How migrant and overseas Christians are helping keep Australian churches alive

An Anglican Church bishop in Queensland's north says that his 11 Pacific Islander ministers, serving the region's parishes, is saving those parishes from collapse.

"Together they make up half of my full-time workforce in the diocese," Bishop Keith Joseph said.

Census data shows the number of Australians who identify as Christian has halved from 86 per cent in 1971 to 44 per cent in 2021.

But the decrease has been tempered by Christian migrants from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific.

Bishop Joseph said priests and brothers have been recruited from the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu to fill service gaps in regional towns, Aboriginal communities and the Torres Strait.

"All that would go if we didn't have them," he said.

The north Queensland diocese is also in financial trouble because of the compensation owed to victims of historic abuse.

Keeping the parishes going also involves vital volunteer work including running op-shops, providing chaplaincy to aged care homes and hospitals, and pastoral care to seasonal workers.

"You're looking at each parish providing between $200,000 to a million dollars of volunteer labour into their communities each year," Bishop Joseph said.

The Pasifika priests are so valued by the community that a migration pathway was set up between the diocese, the Church of Melanesia and the Department of Home Affairs, the bishop said.

One priest recruited from the Solomon Islands under the agreement is Reverend Jeffrey Akoai who serves St Paul's Anglican Church at Proserpine in the Whitsundays.

Besides regular masses he also leads a monthly Melanesian service for the region's many seasonal workers, helping to maintain social cohesion.

On Saturdays they also run a bible study for the workers which helps keep them from spending time at bars and instead saving money for their families back home.

"It's like we're creating a home, a safe space away from home, that they are free to come and share whatever challenges they are going through," Reverend Akoai said.

Christianity mixed with Indigenous beliefs

Reverend Dr Seforosa Carroll, a theologian at Charles Sturt University, said more than 90 per cent of the population in the Pacific was Christian, making religion inseparable from culture.

"To not have the church, to not have spirituality, is to lose your soul," she said.

Christianity was tied to colonisation because becoming Christian often required becoming "civilised", which equated to being "Westernised", she said.

"In some cases the Christian mission and colonisation accompanied each other, and the missionary was the chief promoter of civilisation," Dr Carroll said.

Theological anthropologist at the University of Divinity's Whitley College, Reverend Dr Titus Olorunnisola, said one reason why Christianity remained popular outside the West was because of the prevalence of existential threats like poverty and political unrest.

Another reason why Christianity was strongly embedded in some Pacific and African cultures was because people still held Indigenous beliefs of evil spirits and demons.

"The way to be spiritually protected for most people was to be a practising believer," Dr Olorunnisola said.

Huge parish demographic changes

It is an ironic pattern playing out across regional Australia — where religious leaders are now recruited from countries that were once converted by Christian missionaries from the West.

When Monsignor Glynn Murphy was ordained in 1983 he remembered there being about 100 active priests across 52 parishes in the Ballarat Catholic Diocese in western Victoria.

Since then, the diocese has amalgamated its parishes so just 23 remain with about 30 priests including those from the Philippines, Vietnam and India.

Monsignor Murphy leads the Wimmera-Mallee parish and has observed congregations of migrant groups change.

Growing up in Swan Hill he saw Australians and then Italian, Dutch and Chinese families flock to mass on Sunday mornings.

He said nowadays migrants were mostly young families from the Philippines and India who came to regional Victoria to fulfil labour shortages in education, aged care and healthcare.

"They tend to have their faith and spiritual life very much to the fore … and you see that reflected in their parish attendance and presence," Monsignor Murphy said.

Assimilating through the church

One of Monsignor Murphy's parishioners is early childhood educator May Falcatan-Rosello.

She remembered hearing the Horsham church congregation sing The Lord's Prayer, a universal Christian prayer, in Tagalog after she introduced it during a mass.

Tagalog is one of the main languages in the Philippines.

Another Filipino parishioner cried because she felt like she was transported back home, she said.

Ms Falcatan-Rosello and her family are part of the Wimmera Filipino-Australian Club and attend mass every Sunday at St Michael and John's Catholic Church.

Besides helping with the choir where she has introduced some Filipino hymns, she also runs morning tea and is the only reader of mass of a non-Anglo background.

"I know I have an accent, but they still roster me for it," she said.

After living in Toowoomba, Melbourne and Bendigo, Ms Falcatan-Rosello settled in Horsham because of the Catholic church and "robust Filipino community".

In 30 years the number of Filipino-born Catholics in Australia has trebled — from less than 62,000 in 1991 to 216,000 in 2021.

It makes the Philippines the top-ranked birthplace for Australia's overseas-born Catholics.

Nearly 80 per cent of the Philippines' population identify as Catholic, which stems from Spanish colonisation that spanned more than 300 years.

Ms Falcatan-Rosello said finding a church where she could practise her faith was a consideration when choosing where to migrate to because churches provided a "sense of belonging".

Dr Olorunnisola said besides being part of one's identity, the church served as a "nest" that migrants could "settle into" to help them understand Australia and its colloquialisms.

"There are so many cultural assumptions that you might be coming with when you're coming from overseas," he said.

A different kind of worship

Compared to Australia, the way Christianity is practised overseas was more spiritual and overt, Dr Olorunnisola said.

People lifted their hands and sometimes each other up, and sharing spiritual experiences with others outside mass was more common.

Worship in these cultures tend to be more passionate, exuberant, and deeply emotional experiences than in Australian church culture.

"Someone who is from a Western background within the same churches may feel 'yeah, I think the things that the pastor spoke about today were reasonable'.

"But for someone who has come from Asia … their perception of the service was 'oh, I just felt within me that God was touching people'. So you can see the dynamics."

As churches became more multicultural, Dr Olorunnisola felt the "spiritual temperature" and vibrancy was rising as people were more exposed to, and accepting, of other expressions of worship.

Back in north Queensland, Reverend Akoai is grateful for the parish and its locals who have welcomed their Melanesian expression of faith and musicality.