POINTERS June 2022: Downloadable PDF

INSIDE THIS ISSUE OF POINTERS:

Religious and Spiritual Nominals

In 2018, in the Australian adult population, approximately 22 per cent described themselves as both religious and spiritual (Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, 2018). Approximately half of these people attended religious activities regularly, including those who were active in the churches (about 11 per cent of the population). However, the other half of this group rarely if ever attended religious services. Those who identified as ‘religious and spiritual’, but who rarely, if ever, attend religious services, we might describe as ‘nominal’.

Community Engagement after Christendom

In late May 2022, the Christian Research Association, together with Ethos, the Evangelical Alliance’s Centre for Christianity and Society, hosted the Melbourne launch of a new book by Dr Douglas Hynd, Community Engagement after Christendom.
In the first of the following two articles, the author discusses how churches should be engaging in the wider community and with government at a time when they no longer have the privileged social standing they once had.
In the second article, Dr Wilma Gallet, former CEO of The Salvation Army’s Employment Plus and CRA Accredited Researcher, responds to the author as an academic and practitioner of welfare delivery in church-related organisations.