The Age has an interesting opinion piece today by Jonathan Freedland on the book The Da Vinci Code. The book is a fictional thriller that proposes an alternative view to Christs life from that provided by The Bible.

The central tenet of the piece is that the church fails because, in western society, it has lost a crucial ingredient that humans crave, namely a sense of magic. There is a flood of people back to pagan spirituality, books and films like the Harry Potter series are breaking all records and todays pragmatic church is shrivelling.

It is easy to mistake what people say they want for what, at a primal level, they need. Despite what we may think our world is no less dangerous, no more predictable than was the world of our distant ancestors. The dangers are, in fact, not that much different, forces of nature beyond our control fundamentally affect our lives, other tribes (we now call them nations) threaten our existance, we still must make sense of what our life means. For many people, a practical logical approach to religion does not have enough mystery and, as such, is just not satisfying.

One only has to visit a Christian Church in Mexico or a Hindu Temple in India or a Buddhist Temple in Nepal to witness mysticsim in action. They are magical places redolent with spirituality. One does not have to believe in the particular religion being practiced in these places to feel their potency. Compare this to a visit to an Australian Christian Church, austere, stylised, sterile.

Of course if you tried to replicate one of these churches/temples in Australia it would not work because they are integrated in a gestalt-like fashion with their community. They would be out of place here. It may be impossible for an Australian Christian Church to take the essence of these more mystical institutions and recreate it in an Australian context but, if the church in Australia is to thrive, it must try.