Religion's persistent and new visibility in political life has prompted a significant global debate. One of this debate's key features concerns the nature and impact of secularization. This collection of essays draws together leading sociologists, historians, philosophers of religion, and political theorists in order to provide a broad and up-to-date account of religion after secularization. Contributors explore the meaning and conceptual legacies of religion, as well as the unique features of the Australian case such as religion as it relates to law, education, gender, media, and radical political movements. Intervening in the current debate, this book provides summative accounts of the historical, cultural, and legal interactions that have informed Australia’s relationship to religion and secularization. Contributors critically analyze and engage with secular political theory concerning the public sphere, while also dissecting deliberative politics and democratic practices. This book propels the debate over religion’s place in public life in new directions and promotes urgently needed public understanding.

Religion's persistent and new visibility in political life has prompted a significant global debate. One of this debate's key features concerns the nature and impact of secularization. This collection of essays draws together leading sociologists, historians, philosophers of religion, and political theorists in order to provide a broad and up-to-date account of religion after secularization. Contributors explore the meaning and conceptual legacies of religion, as well as the unique features of the Australian case such as religion as it relates to law, education, gender, media, and radical political movements. Intervening in the current debate, this book provides summative accounts of the historical, cultural, and legal interactions that have informed Australia’s relationship to religion and secularization. Contributors critically analyze and engage with secular political theory concerning the public sphere, while also dissecting deliberative politics and democratic practices. This book propels the debate over religion’s place in public life in new directions and promotes urgently needed public understanding.

Religion's persistent and new visibility in political life has prompted a significant global debate. One of this debate's key features concerns the nature and impact of secularization. This collection of essays draws together leading sociologists, historians, philosophers of religion, and political theorists in order to provide a broad and up-to-date account of religion after secularization. Contributors explore the meaning and conceptual legacies of religion, as well as the unique features of the Australian case such as religion as it relates to law, education, gender, media, and radical political movements. Intervening in the current debate, this book provides summative accounts of the historical, cultural, and legal interactions that have informed Australia’s relationship to religion and secularization. Contributors critically analyze and engage with secular political theory concerning the public sphere, while also dissecting deliberative politics and democratic practices. This book propels the debate over religion’s place in public life in new directions and promotes urgently needed public understanding.

This timely book offers a panoramic overview of the enduring significance of religion in modern Australian society. Applying sociological perspectives and contemporary theories of religion in society, it challenges conventional assumptions around the extent of secularisation in Australia and instead argues that religious institutions, groups, and individuals have proved remarkably adaptable to social change and continue to play a major role in Australian life. In doing so, it explores how religion intersects with a wide range of other contemporary issues, including politics, race, migration, gender, and new media. Religion and Change in Australia explores Australia’s unique history regarding religion. Christianity was originally imported as a tool of social control to keep convicts, settlers, and Australian Aboriginal peoples in check. This had a profound impact on the social memory of the nation, and lingering resentment towards the "excessive" presence of religion continues to be felt today. Freedom of religion was enshrined in Section 116 of the Australian Constitution in 1901. Nevertheless, the White Australia Policy effectively prevented adherents of non-Christian faiths from migrating to Australia and the nation remained overwhelmingly Christian. However, after WWII, Australia, in common with other western societies, appears to have become increasingly secularised, as religious observance declined dramatically. However, Religion and Change in Australia employs a range of social theories to challenge this securalist view and argues that Australia is a post-secular society. The 2016 census revealed that over half of the population still identify as Christian. In politics, the socially conservative religious right has come to exert considerable influence on the ruling Liberal-National Coalition, particularly under John Howard and Scott Morrison. New technologies, such as the Internet and social media, have provided new avenues for religious expression and proselytisation whilst so-called "megachurches" have been built to cater to their increasing congregations. The adoption of multiculturalism and increased immigration from Asia has led to a religiously pluralist society, though this has often been controversial. In particular, the position of Islam in Australia has been the subject of fierce debate, and Islamophobic attitudes remain common. Atheism, non-belief, and alternative spiritualities have also become increasingly widespread, especially amongst the young. Religion and Change in Australia analyses these developments to offer new perspectives on religion and its continued relevance within Australian society. This book is therefore a vital resource for students, academics, and general readers seeking to understand contemporary debates surrounding religion and secularisation in Australia.

Combining an overview of the interdisciplinary literature with original case studies, this volume examines Australian education through the lens of secularisation, from 1910 to the present, questioning the nature of “secular settlements” and the role of Christianity in Australian schools.

Over the course of the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, an interior private notion of religion gained wide public recognition. It then spread through settler colonial contexts around the world. It has since been criticized for its abstract, immaterial nature as well as its irrelevance to traditions beyond the European context. However, such critiques obscure the contradiction between religion’s definition as a matter of interior privacy and its public visibility in various printed publications. Timothy Stanley responds by re-evaluating the cultural impact of the exterior forms in which religious texts were printed, such as pamphlets, broadsheets, books, and journals. He also applies that evidence to critical studies of religion shaped by the crisis of representation in the human sciences. While Jacques Derrida is oft-cited as a progenitor of that crisis, the opposite case is made. Additionally, Stanley draws on Derrida’s thought to reframe the relation between a religious text’s internal hermeneutic interests and its external forms. In sum, this book provides a new model of how people printed religion in ways that can be compared to other material cultures around the world.

This book reveals how taken-for-granted political structures have shaped the fate of religion in Australian and American public life.