Talk:Christianity in Australia

Joey Peters
Joey Peters is a Women's Football player. It is really unfortunately she hasn't got a Wikipedia page. Here's a reference to show that she is Christian. It was deleted because it was non-notable in October 2008, but not only is she really pretty, but she's had a 13 year career, she scored 28 goals in 109 appearances; and vice captain of the Aussie team; played in 3 women's World Cups (1999, 2003, 2007); 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, played for Newcastle (W-League), and clubs in US and Brazil. All relevant information about Joey Peters can be found here. Twigfan (talk) 03:34, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

earlier comments
Stop vandalising please. Leave facts as you see them. Tarins01 03:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Tony Abbott

 * The reason for the NPOV tag is because of Abbott being labeled as a "denier". I agree with that - as I have little respect for Abbott or the Catholic church - but others probably wouldn't. Black-Velvet 03:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

That denier thing is BS. This who article is only here because "someone" did not like the direction of Islam in Australia. Xtra 03:51, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I cant agree with Xtra. A woman wanting Abortion: it is her basic right and decision alone; not Tony's. Tony Abbott, is staunchly against abortion. Werent you keeping up with the pill issues a few weeks back? Tarins01 03:58, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

That is your opinion and if you step back you will realise that it is highly POV. Just like if I were to say "ACT - murderer of unborn children". Xtra 04:17, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Saying "ACT- murderer of unborn children" is different then to single out Tony Abbott. There are a fair number in Howard's government who are pro-abortion; sadly Abbott isnt one of them. So, where is the problem in calling him denier?

You are saying that he is denying them a right, and that is a matter of point of view. I do not see your problem here. I am not trying to impose my ideology here, so why are you? Xtra 05:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

ummm. Well that i wouldnt call it a point of view. its more factual isnt it? Tarins01 06:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Article existance
I would be a supporter of this article being created, but clearly at the moment we need to establish some ground rules for editing before attempting it. Does anybody know of a sample of quality Religion in Place articles we could base from? I'd guess that one thing to learn from Islam in Australia is that the "Personalities" section is probably a bad idea. If we would like to develop either (or both) to Featured Article status, they eventually need references, so we could start by requiring a suitable reference for every potentially contentious statement or statistic.

My proposed ground rules:
 * Every claim or statistic should be referenced using Cite.php references (
 * No lists of people, as they are almost certainly incomplete and subjective
 * Editors will be polite and assume good faith in other editors. This applies on the article page, the talk page and in edit comments
 * All edits by regular editors must have an accurate edit summary
 * Never revert a regular editor or call their edit vandalism (see assume good faith above)
 * It is acceptable to move (with explanation) an unsourced or poorly sourced sentence or paragraph to the talk page for discussion.
 * If such a sentence is removed from the article, it requires two-thirds (or more) agreement in the talk page to be returned. The same goes for disputed reference sources.

Please discuss these proposed rules below, or indicate support. --Scott Davis Talk 09:58, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I think i would be in support of scott davis'proposal. If the personalities section would be in existance in Islam in Australia then so should it in Christianity in Australia including criminals, business figures, politicians etc... Tarins01 03:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Tarins you have already presented yourself as an editor here to demonise Christianity through this article (and thus violate much of wikipedia policy). While I hope your new premise is sincere, I doubt it. I agree with much (but not all) of Scott's proposal - however, before the redirect is taken off a fair and npov stub should be put in its place (and agreed to on this talk page before inclusion). michael talk 05:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Demonise? don't think so mate.Tarins01 06:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I've made a partial start at Christianity in Australia/draft. It got late, so I haven't sought references for everything yet. The second reference was copied from Religion in Australia. There is more info in the first one I haven't used yet. Michael, please don't keep us in suspense about what you don't like in my proposed rules. --Scott Davis Talk 14:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Out of wish for a cohesive effort I will agree to what you have proposed michael talk 14:33, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

New version?
Is the above talk relevant, or are we starting from scratch?

Also, the bit "A number of current and past politicians present themselves as Christian in a partisan manner" seems a bit dodgy - there's no citations - it seems to be original research based on the authors' memory. Andjam 09:00, 16 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It looks like Paul's new article uses some of my draft article mentioned above, but other bits are absent. We are going to need to keep a watch and tight reign on unsourced or badly sourced statements. While I think this is an important article to have, it also has a history of vandalism and bias. I have noted that I oppose merging this article to the general Religion in Australia. Unfortunately, as I will be on holidays for the next month, my editing will be sporadic. --Scott Davis Talk 14:20, 16 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I wrote this using Scott's draft as a start, but tried to be pick up on some aspects not covered. I agree work is required in mentioning individuals. It certainly can be improved. To achieve some balance in addressing Religion in Australia would appear to require an article on Christianity in its own right as there are articles on Islam in Australia and History of the Jews in Australia. To merge it would unbalance that article if the topic is to be addressed effectively. The Christian section would be limited to something quite short. (discussion copied to Talk:Religion in Australia) Paul foord 15:38, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

problem with tables
I was just looking over the tables and I have some problems in that I can't seem to find the sources. In particular the table on religious affiliation (religion 2001/2006) seems to be supported only by raw data not a table created by a reputable source (and is a bit misleading in particular it seems to use 'other Protestants' rather than 'other Christians' and has 'Oriental Orthodox' at .2% but omits the LDS at .3% or Jehovah's Witnesses at .4%, both probably included in the 'other Protestants' category). I found a better table at http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/1301.0Feature+Article7012009%E2%80%9310 which I'm inclined to use. Thoughts? --Erp (talk) 06:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Church attendance section
I also found the church attendance section misleading. The attendance percentages are only estimated percentage of those who attended churches of those churches surveyed which does not include all Christian denominations. Nor does this seem to be explicitly stated in the section. At a minimum it should state somewhere what the percentage of attenders is out of the total Australian population (about 7.8%) or of the total population that identifies as belonging to the denominations surveyed and what the definition of attendance is (e.g., weekly, monthly, once in the last year). What sort of info should be presented in this section? --Erp (talk) 16:21, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Highly weighted towards Catholicism
This article seems extremely weighted towards being a history of Catholicism in Australia, with just a few mentions of other denominations. 124.171.117.28 (talk) 03:13, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

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Les Murray - Does he really belong here?
This article tells me that Murray was a notable Christian poet. His own article doesn't even mention that he was Christian. It says he became a Catholic when he married his Catholic wife, but that was a very common practice at the time, and doesn't automatically demonstrate a strong commitment to the religion at all. Without something stronger in his own article, I don't believe we can claim here he was conspicuously a "Christian" poet. HiLo48 (talk) 09:44, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I wrote the above nearly a month ago. There's been no response. I shall add that the sources in that section the article add nothing to the claim about Murray. I shall boldly remove it, and even more boldly await feedback. HiLo48 (talk) 05:24, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Toowoomba
it seems odd to me that such a large proportion of the article is devoted to one modest regional city, and to just the evangelical denominations at that. I suggest the section be deleted. Baska436 (talk) 04:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree that the whole "Bible belt" section should be deleted. It seems to be a list of large evangelical churches and little else. Mentioning Adelaide (a less religious capital city than Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane) seems out of place and the whole section lacks contemporary sources. 203.221.72.100 (talk) 20:24, 27 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Agree. I've never heard the term being used in Adelaide, and AFAIK people travel to those evangelical churches from wherever they live in Adelaide. There have been many articles pointing out that the old moniker "city of churches" is misplaced, and church attendance across the region is in fact pretty low. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 22:12, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I have deleted the section because the sources did not reinforce the idea that any of these places are "bible Belts", and much of the information was irrelevant. 203.221.72.100 (talk) 23:02, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

"Bible Belt" section
The section "Bible Belts" was a large collection of random places in Australia that have churches in them. Few of them were any more religious per census data than other parts of Australia (eg. Adelaide or the suburb of Brooklyn Park). If there should be a section on key Christian locations then that should be a factual description backed up with evidence. 220.253.80.147 (talk) 11:23, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree. Australia has nothing like the American Bible Belt. In travelling around Australia, I have encountered a few localities where there seem to be a cluster of two or three surprisingly large churches for the regional (not city) area involved (one was a little west of Bundaberg), but not belts. I haven't read anything about this phenomenon, so I couldn't provide reliable sourcing to support writing anything about it. I'd like to understand more about how it comes about though. HiLo48 (talk) 23:45, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Once again I have removed this section because it has no basis in reality, and is not supported by sources. It is not up to editors to "improve" this section because Australia does not have a "bible belt". The source given in the section never even referred to a place, but instead to two politicians. 27.32.52.197 (talk) 09:33, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I have found a number of sources to support a "Bible Belt" section. The current section, however, is riddled with self published sources.  I rewrote the section and replaced the current section. Nowa (talk) 13:58, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That's much better. HiLo48 (talk) 23:21, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Removal of Range Christian Fellowship description
As far as I can tell, none of the references for Range Christian Fellowship are reliable secondary sources (i.e. RS). The primary reference Small, for example, is a self published book by the wife of the founding pastor. I tried searching for RS myself, but could find nothing. Hence, despite the original work that went into writing this description, I deleted it as not being notable per Wikipedia standards. If others disagree, please comment below. If someone can find a reliable secondary source (e.g. newspaper or magazine article) about the Fellowship, I would be happy to add the section back in. Nowa (talk) 14:25, 26 December 2023 (UTC)