Religious belief is waning in the country thanks to the "weak and insipid and in more than a few instances uninspiring and unintelligible" Christianity most Australians encounter, said an Anglican theologian. The former Australian Defence Force Anglican bishop, Director of St Mark's National Theological Centre and head of the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University, Professor Tom Frame, says churches must take some of the blame for the decline, ABC News reported.
"The Christianity that most Australians have encountered is weak and insipid and in more than a few instances uninspiring and unintelligible, and the majority have no idea of what the Christian religion is offering," he writes in his book Losing My Religion: Unbelief In Australia.
"To some degree some churches are caught in a time warp, they've got the social and cultural forms of the 1950s and 1960s and have been unable to embrace the 1990s and the new millennium, so they do seem to be locked in time and their message with it," he was quoted as saying by the ABC.
More contributing factors are internal bickering about minor points of doctrine that don't bear upon everyday life and publicly conducting internal debates, giving the impression that the churches themselves aren't sure of what they believe.
"Now I don't think that's true, but in conducting, if you like, household conversations in the full glare of the media spotlight, (they have) led some people to focus on the division rather than the unity; the separateness rather than the oneness of the message that's being proclaimed.
"And if they can't articulate a clear message then why should anyone bother listening?"
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