2 posts tagged “crikey”
The Politics Free-For-All
The death of religion, not politics and religion
Monday, 2 July 2007
Christian Kerr writes:
"From a lot of cultural indicators, you'd think that religious belief in Australia was on the increase," Charles Richardson wrote in Crikey last week, before pointing to the census figures that showed only 70% of Australians identified with a religion, and only 64% with some variety of Christianity.
"In light of this continuing shift," Charles continued, "some hard questions need to be asked of the school chaplains program. Why does the prime minister think that religious representatives have some particular expertise in counselling and support? Why is Christian belief still being presented as the norm when it is patently no such thing? And what are the non-religious taxpayers getting for their money - where are the paid proselytisers for secularism?"
The answer is very easy. It’s also in the Census data.Christianity might be in decline – but not the Pentecostal churches.
They grew 26 per cent between 1996 and last year.
In NSW, their numbers increased by a massive 48 per cent.
That’s a huge number of bodies to hand out Family First how-to-votes – let alone a huge number of second preferences.
No wonder the Prime Minister and Kevin Rudd are proud to parade their Christian credentials.
We might be seeing a decline in religion, but not of politics and religion.
A link to the Crikey home page http://www.crikey.com.au/
Article from the Crikey web site
Date: Tuesday, 10 July 2007
Thomas Hunter writes:
A case before the Bankstown Local Court, in which a 25-year-old woman is accused of stabbing her father and sister to death and seriously injuring her mother, has raised the issue of Scientology’s views on psychiatry.
link to the rest of the article http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070710-Scientologys-vexed-relationship-with-psychiatry.html
