CHURCH leaders have used their annual Christmas messages to attack the "selfie" culture, call for the faithful to cheer up, and condemn politicians' response to the plight of asylum seekers.
The nation's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, says the church's primary challenge could be responding to those "thirsting for God", not atheism.
He warned Christians not to become "sourpusses".
"Christians cannot answer this challenge if we look like we have just come from a funeral," he said in his Christmas message on Tuesday.
The newly minted Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Glenn Davies, said Christmas was a good time to reflect on the rise of the selfie in Australian popular culture.
"At Christmas time we should remember that there is an ultimate self-image, the image of God, which far outweighs the supercilious picture of a face filling our screen," Dr Davies said on Christmas Eve.
"We are all stamped with the image of God and it is this image that makes us precious in his sight."
His counterpart in South Australia, Adelaide Archbishop Jeffrey Driver, said that in 2013 we'd think of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as refugees - and based on the federal government's recent record, modern-day Australia would turn them away.
"The story of Christmas and the holy family calls for something better than we are presently seeing, an extraordinarily expensive process that risks dehumanising even those lucky enough to get into it," he said.
The National Council of Churches in Australia took a similar theme with a call for social justice in 2014.
"Clearly Jesus as God with us knows the experience of those seeking asylum in another land," the council's general-secretary, Reverend Tara Curlewis, said.
"He knows the experience of the poor and the homeless. Jesus is God with us in all life's experiences.
"May we in Australia know and see God with us."
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