I’ve spent the year compiling links to breaking religious news on sydneyanglicans.net. We’re continuing this service for you next year so I hope you’ll have the home page bookmarked and also check my weekly top 5 review.

As I reflect on the year, I think the the biggest underlying trend in the breaking news links for 2009 was the ‘God is Back’ phenomenon. Back in July we reported on John Mickelthwait’s new book God is Back.  Mickelthwait is the editor of The Economist and posits that there is a global resurgence in religion, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.
Some five months later, research by the Herald would suggest that in Australia, it never left. According to the Herald, 68 per cent of Australians believe in God or a universal spirit, but I thought the most interesting statistic was that 50 per cent say religion is important or very important in their lives. That has profound implications for media outlets. Given the small amount of time they devote to faith now, they would seem to be badly out of step with the half of the population which considers it extremely important. While being interviewed about the survey, Archbishop Jensen told the Herald “Secular is not the word we should use to describe the new Australia that’s emerging and probably not the word for the old Australia either.
The religious instinct is universal and will always be in human beings. That faith is important or very important to at least half of the population is what we have always suspected - an ‘iceberg effect’ that people may not necessarily speak up about their faith but it is very significant to their lives.” Given that, you would think that to be in tune with the new decade, editors will need to start devoting some space and some serious reporting to religious issues and matters of faith. I do see some chinks of light. I have to commend the Daily Telegraph, a paper not known for its religious reporting, for its recent series on faith which included this piece from Peter Jensen.
Even NineMSN got in the Christmas spirit with an online piece entitled “Jesus Christ is the truth: Jensen” He, of course, is not alone in speaking out and I look forward to a lot of discussion in the coming year. Ordinary Christians should use the opportunity of letters to the editor and talkback radio to make their voices heard.

After all, the media tells us God is back. Don’t you always believe what you read in the papers?