Religion and Change in Australia

Adam Possamai, David Tittensor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000529616
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology of Religion
• Index: Social Sciences

This timely book offers a panoramic overview of the enduring significance of religion in modern Australian society. Applying sociological perspectives and contemporary theories of religion in society, it challenges conventional assumptions around the extent of secularisation in Australia and instead argues that religious institutions, groups, and individuals have proved remarkably adaptable to social change and continue to play a major role in Australian life. In doing so, it explores how religion intersects with a wide range of other contemporary issues, including politics, race, migration, gender, and new media.

Religion and Change in Australia explores Australia's unique history regarding religion. Christianity was originally imported as a tool of social control to keep convicts, settlers, and Australian Aboriginal peoples in check. This had a profound impact on the social memory of the nation, and lingering resentment towards the "excessive" presence of religion continues to be felt today. Freedom of religion was enshrined in Section 116 of the Australian Constitution in 1901. Nevertheless, the White Australia Policy effectively prevented adherents of non-Christian faiths from migrating to Australia and the nation remained overwhelmingly Christian. However, after WWII, Australia, in common with other western societies, appears to have become increasingly secularised, as religious observance declined dramatically.

However, Religion and Change in Australia employs a range of social theories to challenge this securalist view and argues that Australia is a post-secular society. The 2016 census revealed that over half of the population still identify as Christian. In politics, the socially conservative religious right has come to exert considerable influence on the ruling Liberal-National Coalition, particularly under John Howard and Scott Morrison. New technologies, such as the Internet and social media, have provided new avenues for religious expression and proselytisation whilst so-called "megachurches" have been built to cater to their increasing congregations. The adoption of multiculturalism and increased immigration from Asia has led to a religiously pluralist society, though this has often been controversial. In particular, the position of Islam in Australia has been the subject of fierce debate, and Islamophobic attitudes remain common. Atheism, non-belief, and alternative spiritualities have also become increasingly widespread, especially amongst the young.

Religion and Change in Australia analyses these developments to offer new perspectives on religion and its continued relevance within Australian society. This book is therefore a vital resource for students, academics, and general readers seeking to understand contemporary debates surrounding religion and secularisation in Australia.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003255338-1

Australia has a unique history when it comes to dealing with religion. It started with the arrival of Indigenous peoples at least 45,000–50,000 years ago when the now dusty landscape was a fertile lake system, making them the oldest living communities in the world (Griffiths et al., 2017). Much later, with the first fleet in Sydney in the 18th century, Christianity was imported as a tool of social control to keep convicts and other peoples in check. This had such a strong impact on the social memory of this country that resentment towards the “excessive” presence of religion is still felt today. At the same time, the religion of Australian Aboriginal peoples was seen as so elementary, and it was assumed that it would not survive the civilising process that the country was going through. The Indigenous peoples were hunter-gatherers, and as they were not harvesting, their religion, contrary to that of the Maori in New Zealand for example, was seen as so inferior that the land was regarded as uninhabited. Further, while colonial expansion generally had a devastating effect on the local populations, Australia was among the worst hit. It was the only territory in the Commonwealth to be considered terra nullius; that is, the land was deemed to belong to no one. This approach was underpinned by a social Darwinist understanding of religion. If only the religion of the Australian Aboriginal peoples had been given more credence at the time, not only would their history had been different, but also the whole conception about the so-called disappearance of religion, that is secularisation, could have taken a radical turn (see Chapter 6).

Yet, while the pre-white settlement of this country was disregarded, tension between Catholics, Anglicans, and other Protestant groups was so problematic at the time Australia became a nation that it led to a specific type of secularism in 1901. Secularism can mean different things in different contexts. The hard line supports the complete disappearance of religion from both the public and the private spheres. A softer line only expects religion not to be part of the public sphere. With the latter view on secularism, it means that religion can still be practised, but that it should remain a private matter, something to speak about within the family, and certainly not in parliament. In the Australian setting, it took a specific meaning, that of minimising conflicts between Christian subgroups. Australia was at the time of federalism a Christian country, but even if the Anglicans were the most numerous, they were not dominant. Indeed, by the middle of the 19th century, the Anglican Church was brought into the fold and subject to disestablishment along with the others. For example, when the British Prime Minister Gladstone took a personal interest in the endowing of Australian bishoprics in Australia in 1846, he received a pragmatic response from the Colonial Undersecretary Lord Lyttleton:

I do not not know what is the principle of the existing New South Wales Church Extension Law. There are two Established Churches in Gt. Britain. Their claims, therefore rest upon a clear foundation. But why one kind of dissent should be preferred to another–a Roman Catholic to a Baptist–or a Methodist to an Independent seems, in theory, unintelligible. The simple fact is that the Four most numerous and powerful Christian societies have divided the whole endowment among them, not because they had a better right than others, but because it was the method of obtaining the greatest amount of general satisfaction, with the least alloy of particular discontent.

(as cited in Carey, 1996: 10)

In other words, the colonial period and the policy of secular egalitarianism developed amongst administrators were supportive of all the Christian denominations and precluded the formation of a state church (see Chapter 3).

Subsequently, the desire for politicians from the various states of Australia, who were getting together to form a new nation, was not to create a church state (that is, having a religion closely linked to a nation, e.g. Anglicans in the UK or Catholics today in Poland). However, if people today called themselves Christians without referring to any denomination, the case was quite different in those times. Catholics were loyal to the Pope, Anglicans to the Queen of England, Methodist and Presbyterian to English and Scottish puritanism, and Lutheranism to Germany. No one could speak on behalf of all Christians.

Race also formed a crucial part of early settler colonial identity. Christians of that time were seen as white people, and people from other faiths were generally perceived to be non-white. Indeed, upon Federation, the very first act of the parliament was the introduction of the White Australia policy via the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, which created major barriers to any further immigration for those adhering to a different faith, such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Migrants already settled, such as the Afghan cameleers and the Chinese gold diggers, could remain, but no more could migrate (see Curthoys, 2003; Scriver, 2004). However, since WWII, the religious landscape has changed as we are today less Christian than at the time of Federation, but we are still impacted by these early events. Australia has kept a strong Christian social memory – a point we will come back to later in the book (see Chapter 5).

The social history of religion in the US was quite different. Many religious groups left Europe to find freedom in a new land. Protestants, such as the Huguenots from Catholic France, or Catholic Irish from Anglican UK, were seeking a place to believe without fear of persecution. In this case, freedom was for religion. In Continental Europe, pushed by the excess of various religious governments against other religions (e.g. the massacre of Saint Barthelemy in 14th-century Paris where Catholics from the ultra-Conservative wing of the Ligue went down the streets to kill anyone dressed in black, as this was the uniform of the French Protestants), many thinkers (e.g. Voltaire) and atheist groups were contesting various damaging superstitions, and the abuse of power (e.g. Inquisition and burning of so-called witches), freedom, as it was understood, was more from religion than for religion.

In Australia, however, we are faced with a hybrid case. We have both a freedom for and from religion. Before the advent of multiculturalism, many religious groups left Europe for Australia to seek a land of freedom where they could practise their faith without fear of retribution, but as long as they were Christian. But along these lines, religion, as mentioned above, was used to control the population. This came from England at a time when industrialisation was gaining momentum and was creating new social inequalities. As new machines were created to harvest in rural areas, people had problems in finding a job. Through a rural exodus, they moved to the cities to find work in the newly created factories, but not everyone was successful. Some of these unfortunate men and women resorted to crime, sometimes serious, and other times petty, and many were put into overcrowded gaols. As the social sciences were developing to help government to control populations (e.g. Bentham’s panopticon), religion was asked to become involved to “civilise” these new criminals. If they could pray and believe in God in an orderly way, they would not commit crimes but become docile. This thinking followed the convicts from these overcrowded gaols as they were coming to Australia. If the religious landscape of England was built on the mixed mythologies of paganism and Christianity with King Arthur, on the crusade of Richard the Lionheart to bring Christianity to Jerusalem, on Henry the Eighth separating from the Vatican and its Italian bankers, on Cromwell bringing Christian puritanism in power, and so on and so forth, in Australia, it was imported to control and civilise its population.

Indeed, since the first white settlements there is a distrust in the Australian social memory when it comes to religion having any authority. This is part of the Australian spirit, wherein one has a disdain for any form of elitism and authoritarianism that could force working-class people to go against their will. In this history, religions, especially Christians before WWII, were welcome as long as they were not trying to dominate the country. Today, there is still a welcoming of religion, and it includes non-Christian ones, but none of them should be able to lead the country. As religions are free to settle, people are free from being controlled by them. However, with the proposed contemporary Religious Discrimination Bill, the way we understand religion in Australia between freedom of religion and freedom from religion may be subject to change (see Chapter 12).

Given this, it is often believed that religion disappeared at one stage in the history of our societies but reappeared at the end of the 20th century. However, religion never drifted away, it simply altered. Religion is a lived experience, and life experiences change as society and culture change. Today, we live in multifaith societies where less and less people attend religious ceremonies, but these might nevertheless still believe in something, even if not always based in theology. The time when people felt obliged to attend a religious service because of a sense of obligation or duty has largely passed. Rather, in the current age, people attend such ceremonies only if it is of interest to them. As a result of this decline of bricks-and-mortar religion, religious figures are resorting to new media platforms to spread their message and create virtual communities. More and more religious leaders and spokespeople are actively engaged in public discourses to send their messages. In particular, religious community leaders have taken to social media with gusto, microblogging sermons and live streaming events to allow people to engage in digital “collective effervescence.” In doing so, many have become what has been dubbed “pastor-preneurs” through their carefully curated personas on Twitter and Instagram, wherein the line between religious leader and celebrity has been blurred (see Burroughs, 2013; Cheong, 2016; see also Chapter 10). This does not mean that more people are religious, but that religious people are more vocal than they were in the past. This is reflected in the current proportion of politicians in the Australian federal parliament who have a Christian confession, which cuts against the ever-increasing secularisation of the wider polity (see Chapter 11).

This disjuncture can sometimes create difficulties. For many people, religious issues can be lost in translation when the attendant vocabulary used in the public sphere is received by those who are not versed in scripture. For Davie (2017), this leads to a poor standard of public debate, as there is a lack of constructive engagement.

As with other social and cultural aspects of life, religion is in a constant state of flux, and the case of Australia is no exception. Religious institutions, groups, and individuals either adapt themselves to changes in our society or react to them. As religions are part and parcel of consumer culture, many spiritual activities have moved – as Mara Einstein (2007) has argued in her work on the branding of religion – from pews to pixels. Social media has given a new pathway for religion to be expressed and to grow. We now have religious groups that design apps for mobile devices to help Muslims pray on time and in the correct direction, Spell Books for witches to record their ritual experiences, a confession booth to help Catholics deal with their sins, and digitalised Bibles. The latter can be used by churchgoers to check if the reading of the priest is correct by following the speeches using keywords on the device, to help busy people to read the important verses before a Bible class after work and before picking up the kids, or by atheists who want to prove to some evangelicals their misreading of the holy book (Possamai, 2018).

Alongside these technological and cultural changes, the population in Australia is increasing and suburbs are expanding. Religious groups follow these developments with new religious buildings, often in industrial parks; emblematic of this development is the purchase of the iconic music venue Festival Hall in the city of Melbourne by Hillsong Church for $23 million (Boseley, 2020). Religion has also become more vocal in the public sphere to the point that we speak about Australia as a post-secular society, that is, a society in which the religious and non-religious are engaged with each other outside of the private sphere. However, the question that confronts us is how post-secular is Australia? For example, while interfaith issues are publicly celebrated, same-sex marriage (see Chapters 11 and 12) and the application of Shari’a are difficult topics of discussion (see below and Chapter 5). People, when speaking about such matters, often fail to engage in the type of communicative action (one based on building constructive dialogue) that the German philosopher Habermas (1984) argues to be necessary for a successful post-secular society (see Chapter 12).

Given this tension, this book takes the temperature of the times with regard to religion and society in Australia. It not only brings to the reader understanding of both classical and new social theories on religion, but also...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Epigraph
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Contemporary theories of religion in society
• 3 A short history of religion in Australia before WWII
• 4 Post-WWII migration to Australia: from being Christian to religiously plural
• 5 Australia as a Christian, a post-Christian, and a non-religious country
• 6 Australian Aboriginal peoples and contemporary religion
• 7 Non-belief: “religious nones”, atheists, and the spiritual but not religious
• 8 Alternative spiritualities, ecology, and individualism
• 9 Feminised religion and the patriarchy
• 10 Religion and new media
• 11 Politics and religion: the use and abuse of faith
• 12 Conclusion: Australia as a post-secular society?
• Index