In Australia, people are confronted by the rapid, almost irreversible, de-Christianisation of their country.

The National Church Life Survey estimates that, since 1991, around 1,200 churches have been deconsecrated and closed, meanwhile around 20 per cent of Roman Catholic churches are no longer used for religious services but have become entertainment venues, shopping centres, or luxury apartment accommodation.

The immigration policies of the Labor government have resulted in increasing members of the Islamic faith settling in Australia and, sometimes, these immigrants struggle to integrate into the nominally Christian community.

Church attendance has dropped to worrying levels, and many people no longer access churches to celebrate important milestones in their life. Although there is no single reason for the demonstrable decline of Christianity, there is certainly one reason that contributes to its demise: the politicisation of religion, involving reliance on religious tenets to facilitate social and political experiments that harm Australia’s Christian values and heritage.

During the last two decades, Australia has experienced a tidal wave of changes ushering in greater intervention in people’s lives.

These interventions include cradle to grave welfare, same sex marriage, voluntary assisted dying – a euphemism for euthanasia – abortion, gender dysphoria legislation, gender self-identification and transitioning, affirmative action, zero emissions fantasies and climate change profligacy, critical race studies, among others.

They are developments aimed at implementing a distorted and extreme version of ‘equality’ which governments have elevated above all other principles even though it may be incompatible with Christianity’s legacy.

Occasionally, church leaders have alerted their congregations to the anti-Christian roots of these changes but, overall, they have neglected to acknowledge the verifiable benefits of Christianity, especially its provision of the conditions amenable for the development of a mature and stable legal system. This neglect has contributed, perhaps unintentionally but certainly effectively, to the demise of Australia’s Christian heritage. As such, church leaders have failed to use their authority to criticise social and political developments that are incompatible with religious tenets – previously the glue that bound our society together.

But paradoxically, they do occasionally rely on the religious tenets of their Faith to achieve secular purposes that denigrate Christianity. At times, religious leaders encourage their congregations to adopt a certain political leaning and to vote for a political party of the church’s choice. The following example will prove the validity of this point.

The Catholic Bishops of Queensland, on their website, are urging ‘those seeking election to resist Populism and post-truth narratives, and for voters to use their votes for the common good’. Accordingly, one Archbishop has previously warned of the ‘destabilising effect of rising polarisation and calls on Queenslanders to engage with key challenges, including healthcare, education, cost of living, housing and more’.

The use of the term ‘Populism’ in the statement suggests it should be avoided by their congregations. Although ‘Populism’ is undoubtedly used as a pejorative word, the exhortation nevertheless fails to define ‘Populism’. This is a relevant concern: an undefined concept, because of its lack of specificity, could easily be used as a sword against any disfavoured view or practice. In offering secular advice, the statement may be perceived to assume ‘Populism’ is necessarily an aberrant anti-Christian trait.

If so, this assumption would violate the standard dictionary meaning of ‘Populism’ which simply means that the will of most electors should prevail in a democracy. Indeed, if the statement had embraced this dictionary meaning, it would have been woefully inadequate for the purpose of influencing parishioners’ voting intentions.

In encouraging people to make decisions which are supportive of the ‘common good’, the statement suggests that ‘Populism’ is incompatible with the common good. The reference to the ‘common good’ is a vague motherhood statement that means what its author wants it to mean. Even more puzzling is the reference in the statement to ‘post-truth narratives’. Does it mean there are ‘truths’ (as defined by the Conference of Bishops) and that any negative narrative about this truth, once revealed, is unwarranted?

But most disconcertingly, the statement’s advocacy makes church leaders into political commentators. It is my view that in promoting fashionable secular opinions they are diminishing the moral and religious value of the principles they rely on.

Of course, Christianity is in decline, not just in Australia, but throughout the Western world. In this context, the Chief Executive Officer of the United Kingdom’s Christian Concern organisation, Andrea Minichiello Williams, believes that her country’s rejection of the Christian framework that previously shaped the legal system, its institutions and public life, has led to the mistaken belief that it is possible to somehow maintain the benefits of Christian civilisation without Christianity itself. As stated in a commentary on Williams’ ministry:

Williams has warned that if British Christians didn’t ‘step up’, the nation would be on a path to eventually criminalise the practice of Christianity in public, and that the heart of our legislative, cultural and educational systems have turned their backs on God. As a result, we end up with legislation that is counter to God’s purposes; she cited ‘equality and diversity’ legislation as examples.

There is no doubt that Williams’ views are apposite to Australia and that the continuing de-Christianisation is turning this country, slowly but incrementally, into a secular bastion where even basic religious principles have little currency.

Occasionally, some church leaders correctly frame notable events as violations of the Christian Faith. A good example is the commentary of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, an excommunicated priest, on the recent invasion of around 60,000 people into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. He described the situation in Ceuta as:

… a diabolical plan of ethnic replacement, of the deliberate destruction of the social fabric, and of the provocation of disorders and civil war. Peoples without faith, without roots, and without identity are immersed in masses of foreigners who share neither the Faith, nor the culture, nor natural law, with the aim of breaking every cohesion and making any resistance impossible.

Unfortunately, except for Viganò’s commentary, and isolated, but encouraging comments by some Australian religious leaders on the serious moral issues of our time, religious tenets are often relied on to pursue secular objectives which conflict with Christianity and have hastened the de-Christianisation of Australia.