The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australia Inc (SPCKA) recently held the Australian Christian Literature Awards. This is one of the ways SPCKA celebrates and encourages Australian Christian writing. One of the awards, the Australian Christian Book of the Year Award, “recognises a work written by an Australian author and published by an Australian publisher.”

Michael Collie, the Awards Coordinator of Australian Christian Literature Society (An activity of  SPCKA), issued the following Press Release (12 August) regarding the 2010 Australian Christian Book of the Year,

The 2010 Australian Christian Literature Awards were announced and presented on 10 August at a gathering of writers, publishers and readers in Melbourne. Losing My Religion (UNSW Press), Tom Frame’s masterful survey of changing religious belief, identity and behaviour in Australia, is the 2010 Australian Christian Book of the Year…The judges’ comments are included in the 2010 Australian Christian Literature Awards Souvenir.

The judges write that Losing My Religion,

…traces the evolution of religion and irreligion in Australia from European settlement to the current day, marshalling statistical and documentary evidence to describe the changes in religious belief, belonging and behaviour. He interacts intelligently and critically with contemporary proponents of unbelief, including Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Phillip Adams…Frame writes with unflinching precision and honesty, listening patiently and carefully to the voices of Australian unbelief, before concluding the book with a moving personal apologia for his own Christian faith. Losing my Religion is a masterful contribution to the current debate, written in a manner that will facilitate conversation between Australian Christians and a society increasingly disengaged from Christian ideas and institutions. 

Losing My Religion: Unbelief In Australia by Tom Frame is available from Koorong.