Peter Jensen, the heresy of Christmas carols and Santa Claus, and Australia a land of superstition ...

Did fearless Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, quite realise what he was saying when he cobbled this line together?

''The decline of Christian faith does not lead to lack of religious belief; it just opens the way for superstition.''

As in other kinds of superstition, which can replace the chief superstition favoured by Australians?

You know, because superstition is a religious belief, just like Christianity, and when loons abandon religious belief in Christianity it doesn't mean the world suddenly lacks religious beliefs, it just means that some superstitions are more engaging than others.

The leading proponent of the heresy of Jensenism was responding to a survey by the Sydney Morning Herald, which has belatedly discovered that Australia was prone to the same kind of grab bag of mumbo jumbo beliefs as America - as if anyone could survive watching repeated viewings of Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural and a host of other paranormal shows without sustaining brain damage.

Well it's the silly season, so a survey of Australia's religious thinking is a good thing, even if it's of the obvious kind, and hardly news. After all, in a country which supports Pastor Danny performing an exorcism on Mount Ainslie to save the soul of Canberra, eccentricity is surely all the go. And the news that Peter Costello, one time aspirational prime minister and eternal prime goose often entered into theological intercourse with Pastor Danny shows how deep, high and far reaching foolish thinking runs in the country.

So the survey is really just another excuse to celebrate the fuzzy logic of Australian believers and unbelievers. David Marr provides the 'in-depth' breakdown of the figures in Our faith today, and like any good tabloid journalist he's intrigued by the eccentricities:

Denial isn't a sure ticket to a rational existence. Heaven, hell, angels, witches and the devil get a tick from about 10 per cent of those who doubt or disbelieve the existence of God. A quarter support miracles; 27 per cent put their faith in astrology and UFOs; and a mighty 34 per cent believe in ESP. So a third of the nation's atheists, agnostics and doubters have turned their back on God, but not on magic.

As if human beans ever lived a rational existence anywhere at any time. Unfortunately Marr insists on a kind of bean counting, which sees a simple manichean approach dominate his review of the findings:

What you make of these figures depends very much on where you stand. The view from both sides is disappointing. Christians might despair that 7 million or so Australians seem headed for hell – not that most of us believe it exists. But the anti-God brigade can look at the same figures and despair that roughly 10 million Australians are still caught in the toils of superstition.

What's that? Atheists can't read a horoscope? Steady on.

The most satisfying result is the scientific thinking of Australians:

Most Australians believe God played a part in the process. That He created all life at a stroke about 10,000 years ago is believed by 23 per cent of us. That He guided a long process over time is believed by another 32 per cent. The beliefs of Australian Christians are even more dramatic, with 38 per cent supporting Genesis and another 47 per cent favouring the God of Design.

What's the bet that the 23% who believe in Genesis are devout readers of Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt? Well faith based science is featured on their pages on a daily basis.

Meantime, it's also reassuring that Christians put great faith in telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychic healing, while a belief in UFOs litters the landscape, and Australia does tremendously well in astrology and horoscopes, thrashing even the Americans.

But what's it all mean? Nothing much, as I'm drawn back to the despair of the Jensenists:

'That faith is important or very important to at least half of the population is what we have always suspected - an 'iceberg effect' that people may not necessarily speak up about their faith but it is very significant to their lives,'' he said.

The fact that the Christian faith was in the clear majority among believers was ''no cause for triumphalism''.

''I would reflect rather on why this is not translating into church membership.'' (We believe in miracles, and UFOs)

Well as for church membership, let's leave aside the way in which the Jensenists carelessly managed to lose $160 million or so and then blamed god for the deed, a story also told by David Marr, this time in Anglican business:

“It may be that the Lord is chastising us for our sins … but then it may not be our sins at all – it may be that the Lord is simply seeking to test us or perhaps He is seeking to stop us doing something which is right in itself but not in accordance with His secret will.”

God surely moves in mysterious ways to test or guide his true believers. Or perhaps, if you want another superstition, it was because the thetans had gummed up the financial works.

Never mind, you can get a better idea of why Jensenism might be a turn off for church attendance, as they fight their various demons, and maintain their own peculiar war on Xmas.

Take Jodie McNeill's treatise Choose Carols more carefully, to be found under the Sydney Anglicans banner:

When my congregation prays from authorised liturgy, I know that the words we speak together are theologically trustworthy. As we pray the words of our Prayer Book, we are subjected to the discipline of God-centred prayers, rather than the I-and-me-isms of much of our contemporary ‘common’ supplications.

When I use prayers or liturgy from another source, I carefully scrutinise the theology. I keep a careful watch on what the words say about God’s sovereignty, and how it claims that God reveals himself. My heresy detector is on high alert when I introduce new prayers and creeds.

His heresy detector? Is that like some kind of metal detector? Can you buy it over the counter? Never mind, what kind of heresy be found with this heresy detector?

Yet, it’s so simple to let our guard down when we introduce new songs to our church’s repertoire. Just because a song has a great feel and a catchy tune often means that it gets a special place on our playlist. But this is dangerous.

Many of the lyrics of contemporary music are Trojan horses for bad theology. We let a nice song into our church without realising that it is teaching things about God that we wouldn’t want to say from the pulpit or the prayer desk.

Well that's terribly alarming. Can we have an example of heresy using a Trojan horse?

Take, for example, the beautiful carol, ‘Away in a manger’. It’s an old favourite for us all. It has a beautiful tune which kiddies and grannies adore. It vividly portrays the wonder of baby Jesus in his humble surroundings.

Yet, the Christ of ‘Away in a Manger’ sounds more like a stuffed doll than a human infant. Just because Jesus was divine didn’t mean that he didn’t cry like a baby. Have we unwillingly let a false picture of Jesus into our churches, one that fails to give accurate testimony to his true humanity?

The offending lyrics?

Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head

The stars in the bright sky
Looked down where He lay
The little Lord Jesus
Asleep on the hay

The cattle are lowing
The poor Baby wakes
But little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes

Amazing, heretical stuff. The notion that a baby might sleep through the night rather than lie awake crying and screaming all night in classic neurotic style! Revelatory.

Immediately I had a flash of blinding light implode in my brain as I realised the world's songs were full of deep, profoundly upsetting and disturbing heresies. What to make of this kind of theologically offensive heretical muck?

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all

Baby is drowsing, cozy and fair
Mother sits near, in her rocking chair
Forward and back, the cradle she swings
And though baby sleeps, he hears what she sings

From the high rooftops, down to the sea
No one's as dear, as baby to me
Wee little fingers, eyes wide and bright
Now sound asleep, until morning light.

But then McNeill was only pushing the severe line of the Bishop of Croydon, who exploded a while ago with the news that Traditional carols are 'nonsense', says bishop.

Away in a Manger cannot be sung “without embarrassment”, Once in Royal David’s City is “Victorian behaviour control”; and O Come, All Ye Faithful is misleading, said the Bishop of Croydon, the Rt Rev Nick Baines.

He blamed the much-loved carols for adding to confusion over the season’s real meaning and turning Jesus into a figure as fictitious as Father Christmas.

While others defended the traditional songs as “joyful” and “triumphant”, the bishop complained that the carols have contributed to the story of Christ’s birth being seen “as just one more story alongside the panto and fairy stories”.

You mean, just another superstition in what is now a very competitive field of superstitions? Well it is of course just another faith-based attack on the true spirit of Xmas, and an attempt to undermine the reality of Santa Claus. Nice work guys. Next you'll be telling me the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny don't exist:

By “romanticising the festival and commercialising our culture” Christmas has become “tame, fantastic and anaemic,” he said. “Bring back the reality. Perhaps we need to recover the nativity play as something to be done by adults for children and not the other way round.”

Bring back reality? Like the garden of eden, heaven and hell and talking snakes?

What a party pooper and a spoilsport, but the feral Baines gives great comfort to the Jensenist way of thinking, as McNeill waxes lyrical:

It appears that I’m not alone in asking this question. In the article, ‘Traditional carols are nonsense—says bishop’, Nick Baines says that “I can understand the little children being quite taken with the sort of baby of whom it can be said ‘no crying he makes’, but how can any adult sing this without embarrassment?” He goes on to add that “If we sing nonsense, is it any surprise that children grow into adults and throw out the tearless baby Jesus with Father Christmas and other fantasy figures?”

Throw out Father Xmas? Diss Santa Clause? All because a tearless baby Jesus spends a night in peaceful sleep?

Oh dear lord, I pray each day for the Martians to come down and save us, and yet they haven't arrived. Oh Martians, why have you forsaken me.

Well it's time to find the heresy in other songs and carols, as heresy surrounds us, and must be fearlessly stamped out, or stamped on.

Heresy detector plugged in, and working? Getting a nice pinging sound from the machine that goes ping? Time to get to work. Here's some lyrics for a trial run:

Dashing through the bush
In a rusty Holden Ute
Kicking up the dust
Esky in the boot
Kelpie by my side
Singing Christmas songs
It's summer time and I am in
My singlet, shorts & thongs

Chorus:

Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells

Jingle all the way

Christmas in Australia

On a scorching summer's day

Jingle bells, jingle bells

Christmas time is beaut

Oh what fun it is to ride

in a rusty Holden ute.

Engine's getting hot
Dodge the kangaroos
Swaggie climbs aboard
He is welcome too
All the family is there
Sitting by the pool
Christmas day, the Aussie way
By the barbecue!

Come the afternoon
Grandpa has a doze
The kids and uncle Bruce
Are swimming in their clothes
The time comes round to go
We take a family snap
Then pack the car and all shoot through
Before the washing up

Yes, it's obvious isn't.

The key heresy is the notion that the kids and uncle Bruce would go swimming in their clothes. The line should have read The kids and uncle Bruce are swimming in their budgie smugglers, just like Tony Abbott, but the lyricist abandoned truth and beauty and deep theological insights because the words couldn't be made to scan.

Phew, another heresy nailed.

Feeling light headed, must go and lie down. That Christmas cheer was jolly good stuff last night, so now, in the land of the superstitious, in the time of the silly season, for something completely different, a word from the machine that goes ping: