The religious climate of Australia has changed drastically in the past decades. Becoming increasingly secularised. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in the last 30 years:
- People identifying as Christians has dropped from 86.2% to 43.9%,
- People identifying as non-religious has increased from 6.7% to 38.9%.
The problem however is that those who are ‘non-religious’ are not passively indifferent towards religion. There is a growing spirit of anti-religion. We should note three high profile cases that illustrate this attitude.
In 2019, Israel Folau posted a picture on Instagram that said unless people repent, hell awaits. He soon lost his job.Seven players from the Manly rugby team refused to wear pride colours on their jersey. They chose to sit out the game. They were labelled homophobic. And most recently, Andrew Thorburn was forced to step down because he was associated with a certain church.
Dan Flynn, of the Australian Christian Lobby summed up the three notable cases like this:
“It’s helpful to us to categorise this. First of all, Israel Folau 2019, that was about his freedom of speech. He said something. And the Manly 7, earlier this year was about freedom from enforced speech. They didn’t want to wear a jersey that said something. And now Andrew Thorburn, another football story, is about freedom of association. Andrew said nothing, but attends, in fact he’s a chairman of the board of City on a Hill in Melbourne. And what is an issue here is his association.”
The message is, Christians have to believe what the world believes or there will be consequences. Christian’s must acquiesce.
Hypocrisy
But don’t miss the hypocrisy that happens. The anti-religious say, “don’t enforce your belief on us”. Yet, they are blatantly forcing their secularism upon us. Saying we must support gay pride, or we must share the same values.
Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, backed the firing. Heindicted Thorburn saying his views says showed no tolerance.
This is the hypocrisy of the anti-religious, in the name of tolerance, Thorburn’s views were not tolerated. In the name of inclusion, he was excluded.
The slogan “don’t enforce your views upon us” is a nice sentiment, but it’s impossible to live out. We preach our views to others all the time. We say things like, “don’t eat McDonalds, its unhealthy for you.” Should we stop doing that? Maybe we should scrap political debate as well. Maybe we should never debate capitalism and socialism again lest we risk enforcing our views on one another.
Sharing views and respecting each other’s views is crucial for maintaining a fair community.
Virus
What we are dealing with is not an apathetic secularism, but a virus of anti-religion. More and more of our freedoms are being infringed upon. How we pray for children, topics of sexual identity education are all being contested.
What we are fighting against is strongholds. What Paul calls spiritual powers. But we can take faith knowing that Jesus is:
“the head over every power and authority” (Colossians chapter 2, verse 10)
And that Jesus has:
“disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians chapter 2, verse 15)
Sovereignty of God
Though there are nations being increasingly secularised, the UK, America, Australia report this, there is also nations that are showing incredible revivals. In China and Africa there are incredible revivals of faith. God is an unstoppable force. If God is pressed down in the West, he raises up in the East. The Christian tradition cannot be snuffed out. It will live on because people will defend the faith intelligently, because people will continue to have personal experiences of God. And they will continue to testify, continue to preach the gospel and make disciples.
We should mourn the secularisation in our country. But let us be held together by the hope of God's sovereignty. God is raising up Christian intellectuals to present intelligent cases for faith. God is raising up mouthpieces who are crying out in the anti-religious wilderness. God is raising up praying communities that will harness Jesus’ stronghold-breaking power.
Though the secularisation is growing into something more, God is still greater.