Reconciling Christianity and Modernity: Australian Youth and Religion

The growth of New Christian Movement Churches (such as the Pentecostal movements) in Australia is explored against a backdrop of falling attendance among the more ‘traditional ’ churches (Catholic, Anglican etc). The powerful appeal of these New Chris-tian Movement Churches (NCMs) to young people is studied through a series of interviews with young Australians using a phenomenological approach. The common threads from the en-quiry are drawn together and mapped onto Lambert’s (1999) secularization of religion model. A ‘consequences of modernity’ (Giddens 1991) argument is used to understand how these NCMs fulfill the need that these young people feel to reconcile aspects of modernity with their religious beliefs. This paper explores the seeming contradiction of the exponen