Religious affiliation
As a first topic that would also serve as an introduction it would be really useful to have a first look at how Australians are religious nowadays and how they have been religious over the years. Just after a quick look at table 1 it is evident that the total number of Christians in the nation has fallen dramatically, going from the 88.2 % of 1996 to the 52.1% of fifty years later. That means a total decrease of 36.1% of Christian believers, more than one third of the total Australian population. If we have a look at table 2, which provides a larger range of years, we can also observe that the process had already started back in year 1921, when from a high peak of 96.9 % of Christians, the number has since steadily continued
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Under the word religion is generally understood that kind or set of beliefs and or practices that involve in some way the presence of a supreme or higher being, which regulates the lives, both morally and practically, of the believers. That is what is generally shared by the three largest and most widespread religious confessions in the world: Christianism, Islam and Hebraism. What all three religions share is the fact of being monotheistic, which means that the believers believe in only one (from the Greek word mono:one) supreme being, that is almighty and have absolute power on the lives of men. When the European and British settlers came to Australia in the later eighteenth century they brought their own religion with them, at the expenses of the people who had lived in the country for more than 40 thousand years. Even if they inhabited a gigantic territory, their number was about 300 thousand. Between them they spoke more than two hundred different languages. At the time of European arrival, the Aboriginal people of Australia followed their own personal religions, which involved believing beliefs in spirits, in the forces of nature and in the power of ancestral beings. Those beliefs were substituted during the British in the 1800s by the different traditional churches, which included the Anglican Church, the Methodist Church, the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian church, the …show more content…
What Aboriginals Australians and Torres Strait Islanders used to believe in and still believe – even if in a much smaller scale – is difficult to compare to the monotheistic religions mentioned before.
Their spiritual beliefs, also similar to the one of the native Americans, are usually understood under the term animism. As the Oxford dictionary reports, animism is
1. The belief that plants, objects, and natural things such as the weather have a living soul.
2. Belief in a power that organizes and controls the universe.
Even if the idea of a supreme being is definitely present in the ideas of the spiritual beliefs of the Aboriginal Australians, it is however not appropriate to include their animistic beliefs in a group of religions that are more structured and organized.
The fact that the animistic beliefs are not shown in the statistics is not only significant, but also difficult to interpret. It may be possible to assume that the Aboriginal Australians who did not convert to Christianism and still practice their original beliefs refused to answer the poll. In that case, they would be under the percentage of “non-stated” (see table
David Unaipon was born in 1872 in the small aboriginal community of Raukkan, South Australia (ABC, 2015). Unaipon was the fourth of nine children and his childhood was changed by conflict between Christians and Aborigines due to the lack of understanding between the different culture and belief systems (ABC, 2015). His education was limited as he began school at the age of seven, at Point McLeay Mission School and left to become a servant at 13 (Walker, 2013). He was known for his intelligence through his schooling life and was highly praised by the “Aborigines’ Friends ' Association” for his intellectual abilities (AWM, 2010). As a young adult, Unaipon
Religion is the way a group of individuals freely choose to follow some or all set rules of a certain faith in accordance with the set shared values. People follow different religions for different reasons some are born into a religion and some choose there own religion. According to source 1, the way the Murri people prepare for Christmas is in a hybrid fashion blending Aboriginal culture and spirituality with Christian beliefs in a way that represents their Christian faith while representing their unique ancestry.22.5 % of indigenous Australians are Catholic and another 21.5% are of Anglican faith.
Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy provides an insight into 1960s/70s Australia and helps reinforce common conceptions about Australian culture. One common conception Goldsworthy reinforces in this text is Australia’s increasing acceptance of multiculturalism. Maestro, set in the 1960s to 1970s, shows Australians growing more accepting and tolerant of other cultures. This shift in perspective was occurring near the end of the White Australia/Assimilation Policy, which was phased out in the late 1970s/early 1980s. An example of this shifted perspective in Maestro is Paul’s father’s opinion about living in Darwin:
On behalf of 85% of the country's Christians, it could prove to be the country's most influential lobby group. The council has made proposals to governments on behalf of member churches. It has lobbied governments about the dole, the GST on food and boosting the Aboriginal health budget. It has intensely spoken out against the Australian government's policy of detaining refugees and has requested for children to be freed from detention camps.
Over the years Australia has had many different problems with racism and racism affecting peoples’ lives. Many racial groups have been affected, most significantly the Aboriginals. The end of world war two in 1945 marked a huge change in types of racism. Australia went from the ‘superior’ white Australians dominating over immigrants and aboriginals. To a relatively multicultural and accepting society that is present today.
The Church was not the centre of life as it was in Asia or in Europe. The separation of Church and State was clear, and the Church had nearly no influence in Politics. Australian Catholics focused on saints of Irish and English origin, while these saints held nearly no influence in other nations.
Between 1947 and 1971, even if you did not practice your religion it was still expected that you would identify yourself as being a part of your/ your family’s religion. In 1947 the ‘no religion’ category made up only 0.3% of religious affiliation in Australia. A change in social values and attitudes has since seen a dramatic increase in people identifying as belonging to ‘no religion’ with the category reaching 6.7% in 1971, “The specific instruction 'if no religion, write none' included in the 1971 Census saw an increase in this response from 0.8% in the previous Census to 6.7%.”(Australian Social Trends, 2013). The chart below is a visual representation of the growth in the ‘no religion’ category.(sourced from Australian Social Trends, 2013).
While Christianity played a crucial part in all aspects of Australian society throughout the pre-federation years 1788 to 1900, it had a significant impact on education and public morality.
Ancient Aboriginals were the first people to set foot on the Australian continent, over 40,000 years or more before Colonization (Eckermann, 2010). They survived by hunting and gathering their food, worshipping the land to protect its resources, and ensuring their survival. The aboriginal community had adapted to the environment, building a strong framework of social, cultural, and spiritual beliefs (Eckermann, 2010).
Aboriginal spirituality originally derives from the stories of the dreaming. The dreaming is the knowledge and a sense of belonging that the Aboriginals had of the beginning of life and the relationship to the land and sea (Australian Museum, 2011). The dreaming stories are passed on from one generation to the next orally. These stories teach the following generations how to behave towards the land and other people. The dreaming stories give them a sense of duty to protect the land and appreciate it because the dreamtime stories indicate that the spirits have not died but are still alive in different forms as animals or humans, therefore the ancestor’s power is still felt through the landforms (Clark, 1963), (Australian Governement, 2008)
The main character&s civilization had religious beliefs long before the white man presented his ideas. Essentially, the Sioux religion was based on nature. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact beliefs of the group because of the deficiency of information. However, from the text, some aspects can be gathered. First, it appears as though everything in nature is believed to retain a spirit.
Religion is defined as "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God" . There are many recognised religions of the world, which all teach its followers to live life "the right way", whose definition varies according to the religion itself. They have some beliefs and practices that distinguish themselves from each other. Some examples are differences and similarities of Buddhism and Islam.
Emil Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life presents religion as a social phenomenon. Based on this idea, this essay will examine the role of religion and its influence on society. Durkheim defined religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”1 Hence Durkheim’s emphasis is on the function of religion as a unifier of individuals. In order to illustrate his theory of religion, Durkheim then introduces the Totemism of Australian aborigines as an example of fundamental and primitive religion. He then explains how religious belief and rituals evolve from society. If Durkheim’s theory of religion is valid and if religion is in fact a social phenomenon, it then follows that religion has a function and is thus necessary for society. In other words, society creates religion, and neither can exist without the other. To summarize, religion’s function is to provide a community with a system of communal belief and activities which can be either functional or nonfunctional.
McNallen (1995), Asatruars believe in Gods and Goddesses that are real just like the God christians worship (4). They pray to their gods and goddesses in a different way, they “commune and honor them while seeking their blessings through formal rites and informal mediation” (5) and they use items to remind them of their gods and goddesses. They also believe that their gods and goddesses “can become “charged” with a certain aspect of divine energy” (5). They also believe that “good and evil are constants” and that the result of a situation or instance “may or may not be “good” or “evil”, but it will still be the right action” (6). They believe that there is an afterlife and that the way one lives his or her life here on earth will determine how their life in the afterlife will be. If one lives a good life then good life awaits them in the afterlife, and if one lives a bad life vice to virtue their life in the afterlife will be doomed to dullness. Even with their knowledge about the afterlife they are not worried about it, they live in and focus on the
o Animism is refers the idea that all living things have a soul. o Animism is the term that invented by Edward Tylor as a proposed theory of the origins of religion o Animism belief that all natural objects have spirit or soul. o All religions from the simples to the complex share some sort of animistic belief.