The next census will be taken on August 10 this year and it will likely confirm that fewer than half of all Australians now consider themselves Christian. At the last census, in 2016, just 52 per cent of Australians described themselves as Christian. There has been a remarkable fall in the proportion of Australian Christians, from 88 per cent in 1966.
There is nothing inherently wrong in Australia moving to a non-Christian society. Many will celebrate a more diverse and multicultural Australia.
But there are also risks as well because Christian principles are the foundation from which modern Western societies became the most free and prosperous in history.
Many of us now fail to even detect the echoes of Christianity in these values. The modern distaste for sexism or racism echoes Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
It was Christians that helped dismantle some of the more brutal practices of the ancient world. Before Christ, it was common for parents to murder unwanted children and Christians campaigned strongly against these horrors.
It was a Christian, St. Telemachus, who helped end the inhumanity of gladiatorial games. He threw himself onto the floor of the Coliseum to save an unlucky victim. When Telemachus himself was killed by the Gladiator, the crowd was horrified and the resulting backlash led to the end of human killing for sport.
And, Europe became the first part of the world to abolish slavery when the Christian king, Charlemagne, pronounced his opposition to it, although it took centuries for it to finally vanish from Europe.
None of this is to absolve Christianity for the many sins committed by some of its misguided proponents. From modern day child abuse in the churches, to medieval justifications for imperialisms, Christians are not perfect. But then neither is any religion or ethical system.
Christianity was and remains a unique approach to looking at the world. Christians worship sacrifice. No other religion has its God killed in perhaps the most brutal possible way, crucifixion. A torment Jesus went through to help save others.
Christianity exalts the importance of the individual and teaches that each human has worth regardless of their appearance or actions. This is something that Christianity inherited from Judaism (“man is made in God’s image”) and its importance is hard to understate. Most other human societies are organised hierarchically, with those at the top having more valuable lives than those at the bottom.
Christianity teaches that everyone, even criminals, will receive God’s mercy and grace.
Non-Christians may respond that all of these things are just common sense. It is true that you do not need to believe in the Trinity to hold the view that you should treat people like you would like to be treated. The question is though will such common sense be all that common in a post-modern secular society?
There are at least some signs to worry. Perhaps the most marked departure from Christian principles is the emergence of a new “dualism” in post-modern thinking. Dualism is the belief that our minds are separate from our bodies and you can see it in the modern view that we can become whatever gender we choose regardless of our biological reality.
This can become a problem because if we all develop our own realities in our minds there will be little that binds us together. If I am the master of my domain, and can choose my gender, sexuality and even race, why do I need to listen to others, let alone love them?
There was never a perfectly Christian society but striving for perfection probably made society better. Let’s hope we don’t lose that pursuit in the modern rush to make our own selves the new Gods.
