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[1] Broadly defined, positivism is the conviction that only what can be scientifically demonstrated is real.

[2] In the parlance of the social sciences, quantitative social research deals in the statistical analysis of "hard" data - such as age, gender, income distribution etc - whilst qualitative social research deals in the statistical analysis of "soft" data - what people say they believe, what values people espouse etc.

[3] On this body of new spirituality literature, see for example, Rolheiser, R., Seeking Spirituality, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1998; O'Murchu, D., Religion in Exile, Gateway, Dublin, 2000; Tacey, D., Re-Enchantment, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2000; Tacey, D., The Spiritual Revolution, HarperCollins, Sydney, 2003; Frost, M., & Hirsch, A., The Shaping of Things to Come, Hendrickson, USA, 2003; McQuillan, P., "Youth Spirituality - a Reality in Search of Expression.", The Journal of Youth and Theology, November 2004. On the cultural and intellectual fading of confident positivistic atheism, see Alister McGrath's The Twilight of Atheism, Rider, London, 2004.

[4] Protestant Evangelical fundamentalism is historically deeply embedded in Enlightenment framed modern and secular Western culture, and is typically supportive of the liberal and secular political and economic freedoms that have developed in Western culture since the 18th century. See Rawlyk, G.A., & Noll, M.A., Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States, Baker Books, USA, 1993.

[5] The Non-Conformist Protestant heritage has strong historical associations with the separation of the religious from the political, commonly known as secular governance. North American democratic secular governance is premised on the civil and liberal interface of the two spheres of private belief conviction and public political order, via freedom of expression and persuasive rational argument. See Hunter, J.D., & Guinness, O., (eds.) Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace, The Brookings Institute, USA, 1990. Hence Non-Conformist Protestantism can be described as secular in two ways. Firstly, supposedly discrete "spheres" of human life - such as politics and religion - are dis-integrated, in a nominalist manner, and this dis-integration creates "the secular" as discrete from the sacred. Thus, "the secular sphere" itself is deeply embedded in the theo-political assumptions of this type of religion. Secondly, the notion that reason itself is neutral regarding the different claims of politics and religion, for example, pre-supposes that reason is both not theological nor political. That is, this type of religion constructs "reason" as discrete from theology. However, the degree to which such reason can be understood as anything other than secular - if it is definitionally not theological - becomes hard to grasp. In short, the very logic of the contemporary descendents of Non-Conformist Protestantism is still typically premised on an essentially 18th century Enlightenment view of Reason, and as this view developed into 19th century atheistic positivism outside of Evangelical Protestantism, it seems that non-theological Reason, as a supposedly neutral secular playing field, is in fact very far from theologically neutral. But contemporary Evangelical Protestantism, being still content with 18th century Enlightenment epistemology, has not seemed to notice how 'secular reason' has bitten the theological hand that fed it. Today's Western Evangelical Christianity can hence typically be described as a secular form of religion because it assumes that some neutral "secular reason" is still viable for the pursuit of its apologetic and political agendas, and the logic of this appeal is deeply grounded in its own nominalist theological assumptions.

[6] Tacey, D., Re-Enchantment, Harper Collins, Sydney, 2000, p7.

[7] Bauman, Z., "Postmodern Religion?" in Heelas, P., (ed) Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity, Blackwell, Oxford, 1998, p 55 - 78

[8] See Professor Philip Almond's lecture, "Fundamentalism, Christianity and Religion", delivered on air by the ABC Radio National's "Encounter" program, 7/04/2002. For the transcript see http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s520400.htm

[9] Of course, whilst fundamentalists are Evangelical Protestants, Evangelicalism itself does not equate with fundamentalist. Whilst Evangelical Protestantism is almost universally theologically conservative (ie for Evangelicals belief in the traditional creeds of the church is still just as strong now as it was prior to the theological and philosophical developments of European high culture in the 19th and 20th centuries) it is not at all necessarily politically conservative (see Wallis, J., God's Politics, Lion, Oxford, 2005) or doctrinally and intellectually fundamentalist (see Noll, M.A., The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, IVP, UK, 1994).

[10] Noll, M.A., American Evangelical Christianity, Blackwell, UK, 2001, see Part 1, "Who are Evangelicals?" particularly Chapter One, "Historical Overview", pp 9-29.

[11] The irony of the strongly fundamentalist influenced Religious Right in America decrying Islamic militant extremism as "fundamentalist Islam", when the USA is by far the most militant nation on earth, and the only true home of religious fundamentalism, is bazaar.

[12] Though even in the USA Evangelicals like Jim Wallis question how typical the more fundamentalist "Religious Right" are of American Evangelical Christianity. See Wallis, J., God's Politics, Lion, UK, 2005

[13] Maddox, M., God Under Howard, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005

[14] Faith is not, necessarily, only compatible with "pre-modern" belief - though the "pre-modern" may be far more interesting than our progressive prejudices have led us to assume. Indeed, exploring pre-modern Western belief, in the light of post-modern critiques of modernism, in order to construct new approaches to true belief now, is the very interesting theological project of the UK based theological movement known as "Radical Orthodoxy".

[15] I draw the term "hypermodern" from Middleton, J.R., & Walsh, B.J., Truth is stranger then it used to be, IVP, USA, 1995, p54. Yet whilst Middleton and Walsh point to a continuity between modernity and postmodernism in the context of their use of the term "hypermodernity" in Evangelical literature, Os Guinness more clearly points out the neat fit between a modern way of living and a postmodern set of beliefs. See Webb, K & Webb, H., "Calling, Postmodernism, and Chastened Liberals: A Conversation with Os Guinness", Mars Hill Review 8 (Summer 1997): 69-87; http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr08/os1.html

[16] See Lyotard, J-F., The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, Manchester University Press, 1984

[17] Realism believes that the truth about reality is humanly knowable. Anti-realism does not believe that the truth about reality is humanly knowable, but does believe that we can know truths about our perceptions of reality, and we can know truths of logic concerning the structure of our consciousness. Irrealism simply doesn't care about whether one makes any hard distinctions between reality and illusion, or truth and fiction, or not. See McCormick, P.J., (ed) Starmaking: Realism, Anti-Realism and Irrealism, MIT Press, 1996

[18] See Frankfurt, H.G., On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 2005. Professor Frankfurt links a pervasive cultural disinterest with truth to the intensive advertising presence contemporary Western people live with, in an interview that can be found on http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/video/frankfurt/ .

[19] Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, 1995; Slazoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Verso, New York, 2002.

[20] I have included Pentecostal within Evangelical here, although the reverse might be more accurate. Since the 1980s "charismatic renewal movement" in the Australian Evangelical scene, it has been increasingly difficult to distinguish Evangelicals from Pentecostals. I appreciate that it is possible to think of Evangelicals and Pentecostals as being significantly different types of ecclesial traditions, but for the purposes of this paper, the differences are now negligible.

[21] Web site: www2.hillsong.com/default.asp

[22] Because there is a God, and because He always speaks to us in the context of culture, it must be recognised that God is able to redemptively speak to people form where-ever they culturally are.

[23] The way in which films often seem to have significant belief implications for those at home in hypermodernity - films like the "Passion of Christ" and "The Davinci Code" - reflects the tacit conviction that carefully crafted moving images and spectator experience, for all effective purposes, actually are reality.

[24] Mackay, H., "One for all and all or one: it's a tribe thing." Sydney Morning Herald, July 13, 2002: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/12/1026185109842.html

[25] Hamilton, C., Growth Fetish, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2003; Eckersley, R., Well and Good, Text, Melbourne, 2004

[26] See Mackay, H., Generations, Macmillan, Sydney, 1997, Part Three.

[27] Mackay, H., "One for all and all or one: it's a tribe thing." Sydney Morning Herald, July 13, 2002 pp1-2 of http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/12/1026185109842.html

[28] See: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

[29] Mark C Taylor points out the relationship between relationalism and moral relativism on ABC Radio National, "Encounter", 12 March 2006, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s1584917.htm

[30] See Paul H Ray and Sherry R Anderson, The Cultural Creatives, Three Rivers Press, USA, 2001. This demography is, in the terms defined by Ray and Anderson, typically older than our youth demography - but it is a demography that sits well within David Tacey's characterisation of the non-churched spiritual quests of many Australian young people.

[31] See Milbank, J., Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Blackwell, Oxford, 1990. See also Blond, P., (ed) Post-Secular Philosophy, Routledge, London, 1998.

[32] Augustine, City of God, Penguin Classics, UK, 1986

[33] See 9.3 and 9.1 below, including footnotes.

[34] Maddox, M., God Under Howard, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005

[35] Kingston, M., Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999. Whilst Kingston's fascinating account of 30 days in the 1998 federal electoral struggle of One Nation gives no specific attention to religion, the obvious support Ms Hanson was able to attract form Queenslanders form outside of Brisbane is well documented by Kingston. That demography is typically politically and morally conservative in comparison to the rest of the country, and this conservativism still has strong ties to the sort of nominally Christian belief more mainstream in Australian life 50 years ago.

[36] See ABC Radio National's Background Briefing, 19 March 2006, titled "Postmodern Politics" which looks at Mark Danner's observations about the absence of interest in truth in the game of high power political spin. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2006/1593326.htm

[37] See Chesterton, G.K., The Everlasting Man, Ignatius Press, USA, 1993

[38] I have been involved in Evangelical youth ministry in Melbourne, Adelaide, Cairns and Brisbane over the past 25 years.

[39] It is interesting to note that in Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (Penguin Books, London, 2004, chapter 7) he discusses whether parental influence in the child in the development of conscience is affected by stern or indulgent parenting. He thinks that guilt - a sure sign of the presence of the super-ego - is likely to develop with or without stern parenting, but when Freud was writing, the cultural power of stern conformist morality as the context in which most German families themselves sat, was very strong. When, as in our context in Australia, clear cultural concepts of morality are increasingly being replaced by collective hedonistic pragmatism and subjective emotivism, the pervasive underlying psychological presence of guilt consciousness seems to drop off sharply. This tends to make traditional Evangelical appeals to conversion - as essentially a mechanism of cleansing from guilt consciousness - more or less incomprehensible to our youth. If Evangelical Christianity must approach sin as a moral issue, and if it seeks the psychological leverage of moral guilt consciousness as its primary means of proselytising, then, in this context, it becomes increasingly ineffective in its proclamation of the gospel. Further, if the Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras is right (The Freedom of Morality, SVS Press, USA, 1984), sin is not, theologically, essentially a moral issue, but is an ontological issue, and the psychological appeal to guilt appeasement is both heretical and manipulative. Yannaras' case is powerfully theologically argued and offers, in my opinion, the opportunity for us Evangelicals to re-think what sin and salvation is all about in a manner that could be both theologically liberating and proselytically far better suited to our times (as the truth always is).

[40] For a classical Evangelical framing of penal substitution see Packer, J.I., "What did the cross achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution." (Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture, Cambridge, 1973), http://www.the-highway.com//cross_Packer.html . "Cheap grace" - see Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, Macmillan, NY, 1963 - means that we can live like everyone around us and still consider ourselves to be both saved and forgiven. That is we can be as morally compromised and relativistic as everyone else, but still have our own sense of superiority to the world, and consider ourselves as being committed to a moral absolutism (that we never live) because we are saved and forgiven. And we first world Evangelical Christians are, in general, as deeply situated within the profound immoralities of our time as most first world Western people in general are. On the idolatry and exploitation of our consumer way of living, we are no different to "the world". See, for example: Jacques Ellul, Money and Power, Marshall Pickering, UK, 1986; Susan George, A Fate Worse than Debt, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1994; Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents, Allen Lane, UK, 2002; Radio National documentary Background Briefing (26 Feb 2006) "Selling China: The Wal-Mart Effect" http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s1576650.htm. When it comes to the "religious right" in Australian politics, Evangelical/Pentecostal Christianity is typically deeply aligned with Conservative politics, politics that has systematically distorted truth in the public arena, and that has harnessed fear and self interest in its quest for electoral dominance (not that "Radical" politics is, on this front, any different). See for example: Andrew Wilke, Axis of Deceit, Black Inc, Melbourne, 2004; Marion Maddox, God Under Howard, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005; Tony Kevin, A Certain Maritime Incident, Scribe, Melbourne, 2004. Then, when it comes to the dominant social, sexual, familial, and professional norms of our times - and these are generally relativistic, hedonistic, escapist and ego-centric - the typical range of life difficulties people grapple with in my Evangelical church leads me to conclude that there is little appreciable demographic difference between Evangelical Christians and main stream Australia; divorce, managerial power politics, workaholism, sexual promiscuity, drug use and escapist entertainment seem just as typical amongst Evangelical as their non-Evangelical counterparts of similar demographics. So whilst we claim moral absolutism, and this jars doctrinally with the comfortable moral relativism of contemporary relationalism, in practise we typically are socially morally relativistic and also deeply morally compromised in the very fabric of the norms of our way of life.

[41] Of course, the Salvation Army is an Evangelical denomination. Yet, they are atypical of Evangelical denominations in that they are visibly not integrated into 'civilian' cultural normality, as evidenced by their uniforms, their abstinence form alcohol, and the degree to which local parish life is actively compassionately engaged with the poor and the outcast - ie the marginal - is typically much higher than for other Evangelical denominations.

[42] Of course, the power that Saint Paul talks about as evidence of the authenticity of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 2:5, is the Holy Spirit. The work of the church can only ever be adequately done by the Holy Spirit as the dynamos for the church. To critique the church as a weak and sinful human institution is nothing that should surprise anyone, but to rely on anything other than the Holy Spirit for the church to be what it actually is - the body of Christ in the world today - is to respond to the truth of our weakness without faith.

[43] See, for example: Scott Stephens, "You Cannot serve God and Mammon" (2005) "The Church in Ruins" (2004), audio CDs of lectures given at the Centre for Theology and Politics, http://www.theologyandpolitics.com ; Barker, A., & Hayes, J., Sub-Merge: Living Deep in a Shallow World, UNOH, Melbourne, 2002; Drane, J., The McDonaldization of the Church, Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 2000; Dave Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, Lion, UK, 1999; Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, W Publishing, USA, 1997; David F Wells, God in the Wasteland, IVP, UK, 1994; Mark A Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, IVP, UK, 1994; Os Guinness, Fit Bodies and Fat Minds, Baker Books, USA, 1994; Os Guinness & John Seel (ed), No God but God, Moody Press, Chicago, 1992; Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, Eerdmans, USA, 1986.

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