So Friedrich Nietzsche was right, God is dead and we have killed him.

That's what the latest census tells us: the number of faithless is closing in on the number of faithful.

In my lifetime I have seen Australia change from being an almost completely Christian country to one where now just 44 per cent practise Christianity.

This is no surprise. It mirrors a widespread shift away from religion by citizens of the Western world, most of whomwere traditionally Christian, alongside increases in religions like Hinduism which has grown more than 55 per cent in Australia since 2016 as our communities diversify.

Yet the numbers reporting no religion is also increasing and the impactis rapidly gathering pace.

Philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book A Secular Age, warned: "Modern civilisation cannot but bring about a "death of God."

Taylor said we have seen the rise of an "exclusive humanism". We have swapped God, he wrote, for a "culture of authenticity, or expressive individualism, in which people are encouraged to find their own way, discover their own fulfilment, "do their own thing".

Scholar of religion and politics Jocelyn Cesarihas traced the evolution of secular modernity in her book, We God's People. We have now reached a point in Western Europe, she says, where"worldly" things are allthere is.

There is a division between the immanent and the transcendent between what is Caesar's and what is God's. The immanent is the realm of politics.

Believers, she says, "are expected to keep the transcendent to themselves".

Cesari says the nation is now "the superior collective identification" overtaking "religious allegiances."

This is where the West was bound to end up. The tension between secularism and faith emerged out of the Thirty Years War the wars of religion that laid waste to Europe between 1618 and 1648. It's estimated as many as 8million people were killed.

It led to the birth of the modern state and coincided with an explosion of new ideas that we call the Age of Reason or The Enlightenment.

Across Europe reason was elevated above faith. People were encouraged to break with tradition. Thinkers like Rene Descartes the father of modern philosophy told us "I think therefore I am."

The mysteries of the universe were no longer the province of God.

Immanuel Kant summed up the Enlightenment with three words: dare to know.

While historically the West was founded on Christianity, the modern West was shaped by the break with God. People were sovereign. Liberalism prized the individual above all.

SociologistPhillip Rieffsaid we swapped a sacred order for a social order. That accelerated in the 20th century with social revolutions up-ending society and demolishing old ethical and moral boundaries.

French writer Olivier Roy says "secularisation has given way to large scale de-Christianisation." There is now, he says, "a serious crisis surrounding European identity and the place of religion in the public sphere".

The Church has found itself out of step with changing societal values on issues like divorce, abortion or same sex marriage.

Roy says: "Little by little, the very definitions of sexual difference, family, reproduction and parenthood have been redrawn." The scandal of child sex abuse in the church has further stripped religion of its moral authority.

Personal freedom, Roy writes, "prevails over all transcendent standards." Society is now ordered on "new valuesfounded on individualism, freedom and the valorisation of desire."

The West is a place beyond history. The past is another country. Tradition is seen as stifling, old fashioned. No doubt some traditions are well rid of. Which woman or person of colour would want to return to the white, male, dominated 1950s? But what are we left with? Is there still a role for tradition?

HistorianTim Stanleythinks so. He says the "war on tradition"has "translated into a soulless consumerism, and, while some flourished, many felt alienated and unfulfilled."

In his new book Whatever Happened to Tradition, Stanley fears our "liberal order is out of ideas, that's partly because we have deprived ourselves of valuable experience".

For some, the response to this soulless voidhas been a retreat into fundamentalism. We see this in radical Islamic groups like Al Qaeda or Islamic State whichrepresent a rejection of Western modernity.

Similarly right-wing or white-supremacist groups reach back to "tradition" as an attempt to recover some lost glory.

Stanley warns against this fundamentalism, yet he wonders what the secular West offers in response. Across the West, he says, "there is a dearth of purpose and spirit: we can't agree on who we are or what we are about, or even of these big existential questions matter."

Yet if people have turned away from religion it does not mean they are without faith.

Atheism in its own way can become an article of faith.

The new radical atheists quote the likes of scientistRichard Dawkinswith the certainty of scripture. They proselytise with evangelical vigour. In the West, identity is the new faith.

We are free to re-imagine and reinvent ourselves, untethered from the past; from family or faith.

It is a peculiarly Western phenomenon. Elsewhere religion is booming. The heart of Christianity has shifted from Europe to Africa and Latin America.

Officially atheist, China has experienced what's been called a Christian revival. It is estimated that by 2030 China may have the world's largest Christian population.

And despite what the census tells us is happening here, Christianity is not dying. Pew Research shows that in the century between 1910 and 2010, the number of Christians grew from 600million to more than twobillion.

Pew says that by 2060 Christianity will remain the world's largest religion with more than three billion followers.

Islam is the world's fastest growing religion driven significantly by a higher fertility rate. By the end of this century it is thought there will be more Muslims than Christians in the world.

This is a reminder if one is needed that the West is not the world. Indeed in many parts of the world the turn to religion is connected with a rejection of colonialism and Western values.

Sudipta Kaviraj, Columbia University Professor of Indian History, asks: "Why should the history of Europe happen elsewhere?" In Bengal, he says, Hindus in the 19th century "rejected an unconditional embrace of the package of moral values of Western modernity". Modern individualism, he says, was seen as "impoverishing the character and content of collective life".

In modern India, he writes, even the secular "need and desire transcendence as intensely as the devout."

Kavirajcautions against seeing the world through eyes of the West, not to speak, he says, "the facts of one history through the language of another." Yes, the West is more secular, less religious, and hyper-individualistic but that is not how most people live.

Western ideas of progress are founded on burying the past, killing God, and making the human divine. It can be liberating and holds the promise of freedom. But it doesn't speak to all. It doesn't even speak to all in the West who replace old faiths with new faith, who feel alienated and alone and long for somewhere to belong.

As Charles Taylor sees it, the journey of the secular West is from an enchanted age, to an age of disenchantment.

If as Nietzsche said, "God is dead", we in the West might ask what comes next?

Stan Grant is the ABC's international affairs analyst and presents China Tonight on Monday at 9:35pm on ABC TV, and Tuesday at 8pm on the ABC News Channel, anda co-presenter of Q+A on Thursday at 8.30pm. He also hosts the Religion and Ethics Report on RN.

Posted2 Jul 20222 Jul 2022Sat 2 Jul 2022 at 7:00pm, updated3 Jul 20223 Jul 2022Sun 3 Jul 2022 at 9:53am

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The census shows Australians are becoming less religious but why have we chosen to live without God? - ABC News