It's cool to be Christian

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- God and his teachings are on a roll, enjoying a surge in public support, writes Jill Rowbotham --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

16dec05

BEFORE Peter Garrett was a rock star, before he was an environmental campaigner, before he was the federal member for Kingsford Smith in Sydney, he was a Christian.

"I would not describe myself as devout, although certainly a Christian belief has, I think, informed my value system," the former lead singer of Midnight Oil says. "It explains who I am and what I believe in." With Christmas upon us, Garrett, Labor's parliamentary secretary for reconciliation and the arts, is reflecting on the trend that it's now OK to declare yourself Christian. "I think there is no doubt Christianity is more talked about and there are more expressions of Christianity in the marketplace," he says.

In an increasingly volatile world, with terrorist attacks occurring abroad and outbreaks of racial and religious violence erupting at home on Sydney's Cronulla beach and surrounding suburbs this week, Christian and Muslim leaders and followers are standing up and calling for peace and tolerance.

Garrett says the attacks, and the fact that the terror is emanating from an extreme form of Islam, forces "people to start to focus back on the role of Christianity in our society, and religion, and what they personally do and do not believe".

Politicians are also becoming more vocal about where they stand. They lined up to attend the July conference of Sydney's ever-growing Pentecostal Hillsong church. Federal Treasurer Peter Costello and then NSW premier Bob Carr spoke, and federal ministers Alexander Downer, Kevin Andrews and Helen Coonan were in the audience. Hillsong boasts a congregation of 19,000 every week across its two campuses, in the Hills district of Sydney and the other in the inner city.

A sideshow was staged in September when it emerged that David Clarke, the right-wing Liberal powerbroker who delivered the NSW party leadership to Peter Debnam, had strong connections to Catholic conservative group Opus Dei, feeding concerns about the ascendancy of the Christian "Right".

In October, federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley addressed the Australian Christian Lobby's convention and restated his Christianity. Prominent Melbourne Anglican professor Ian Harper, who will chair the new Fair Pay Commission, which is part of the industrial relations package, also spoke. Afterwards Harper said: "For me as an individual, I will be resting on my faith and my belief in God in helping me reach balanced decisions."

Christian church leaders have become insistently vocal: over the defects of John Howard's industrial relations legislation; Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen gave the Boyer lectures; and Cardinal George Pell appeared on a Vatican balcony, among members of the enclave that had just elected Joseph Ratzinger to succeed pope John Paul II, as Benedict XVI.

Interfaith dialogues have gathered pace via organisations such as the Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims and Jews, whose participants are the National Council of Churches, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

In a laidback country unused to people wearing their religious hearts on their sleeves, it has been a remarkable show of force. And there are no signs it will diminish with Sydney's Catholic diocese swinging into the planning for the Vatican-backed World Youth Day in 2008, expected to attract as many overseas visitors as the 2000 Olympics, and heightened awareness of belief.

Australia boasts a range of well-known Christians, including Prime Minister Howard, Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd and Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian. Those with a lower-profile faith include Garrett, singers Marina Prior and Nick Cave, and best-selling writer Tim Winton.

Prior re-embraced her childhood faith about eight years ago. "I was at the height of my success: I was in a hit show, earning lots of money, I had a happy marriage, everything was essentially good in my life, but I just felt a yearning," she says of the days when she starred in The Phantom of the Opera.

She and her husband Peter already had the first of their three children. "I think you definitely start to face your mortality when you have children and there is a sense of generational things. You look at what you are going to give your children, the foundations to base their lives on. I thought it was a bit nebulous to say 'just be nice'.

"The greatest thing we can give our children is a spiritual focus for their lives rather than living on a default setting that is nothing in particular." Asked whether Christianity is becoming cool, Prior observes: "I imagine it's slightly cooler to be Buddhist than it is to be a Christian."

To test the popularity of Christianity look no further than that harbinger of trends, Hollywood. Mel Gibson woke up the studios with a fright when he funded the wildly successful The Passion of the Christ. That was in February 2004, a year after Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, about the supposed fate of Jesus' descendants, went hurtling up the best-seller lists.

The astounding success of that film and that book convinced worshippers of mammon there was a substantial appetite and therefore serious money to be made from selling Christianity.

The most recent evidence for this is the marketing campaign behind a range of editions of C.S. Lewis's Christ-based allegory, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in the bookshops. It is timed to coincide with the release of the film of the same name on Boxing Day. Next year The Da Vinci Code will rake in more sales when the film of the book, starring the highly bankable Tom Hanks, opens in May.

Yet while Australia's dominant religion is exhibiting a surge in public confidence and profile, overall numbers attending traditional churches are still falling. In the 1950s, 44 per cent of Australians went to church at least once a month; a 2003 national church life survey showed the figure was 19 per cent. According to 2001 figures, about 1.5 million attended every week, down from 1.76 million in 1996. This despite almost 70 per cent of Australians identifying themselves as Christian on the most recent 2001 census.

It is widely accepted that baby boomers, like previous generations, drifted away from the church as young adults. But while those earlier prodigals returned once they had children of their own that they wanted to raise as church-goers, the boomers were largely lost for good.

But there are signs of new growth. Research by advertising company Clemenger Communications released in September shows there has been a rekindling of interest. During a 1978 survey of twentysomethings, 26 per cent agreed religion was important in their lives, but a 2005 survey of people who had been twentysomethings in 1978 revealed that now 36 per cent agreed. Clemenger argues today's young people are more religious than their parents' generation, with 40 per cent of the twentysomethings surveyed in 2005 agreeing with the proposition. And 56 per cent of today's young people say they consider themselves spiritual even though they don't go to church.

An exception to the denominational decline are the evangelical and Pentecostal congregations, which are experiencing massive growth.

Among rank and file Christians, there is a diversity of practice. Garrett, who grew up in the Anglican tradition and has attended a Uniting Church, would not call himself "a denominational Christian". "I go wherever the door is open and sometimes I don't go anywhere at all."

Prior and her family are members of a Christian City Church in Melbourne and will be singing in the Christmas Day service.

New ways of "doing" church are also emerging. Sydney psychiatrist Sonia Luscombe, 34, fits into the category of "small c" Christian. "I suggest it's become a bit more fashionable to speak out about your faith and not to be regarded as odd," she says. "Christians had a certain image when I was growing up as being daggy and skivvy-wearing people. But now there is more diversity in all religions. It has loosened up generally."

Luscombe has a Hindu father and a nominally Methodist mother, both academics who didn't practise their faiths. Her interest in psychology led her to spiritual topics and at about the age of 30, she began to look for a religious tradition to follow. "I approached it as a bit of a shopping expedition and I compared different faiths and what I could get out of them."

Luscombe went through a "passionate" stage for about a year and these days attends the Cafe Church in Glebe. Her concept of faith is that it is "an evolving thing as opposed to a fixed thing". Her husband, Huw Luscombe, 39, a high school science teacher and co-ordinator of the Cafe Church, was raised by nominally Christian parents and was 12 when he became a Christian. He points to an explosion of interest in Christian schools and says it flows through to a relationship with the churches. "The Catholic Church has been doing schools for a long time and it has a huge impact on their attendances," Huw Luscombe says.

Another reason attitudes to Christianity have become more tolerant, he says, is that: "People are supportive and respect churches because of their involvement in social welfare."

Garrett agrees. "One thing I have noticed is that with the great concentration that many people have had regarding issues to do with poverty or environmental justice, peace, disarmament, quite often you find there is a Christian input, represented through churches and organisations, or through the people themselves," he says.

Prior says a faith that is engaged with the world and its problems is more attractive. An ambassador for the non-denominational Christian aid organisation, Samaritan's Purse, she will travel to Cambodia in April to visit projects and distribute donations to orphans and street children.

Prior says non-believers are attracted to Christians who incorporate faith into their daily lives. "If they see people authentically living it out they respond to it," she says.

Jill Rowbotham is The Australian's religious affairs writer.

© The Australian

From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,17580939,00.html