The Samaritan in our Census

(painting by Banksy)

Last week the results of the 2021 census revealed many things about our Australian culture. Australia has increased by over 2 million people since the last census in 2016, mostly due to immigration. This means Australia is becoming more diverse with more people speaking different languages and practicing different cultures. The silent generation is in stark decline and even baby boomers aren’t the majority of the population anymore. Instead millennials, aged 26-41 (in 2022), are the largest part of our population. With the increase in diversity and the increase of millennials in this secular culture, those who identify as Christian have decreased since 2011 from 61% to 43% in 2021.

Australia is no longer a Christian country.

These numbers are not surprising for the church. You can tangibly feel the fear in congregants. You can hear the echo off church walls and empty pews. For those who still are sitting in the pews, you can see their white hair and hear their faint voices singing with an organ that hasn’t been tuned in over 10 years.

And although this might strike fear in the hearts of congregants and Christians alike, the story of the Good Samaritan might have a lot to say to us in this time and in this place.  

The well-known story goes something like this:

There is a man who is battered and broken, beaten up by robbers and left homeless and helpless on the side of the street. A priest walks down this very street, sees this helpless man, crosses the street and continues his journey. Then a Levite (a kind of priest) comes upon this road and, seeing this man half-dead, similarly crosses the road and continues on his way. Then a Samaritan who is walking the opposite direction of the priest and Levite sees this battered being and is filled with a spirit of compassion. And so he stops, bandages his wounds, takes him to an inn, feeds him and provides him with money. Not only this, but promises he will come back to check on him.

There are many things that are striking about this story but the one thing that stands out the most is the spirit in the Samaritan.

Most Christians particularly in colonized western countries often think of themselves as the ones who are the wielders of truth. We are, after all, often very educated, very wealthy and our Christianity has spread all over the world. We have been quick to deny people’s cultures, genders, sexualities and religions, often having more in common with colonization than we do with Christ. And yet, this story of the Good Samaritan reveals where the true Christ figure lies: outside the realms of those who think they’re the harbourers of truth and within those who actually do the thing Jesus is often on about: i.e. the thing of loving your neighbour as you do yourself.  

You see, Samaritans were considered unclean and unrighteous pagans and the religious folk of the day wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. A similar antagonist to good, colonized Christians might be Hindus, Atheists, gay men or trans women. But these are obvious candidates. Less obvious is the ways good, colonized Christians perpetuate racism with western practices, procedures and perceptions. Or the way good, colonized Christians perpetuate patriarchy (and yes, this also means women who are caught up in desiring power and privilege over and against others). And yet what Jesus is doing in this story is saying this Samaritan, this Pagan, this Atheist, this gay man, this trans woman, this non-white Western person is the Christ figure because they are the ones following the life-giving Spirit of love.  

What the 2021 census did not reveal is the increase in people identifying as spiritual but not religious. These people are tired of the hypocrisy, the hatred and the cerebral-nature of the church. These people are tired of ministers who are power-obsessed and do not listen and stand up for those on the edges of society.

These people are after the life-giving nature of the Spirit.

They are after living lives of compassion. They are after being connected to divine inspiration. They are after a community who will see them, love them and accept them without having to conform and change to conservative constraints of what it has meant to ‘be a Christian’. And these people (as the census reveals) are largely millennials, born from different countries, speak different languages, and (gasp!) are not Christian.

And the church is no longer a safe place or an accessible space for them to encounter the Spirit. And so these people are following the Spirit through meditating in the morning, attending a local yoga class, spending time in the garden, going out to the bush on weekends, gathering with friends for a few frothies, showing up to protests or volunteering with their local social justice organization.

So maybe the decline in Christianity in Australia is showing us Christians where the Spirit is very much alive and thriving in the lives outside of our controlled and contained practices of Christianity.  Maybe, instead of continuing our colonizing nature, we need to figure out how we can create spaces that are inclusive for the diversity of Australians: their varying cultures, languages and even beliefs, so that we can sit at their feet and learn from them. Maybe we need to begin letting go of traditions or ways of doing church that are dying and dead so we can make room for the Spirit that is very much blowing where it will in the lives of millennials, of immigrants and refugees, in the lives of queer folk, atheists and religious others. In other words, maybe we need to let go of our self-righteous religiosity and cross the street so that we might find the Spirit of love very much alive and thriving.