Australia - Anger over attack on Christmas

[Felix the Cat]

Anger over attack on Christmas (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17454097-421,00.html)

A leading Islamic body says the use of the term "Christmas" is politically incorrect because it excludes too many people in multicultural Australia.

The Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations wants a community debate to find an alternative – suggesting the word "festive" as a possible replacement.

And a Queensland Jewish leader has called for an end to the "automatic imposition" of Christmas on the community, saying the season has been reduced to a "shopping festival".

The attacks have outraged Christian churches, family groups and civic leaders. Even other Muslim groups have slammed the call.

Islamic Council of Queensland president Abdul Jalal said Muslims have "no right" to question what Christians called their religious festival.

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Premier Peter Beattie said Christmas was an important celebration that should "stay put". He said: "Christians should be able to celebrate the festivities as Christmas."

Brisbane Anglican Archbishop Phillip Aspinall said Christmas should continue to be celebrated as a "very important" date on the Christian calendar.

Queensland Churches Together – representing 11 denominations including Catholic, Anglican and Uniting churches – described the name-change proposal as "absurd".

And Family Council of Queensland president Alan Baker described the plans as "impertinent and intolerant".

He said: "No one is suggesting that other religions change the name of their celebrations, such as Ramadan for Muslims or Hanukkah for Jews."

Queensland local councils scoffed at suggestions they shun Christmas.

Townsville Mayor Tony Mooney said: "Christmas is not politically incorrect and there is only a small group in the population that believe it is – and they're nuts."

Caboolture Shire Council Mayor Joy Leishman said the call to rename Christmas was ridiculous.

But the Islamic-relations forum director, Kuranda Seyit, told The Sunday Mail it was time for Australia to fall in line with places such as the UK, where councils have renamed Christmas "Winterval" and replaced references to Christmas on signage with the words "Festive" and "Winter".

"Australia is now so diverse and there are so many cultures and festivities, we need to acknowledge the need to be inclusive of our identity."

He expected his plan would insult some people, but urged a "step-by-step" approach.

"A word like Festive is a good word but the community should make an effort to come up with an alternative to Christmas. Schools will take a leading role in terms of political correctness. The younger generation will grow up and say 'it's not fair'."

Queensland's Jewish Board of Deputies president David Paratz said the extent of Christmas celebrations and partying had got out of hand – as had the commercialism surrounding the festival. Christmas was considered just a "shopping festival" by many people, he said.

"It can't be assumed everyone is a Christian. People should not be faced with the automatic imposition of Christmas."

[Jimbo Gomez]

Queensland's Jewish Board of Deputies president David Paratz said the extent of Christmas celebrations and partying had got out of hand –

Pardon, I must have read this wrong, I thought it suggested a jew has the authority to regulate how much Christians can do to celebrate Christmas.

[Felix the Cat]

Does Australia have an established church?

[Felix the Cat]

I guess not: I just noticed there are more Catholics in Australia than Anglicans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Australia#Ethnic_groups), which comes as a surprise:

Roman Catholic 26.6%, Anglican 20.7%, other Christian 20.7%, non-Christian 4.8%, no Religions 15.5%, undescribed 11.7%

[Starr]

These things seem to get worse every year and almost nobody says anything outside of a few religious leaders. It would be politically incorrect to do so, for sure, but it also has a lot to do with this, that the Jew was correct on:

Queensland's Jewish Board of Deputies president David Paratz said the extent of Christmas celebrations and partying had got out of hand – as had the commercialism surrounding the festival. Christmas was considered just a "shopping festival" by many people, he said.

[Ace Rimmer]

Damn it's wonderful to be a Christian.

[Lenny]

I guess not: I just noticed there are more Catholics in Australia than Anglicans, which comes as a surprise:There is a big discrepincy in the way Catholics vs. Protestants count religious affiliation, which inflates the number of Catholics and deflates then number of Protestants.

The Catholic Church typically counts "all baptized Catholics" as Catholics, which inflates their actual numbers because it gets a lot of people who are not practicing or even believing Catholics to answer the religion question on their Census questionarre that they are Catholics. Protestants will much more often answer the religion question based on current church membership, e.g. they would answer Anglican only if they were members of the Anglican church, this deflates their actual numbers because there are many more people who would absolutely be counted as Protestants if the Catholic way of counting members was employed

For this reason I would say that there are probably more Anglicans than Catholics in Australia, but deceptive Catholic membership counts hide this fact.

Here is the link to the religion results of every Australia census since 1901: Here (http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/dc057c1016e548b4ca256c470025ff88/56c35cc256682bc0ca256dea00053a7a!OpenDocument) (scroll down half way to see the table)

In 1981 and in every single census prior to 1981, there were more reported Anglicans than Catholics. In that census 26% of the population was Anglican and 24% of the population was other Protestant, for a total of 50% Protestant