on the political right in this country, and in America,
it’s important that people on the center-left of politics initiate the
argument from a different perspective but from within the Christian
tradition.

This could have been re-iterated by Obama who has been brought up in a
non-religious household, and it was only as a young adult community
organizer in Chicago that he embraced Christianity, primarily because of
its emphasis on social justice, and this has been emphasized in his
book, Audacity of Hope. Since coming into power he has faced a tough
time in defending the view that Christianity does not have a privileged
position in America. His further remarks at a press conference on his
recent visit to Turkey, considering USA as a nation of citizens who are
bound by ideals and a set of values and not being a Christian nation or
a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation, has irked many conservative
evangelicals.

Kevin Rudd would happily agree with these views of Obama. But the
similarities in views don't end with the political leaders. Statistics
reported in the recent Easter edition of Newsweek magazine created
uproar in America. Written in the form of a cross, in bold red letters
on a black background, its provocative cover read “The Decline and Fall
of Christian America”. The article analyzed the results of the 2008
American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) published in March this
year, and threw light on some intriguing facts surrounding these two
startling statistics.

Firstly, in the last 18 years the number of Americans not affiliated
with any religion has nearly doubled from 8% to 15%, matched by a
similar decline in the percentage of Christians. The numbers of
Australians who are not affiliated with any religion are slightly
higher. Our 1991 census revealed this as 12.9%, which has grown to 18.7%
as reported in the latest census of 2006.

Secondly, the biggest decline in religiously affiliated people was
concentrated in the north-east of US, which is considered the Christian
heartland of the country. This massive decline in has agitated many
conservative Christian leaders to claim America has become a
post-Christian country. But this alarmist tendency is skewed because
though the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the
death of Christianity are greatly exaggerated. Being less Christian is
not equal to America being post-Christian.

Meacham has demonstrated the percentage of Christians in his
presentation of ARIS which shows that some 76% call themselves Christian
(in Australia, 64% are Christians). The largest Christian group in US is
Catholics, making up 25% (almost identical to Australia’s 25.8%).

The major difference which the statistics show with Australia is the
massive conservative evangelical base in the US; 45% of American
Christians, or 34% of the total adult population, define themselves as
being ‘born again’ Christians. In contrast, in Australia, in the 2006
census, only 1.1% described themselves as Pentecostal, but ‘born again
Christians’ also reside in other denominations. In a survey conducted
for Sydney's Center for Public Christianity, 15% of 2500 respondents
identified as ‘born again Christians’; it’s a significant number, but is
still much smaller than the percentage in the US.

So, after the Bush era and the Religious Right, the landslide election
victory of Obama, has swung the religious pendulum in such a way that
now the perception of Christianity’s place in America is suddenly very
different, and with this ‘change’ maybe it’s not so different than
Australia.