News out of America: Following Easter, there has been a discussion on whether the US is still a 'Christian country'.

Newsweek ran an article 'Christian no more'. CBS followed with ‘Is the USA a Christian Nation?’. 

According to the articles, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percent since 1990, from 86 percent to 76 percent. The number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 percent to 15 percent.

And also, from Christian Post, comes this article about Americans not believing in Satan and this about the so-called 'Mosaic Generation'.

But what about Sydney?

John Dickson and the CPX discovered signs of hope in Australia. John, as always, has done his research. But will you allow me to be anecdotal for a moment?

I drove a taxi while at Moore College. All up, I drove for about six years. 

Quite frankly, I needed the money.

And yet, I learnt two significant things about the Australian cultural landscape.
The first thing is how secular our individual ethics are. Most of us 'make it up as we go along'.

For some reason, people think of a cabbie as being invisible (if in the back seat) and as a priest (if in the front seat). So I listened to people as they figured out their sexual ethics between Kirribilli and Killara. I brokered arguments from Wynyard to Strathfield. One boomer shed tears from King's Cross to Five Dock about 'killing a man' (he was referring to Vietnam). I left a semi-famous television presenter drunk on his front yard while insisting to me over and over 'Do you know who I am?!' I listened to men boldly lie to their wives about their whereabouts. Most heartbreakingly, one woman hadn't told her parents over Christmas that she was working in a brothel. 

The truth is, of course, that all these people were very normal. Very nice. And very Aussie.

The other thing I learnt: the city is profoundly not-Christian. Many of my customers found out that I was a Christian (I was studying theology), and yet over a period of six years, I would have had only four or five say that they were Christian. The rest looked at me blankly, as though I was a dinosaur of Old Europe.

I think that the old term 'post-Christian' describes Australia (if we ever were). A friend thinks that if you want to reach Sydney for Jesus, you've got to think of her as being Paris. Christian-no-more.

Mark Driscoll often says that Seattle is one of the least-churched parts of the US ('More Dogs than Christians' etc). But I preached in Portland last year, and people were engaging in conversation with me all night about Jesus. I realised then that even in the Pacific North West, Christianity is part of the American national dialogue. We have no such dialogue.

So, all of us who are interested in winning Sydney for Christ:
1. Is Australia a Christian Nation? And does this matter?
2. Is it worth fostering a 'national dialogue'?
3. How do you speak into such a secular culture?

I'm here on York St.

Give us a clue.