Thank God census night has come and gone. Thank God literally. I’ve been bored witless by insecure atheists prattling on in the last few weeks and days about questions on religion.
For two things are sure. The census will show that a clear majority of Australians believe in a god. And religion is a clear force for good in our society.
“I wonder how many people still believe in God?” my 55 going on 15 year old DJ and artist brother in law Driller (that’s his real name) wrote on his Facebook page recently. “I certainly don’t. Do you?”
It was a free kick. I had to respond. (Driller and I bait each other constantly.) The 2006 census showed that 63.9 per cent of Australians were Christians. One point seven per cent were Muslims. Add in the Jewish population and it means two thirds of us subscribe to one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions.
And religion is great in every sense of the word.
Now, with a name like Christian you’re going to say I am biased. Truth be told, I have had no religion for most of my life and certainly the vast majority of my adult years.
I was taught by Jesuits in the tail end of the ‘70s and the start of the ‘80s when they were going through what the historian Paul Johnson has called their “Holy Nicaragua” years. and put a greater emphasis on liberation movements in the developing world than theology.
Whatever they gave me, an adult appreciation of God and religion was missing. I didn’t go church for more than 20 years.
But a long-dead Jesuit who wrote poetry half a century ahead of its time had got his claws into me. Gerald Manley Hopkins’ striking and startlingly beautiful 1877 work The Windhover is dedicated “to Christ our Lord”.
And glimpses of the startling beauty of nature – like the flash of scarlet and bright green on a passing parrot, like the kestrel that inspired Hopkins – provided a constant reminder of the greatness of God. Then in 1997 came the Nick Cave album The Boatman’s Call.
Like Cave in Into My Arms, I didn’t believe in an interventionist God – but the more I listened, the more, like Cave himself, I began to wonder if that was true.
And there was also the song Brompton Oratory. The thought of the man who once released Drunk on the Pope’s Blood fronting up to the same church as Cherie Blair and Jennifer Patterson of Two Fat Ladies amused and appealed simultaneously and niggled me for years.
If Nick Cave could do it, so could I.
Early one Saturday evening in February 2003 I found myself outside Holy Cross Church in Bondi Junction with an hour to kill. Bondi Junction is loathsome at the best of times and unbearable once the shops have closed. Mass was about to begin. I went in.
It was a stripped down service, no music, almost austere. The familiarity of the long unheard words of the liturgy flooded back to me. But three quarters of the way through came a line I had no recollection of: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” And suddenly a great weight was lifted from me. I’ve been a churchgoer ever since, not every week, but regularly.
For religion offers comfort and succour. It offers values and a sense of purpose. Faith in God gives us faith in ourselves. And that makes us better people better able to make a contribution to our society.
While a clear majority of Australians do not go to church, somewhere deep down, they recognise this truth, if only in the simplest terms. They know it matters.
Forget the supernatural aspects of religion if you want to. Human beings have created religion because it meets clear human needs. And that is why despite the shrillness of the proselytising atheists, a clear majority of us will have told the census we believe in God.
Christian Kerr is a political reporter with The Australian
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