Some of the Aussies on the board can answer this, or anyone else who knows: what is the current spiritual condition of Australia as a whole? I've heard Australia and New Zealand are very secular - but is the church growing there? How is the reformed faith? Just curious about what things are like for our brothers and sisters Down Under...

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Mason
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA)
New York, NY

"Come now, and let us reason together," says the Lord, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." - Isaiah 1:18

I have only second hand information (hearsay) evidence.

We are good friends with an Australian family that immigrated to the USA and now goes to our (PCA) church. We have had many substantive spiritual conversations with them and some Bible study as well, particularly with the husband.

In short, he says very very few (like fewer than 2%) go to church regularly. He describes it as being very odd to identify oneself as a "Christian" there at all and to expect to catch some "flak" for being public about it.

The denominational divisions are odd- Baptists are quite different there than here, for example. He describes Presbyterians more like Episcopalians and I haven't figured out yet what doctrine and polity a "free church" there would have, if that is standardized.

A pentecostal/charismatic movement swept through in the late 1970's and 1980's and caused much division and confusion. For a short time it looked like increased numbers and excitement for Christ but, in its wake, there was not lasting fruit in terms of church numbers or quality.

Socialism has meant there is much less consumer spendinging per average citizen (read TITHE money to support the local church). Consequently, there are reasons there are very meagar resources to support churches, mercy ministry, etc. Offerings are very very small and what is done through the local church is limited. For example, it is unimaginable to him for a church to raise funds to build a house in Guatelmala and send a team of young people to do that on a one week mission trip.

My friend also had a concept of a significant social stratification in mind between Roman Catholics and Protestants generally which he is amazed to see does not exist here.

On top of all this, Reformed theology, according to my friend, is rarer still in Australia. He is still trying to recover from the outrageous assertion he has heard here that the Bible teaches salvation is 100% the work of a Sovereign God, and 0% a work of man's ability. He had thought he was firmly biblically planted on something like 60/40%.

I sense this family from Australia are committed Christians and are proving out their salvation and they have suffered real difficulty and indignity for it there.

I've never been to the USA, so I can't make especially accurate comparisons, but I don't think the situation is quite as dire as your friends suggested.

The percentage of people who go to church regularly would be considerably higher than 2%. My guess would be around 10%. When I was at University, about 2% of the entire student body was affiliated with our evangelical student group - but there were also other groups, and not all Christian students were affiliated with any of the groups.

Being a Christian is not likely to win you any popularity contests in Australia. But it is not likely to get you a lot of insults either. Back in high school, of course, being a Christian was about the most uncool thing you could do. But by the time people grow up, most are pretty accepting of Christians. I've never received any grief for being a Christian since I was about 15.

I think there are some areas where Christianity is better here than the US, from what I have seen of American Christianity. We have far fewer people who got to church because it is the done thing, or to make social connections. There is really no equivalent of Joel Osteen in Australia. The Charismatic movement, and Pentecostalism, exist here, but would be a considerably smaller percentage of Christians than in the US. The mainstream Anglican and Presbyterian churches are far better than their US equivalents, especially the Anglicans, which is an order of magnitude better than the Episcopalian church in the US. Unfortunately the Uniting Church (Methodists plus some of the Presbyterians) is dire. I grew up Anglican, and it was there that I was taught of salvation through grace alone and faith alone. Outright Pelagianism is far rarer in Australia than in the US, and I think our conservative evangelicalism is probably better than the US equivalent.

Australian Baptists are quite different from their American counterparts. Baptist here has almost none of the political connotations that it has in the US, and as mentioned above, there are very few fundamentalists here. But they are also less likely to be of the extreme Arminian, or Arminian plus OSAS, than their American counterparts.

As far as tax rates go, the US and Australia are not greatly dissimilar. Overall taxation levels would be about 38% in Australia and 32% in the US, (off the top of my head, I didn't look up the figures). Our marginal income tax rates are higher, but corporate taxes are actually lower, and we have no inheritance taxes. Less charitable giving is tax deductible, and almost no giving to churches except for explicitly charitable activities (which would not include mission trips) is tax deductible. Australia has much less of a tradition of charitable giving than the US, however the mainline (Catholic, Anglican and Uniting) churches, and especially the Salvation Army, have well run and well funded charitable branches. The independent evo church I go to supports several missionary couples overseas, plus a couple of women in different places doing humanitarian work overseas.

Roman Catholicism has a different place in the the social and political hierarchy in Australia, though that has changed, and actually, all but died out in the last 10-15 years. Catholics in Oz were first poor Irish immigrants, then post-WWII immigrants and refugees from Italy, Croatia, Poland etc. Very strongly Trade Unionist, and the main part of the Right faction of the Labor party. However those distinctions have broken down quite remarkably since about 1996, when the Federal Liberal government attracted many Catholic votes. The thing to remember is that Australian politics and society was descended quite directly from their English and Irish equivalents; there was very little direct American influence.

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T W Hopper
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church
Currently between churches since PRC closed here - attending Crossroads Christian Church.
Canberra, Australia.