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Can GOD Survive
•
ID
Australia?
by
Clayton D. Steep
Few would have thought to ask the question 25 years ago. Now, according to
Bruce Wilson, author of
Can God Survive in Australia?,
the sun may be setting on organized religion in Australia. Why?
I
T'S NOT
that Australians
have s u dden l y begun
flocking into the atheist
camp. Not at a ll . Australia
has been and still is by and
large a Christian-professing
nation.
But what disturbs author
Bruce Wilson is that since 1960
the God of traditional Christian–
ity has rapidly become irrele–
vant to increasing numbers of
people-as irrelevant, in his
words, as ice boxes in a world
that has invented the refr igera–
ter.
Though polls reveal sorne 80
percent of Australians "believe in
God ," the majority of them, Mr.
Wilson says, behave as if God had
little relation with their day-to-day
affairs. Such an attitude was not
always clearly obvious in that vast
continent-nation. But the last 20
years or so have seen a tremendous
change in the way the average per–
son views religion.
Looking
at
the
Cause
Sorne suggest that Australians are
merely pulling away from institu–
tional Christianity, of mostly Eu–
ropean origin, in the interest of
allowing a purely Australian brand
of Christianity to develop. Others
go so far as to describe what is
January
1986
happening now as a reemergence of
the hostility sorne of the original
white Australian settlers demon–
strated toward religion. Still others
say it is all a temporary fluctuation.
Bruce Wilson minimizes such at–
tempts at explaining the trend. He
lays most of the blame for the rel i-
gious decline at the feet of a phe–
nomenon that has affected all the
advanced industrial societies of the
West: industrialization itself.
The explosive increase in mate–
rial goods; the leaps in scientific
knowledge; the perception that
roan is self-sufficient; the interest
in entertainment and leisure-such
by-products of industrialization
have pushed religion into the back–
ground, according to Mr. Wilson.
In this, the situation in Australia
is not unique. Other voices have
decried similar developments in
" I n advanced
industrial societies
the majority . .•
still believe in
God ... , at least
in their heads,
but they find God
and the whole
business about him
irrelevant."
other Western societies. Industri–
alization, they have said, is basi–
cally responsible for the eclipse of
Christianity as a relevant religion.
But is this a sufficient explana–
t ion?
Is industrialization really to
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