Does Religion Matter?

At the last census, the number of Australians who said they associated with Christianity was over 11 million people… that’s 44% of Aussies.

Now the big news was that it was a million less than five years before, with the largest decrease in your age bracket… the 18 to 25 year olds.

But even though there are many religious people around, we’re still pretty shy about revealing our faith.

Just before Covid hit, there was a survey of 54,000 people by the ABC.

They surveyed all sorts of different things, but one of them was their attitude to religion.

Journalist Annabel Crabb analysed the results and said that 60 per cent of Australians would prefer that people keep their religious views to themselves.

What’s more, almost half of all religious people, “agreed that religion should be a hush-hush affair.”

But not only was religion something that people wanted to keep quiet.

It also didn’t seem to have any real impact on peoples’ lives.

That same journalist went on to say that, “when given a list of eight attributes and asked which was most central to the respondent’s sense of self and identity, Australians placed religion stone-cold, motherless last.”

And what’s more, Crabb said that, “only 15 percent of respondents thought the country would be better off if more people were religious”.

And to top it off, she observed that, “one of the survey’s most striking findings is the poor esteem in which religious leaders are held.”

Even though four out of ten people identified with a Christian religion, most Aussies don’t think that religion matters.

And that’s not really surprising, is it?

But that’s our challenge, because we are amongst the 15 percent who think that our country would be better off if more people knew Jesus.

And that’s why we’re praying that each person in our village, valley, and region would know how to follow Jesus and why it matters.

Will you join me in that prayer?

JODIE McNEILL

(Photo credit: Gafcon)