Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia, by Tom Frame; UNSW Press, 2009, 337 pages, $34.95.

Australia and religion: to some minds these two terms represent polar contradictions; yet there have been many who would deny their incompatibility. For some Australians, to discuss religion is socially impious, while to others any discourse on that subject should avoid the casual, the slight, while assuming a measure of deep solemnity or grave reverence. Religion carries with it both an impetus to sceptical denial and a tenacious insistence on some higher truth, depending on the individual to whom its claims are presented. In Australia, religion has a definite ambivalence, both within single minds and in defined communities.

Tom Frame’s book represents its author’s exploration of the status of religious belief in Australia, in both historical and contemporary contexts. It is concerned with post-1788 Australia, wherein imported religious precepts, the worldviews of the representatives of the cultures from which those outlooks originated, have been transplanted to a foreign soil. He is interested in the insights and oppositions that define the nature of the religious thoughtscape that he and we, his contemporaries, inhabit.