A number of secular media commentators have claimed that Julia Gillard’s admission that she is an atheist will have little impact on the upcoming election.
Given some of the bogus statistical evidence used to make the point, I doubt their confidence.
The worst offender was Rob Chalmers, the longest serving member of the Canberra press gallery and editor of Inside Canberra.
It’s clear most Australians couldn’t care less about God… Bureau of Statistics figures show that in 2001 barely 10% named a Christian religion to which they adhered… Only the Holy roller, hot gospeller, minority groups gained substantial ground. Church attendance is currently less than 8% of the total population and those at church are mostly grey haired old ladies.
I have no idea what data Chalmers thinks he is citing but survey after survey puts the number of people claiming Christian beliefs at about half the population.
It is certainly true that most Australians - and even 3 in 4 Christians - are not swayed by the religious views of the PM. But in a close election a 1% or 2% swing either way will matter.
In fact a recent Fairfax survey found that there are slightly more Christian voters willing to vote for a Christian candidate than atheists willing to vote against them.
Overall it gave a Christian politician a 1.5% boost.
But what of Chalmer’s claim that the decline in church membership is a key factor? Is this not a sociological fact?
Even here we need to see the total picture.
Lets look at a recent article from the West Australian and republished in the Sydney Morning Herald.
An investigation into Christianity has revealed a major decline in Australians’ faith over the past 16 years, with those surveyed having more confidence in much-maligned court and legal systems than churches religious organisations.
Christian Research Association senior researcher Philip Hughes said new research to be released this week surveyed 1718 Australians at the end of last year, repeating questions asked in 1993 and 1999. Most measures of religion showed a significant decline.
“There is certainly decline in the Christian portion of the population and it is occurring at a somewhat faster rate than we had anticipated,” Dr Hughes said.
However, John Bellamy a researcher from Anglicare’s Social Policy Unit, takes issue with Mr Hughes’ view that the church attendance is declining at a faster rate.
“I don’t think there is any evidence that the rate of decline is faster,’ Mr Bellamy says.
Mr Bellamy, who formerly worked for the National Church Life Survey, has looked at survey data going much further back than Hughes’ 1993 survey and says there has been a more or less linear decline in church attendance since the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
% of Australians that attended church at least monthly
1950: 47%
1983: 27%
1993: 23%
2009: 16%
“It has a lot to do with generational change,” explains Mr Bellamy. “The older generation is far more likely to attend church than the younger generations. With each new generation, the rate of church attendance has continued to decline.”
Roman Catholicism is driving the decline. And therefore its influence on Labor is waning.
In terms of political analysis, the most important fact to note is that the decline in attendance is not even across all denominations.
The loss of attendees within the Roman Catholic has mostly been driving the overall decline in church attendance. Overall Protestant church attendance has been stable.
Between 1996 and 2001 the number of people attending Protestant churches according to the National Church Life Survey was fairly stable.
“The growth of the Pentecostal churches has been balancing out the decline of the mainline Protestant denominations: Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting,” Mr Bellamy explains.
The significant point here is that there remains a sectarian political division between Catholics and Protestants. Polling last year showed that Catholics still tend to vote Labor.
‘Social Justice’ Catholicism was and remains a significant thread within the Labor movement. But as the Roman Catholic church sheds members, its political influence will wane.
Conservative Protestantism remains a force in our national body politic. It is the influence of left-wing Catholicism that is in most trouble.
