Aussie Christians
Some rights reserved by Jiaren Lau.For three centuries, the British Empire took the lead in the global expansion of Christianity. It seems startling, then, that in the modern world a British background appears to be closely correlated to extreme secularism.
Britain itself is one of Europe’s least religious societies, and faith is just as little in evidence in the old imperial offshoots of what used to be called the White Commonwealth. When an academic report last year projected that religion might vanish altogether in nine countries by 2100, the list included three British dominions overseas—Australia, New Zealand and Canada—as well as the longtime British possession of Ireland. Globally, secularization looks like a British disease.
At first sight, Australia perfectly illustrates this secular trend. Up to the 1950s, the Australian churches were powerful and well established, with a traditional threefold division between Anglicans, Catholics and Protestant Nonconformists. From the 1960s, though, the country began a very European evolution toward secular liberalism and plummeting church attendance. Catholics in particular have been traumatized by the church’s response to child-abuse allegations. Although this is not a scientific measure of decline, religious themes and characters have next to no serious presence in contemporary Australian cinema. When clergy or believers do appear on screen, they tend, as in contemporary Europe, to be mindless fanatics or comical buffoons.
