How many go to church each week in Australia?

Following the estimates/guestimates by several of us recently, I checked with about the best source for up-to-date info on questions like this – Rev. Dr. Philip Hughes, of the Christian Research Association. His summary: 1. When we *ask* in our research how often someone goes to church, the general tendency is to *overestimate*… but no one knows by how much. 2. The National Church Life Survey omitted several groups, particularly Catholics, so fewer than 10% is probably too low. 3. Other research indicates probably 10-11% of Australians are in church on any given Sunday, 15-18% at least once a month. 4. Probably the best guesstimate is: 12% of Australians will be in church next Sunday. Now that’s higher than for most of Europe (why?), lower than Poland or Ireland (why?), lower than the U.S. (why?), and, yes, as we have affirmed, much higher than goes to sporting fixtures. Further, do you realize that if churches got their act together, they could be the most powerful lobbying group – by far – in Australia? In other words, more people attend church, and experience some sort of community, more regularly, than attend any other sort of community-fixture. If only… if only… Well, first, if only the right-wing fundamentalists got themselves organized lobbying-wise, we’d have a situation like that developing in the U.S. My response: scary in some respects, positive in others. Further: if the *whole* church could get their act together on an issue, like, being more (appropriately) generous with foreign aid, the world would a better place. Another way of saying that: churches don’t generally lobby federal parliamentarians about foreign aid. (Gareth Evans, and Bill Hayden before him in Australia, and President Nixon in the U.S. have said, in moments of candour: ‘There are no votes in foreign aid’.) IOW, churches throughout the western world (the most prolific grain-producing nations) are conniving, indirectly, to keep 800 million people starving. And they’ll be asked about that One Day… Shalom! Rowland Croucher

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