Christian Today Australia recently caught up with Reverend Dr. Phillip Hughes, the Senior Research Officer at the Christian Research Association to discuss about the relevancy of the church in the modern era and the disconnection between those who identified themselves as Christian but yet do not attend church.
C.T. AUS: Given that the Australian society is fragmenting, as described in the new book entitled 'Building Stronger Communities' published by the Christian Research Association, do you think the church can still play an influential role in guiding us?
P.H.: I think the church still do play an influential role. In some way, I think they represent the vestiges of society that existed in previous time. The church has a major role in terms of encouraging people to undertake voluntary work and to give back to society. So in a number of respects, they feel they are strongly contributing to it.
I think the societal form is changing, the way people interact are changing so I am not sure what will happen to the role of the church in the future. People are networking now rather than joining organization. Now whether the church will continue to play as much of a role in the future as now is not clear to me.
C.T. AUS: Do you think the church should use modern technology, especially the Internet, to attract more people to come?
P.H.: I do. I think that the church should use modern means of communication but I do not think the 'E-Church' will necessarily replace the church in the physical world. The 'E-Church' should not be the end of the line, for example, where we just meet on the net instead of meeting face-to-face.
On the other hand, I do think the sense of community in a church and the contact with a range of people can certainly take place through the Internet. These two points are very important to what a church does.
C.T. AUS: Can you explain the disconnection between the 2006 Census figure showing 64 percent of the total overall Australian population identified themselves as Christians but yet only around 8 to 9 percent attend Sunday Service?
P.H.: There is about 8 to 9 percent who attend church on any given Sunday. However, the figure is higher and is about 18 percent (or about double the proportion of those who attend church 'fairly regularly' – classified as at least once a month). In fact, the actual amount of people attending church service on a monthly basis is a lot higher.
There are also a lot of people who attend church just occasionally or are in there for a couple of times a year, such as at Christmas or Easter and so on. This brings it up to at least 35 to 36 percent of Australians.
But you still got another 30 percent of Australian who never attends a church but still maintain their Christian connection. Now when it comes to the Census, people are indicating not their practice but their sense of identification. This identity may have come from the school, for example, where they used to go to a Christian school.
A lot of people say we hold onto Christian value but we don't see any necessity of going to church. In fact, over 30 percent of Australian say, "Yes, we believe in Christian values and we think there are important and we see ourselves as Christian but we do not see any necessity to go to church."