ABC - The Making of Modern Australia 4 of 4 (2009)

Information
The Making of Modern Australia

Launched in March 2009, The Making of Modern Australia is a cross-platform people's history of postwar Australia. What began as an interactive website is now also a major four-part TV documentary series on ABC TV and a book of the same name, written by series narrator William McInnes.

Under the slogan Your Story; Our History, the Making of Modern Australia website allows Australians to upload text, images and home movies. Users have already laid the foundations of a rich scrapbook of the nation's history within living memory.

The TV series and book draw on stories gathered online. As more and more Australians add their stories, the Making of Modern Australia becomes a richer and more entertaining resource. Stories are catalogued by geography, time and subject.

An education portal presented by ABC and Education Services Australia has also been incorporated into the website. This interactive resource engages students and teachers to learn online and contribute themselves to our living history.


Part 4: The Australian Religion
Episode 4 - The Australian Soul
Broadcast: Thursday 19 Aug, 2010

The Church once dominated the Australian landscape.

Of all the great shifts in Australian life since World War II, perhaps religion has travelled farthest. Back in the 1940s and 50s Australians dutifully attended church and Sunday school. Christianity had a firm grip on the Australian soul. But from the late sixties, bad boys and girls were finding spiritual fulfilment elsewhere and the Churches struggled to keep up.

Nowadays only about 8% of Australians go to church every Sunday and over 18% say they have no religion. So are we a nation of lost souls?

Combining astonishing historical archive film and the revealing personal stories and photographs from people, both inside and outside the church, this episode explores the struggle for the Australian soul since the end of World War Two.

Encapsulating the era: an Irish catholic family experiences sectarianism first hand in the 1950s; a nun is touched by romance during the flower power of the 1960s; a priest is radicalised by the Vietnam war in the 1970s; a good catholic girl closes the door on organised religion when she is scorned for an extra marital affair; an Aboriginal woman tries to maintain the ties to traditional beliefs and two protestant boys both at the Billy Graham Crusades in the 1950s embark on entirely different future paths.

Each story illuminates the dramatic moments in the changing nature of the Australian spiritual landscape.

This Episode has captions.