Australian

Religion In

41 Varieties

Disguised by an undistin

guished and off-putting title,

Tess Van Sommers’ Religions in Australia is clinically factual and at the same time manages to be

exceedingly interesting.

A CCORDING to the author’s count there are 41 different sects operating in Australia, not all of them Christian. On the Christian side they range from Anglicans to Molo kan Christian Holy Spiritual Jumpers.

On the non-Christian front there are Baha’is, Buddhists, Moslems, Jews, Sikhs and others.

Although she has confined herself to how the various sects operate in Australia this book is a pretty good run-down of 41 varieties of religion, none of which originated on that continent.

A number of the more off-beat religions arrived in Australia from that fertile spawning ground of such phenomena, the United States. Others had their origins further afield—such as the Molokan Christian Holy Spiritual Jumpers who went to Aus tralia from Russia via Los Angeles in 1964. They are descendants of a group that broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church three hundred years before after a schism over ritual.

Persecution

In Russia the adherents of the new sect were persecuted from time to time by the Orthodox Church and were sustained in their efforts only by prophets who predicted that they would eventually be give a sign to move out of Russia to seek anew land ordained by God. The sign did not come until the end of the 19th century and between 1900 and 1912 over 4,000 of them left Russia for the United States, settling chiefly in California where there are now 20.000 adherents.

Many of the Molokans believed that this was only a stage on the way to the Far East and the small group that migrated to Australia

(they have settled near Bunbury, W.A.) believe that this is another staging place.

The Christian Holy Spiritual Jumper part of their name derives from the fact that in moments of spiritual ecstacy they believe the Holy Spirit descends upon them and makes them jump for joy.

Australia also has the Brethren (in five varieties) Christian Israelites, followers of the House of David and of the so-called Father Divine. There are others who prefer their prophets to be Persian, such as the followers of Baha’i or Meher Baba; or to get their messages from outer space like the adherents of Shalam,

Some Are "Comfortable"

It seems obvious, generally speak ing, that the more orthodox your religion, the more comfortably it sits.

One may be an Anglican, or a Roman Catholic, a Presbyterian or a Baptist and live a pretty normal life. But most of the far-out sectarian thought is as all embracing—and about as comfortable—as sinking up to one’s neck in wet concrete.

Probably the greatest impact this catalogue of faiths has on the reader who is not deeply committed to any religion is the terrifying realisation of the diversity of human thought and purpose that has produced these 41 varieties.

When men who all profess to be Christians can fight to the death over lines of dogma; or can remove them selves across oceans and continents so that they don’t have to breathe the same air as compatriots who worship God a little differently, one begins to wonder how, under Heaven, we are ever going to get nations to live peacefully together on the same globe.

Some of the material in this book was first published in the Australian magazine Pix. It has been greatly

extended.

JT.

(Religions In Australia. Rigby.

$A4.50.)