Sydney, Australia
The results of the 2021 census were released in late June. One of the most discussed findings was a rise in the number of Australians who declared themselves as belonging to the category “no religion”, along with a fall in those responding as “Christian”.
According to the census results, Christian identification declined from 52 per cent in 2016 to 44 per cent in 2021. This drop is largely made up of declines in those who identify as Catholic (three per cent) and those who nominated ‘Anglican’ as their religion (three per cent).
The number of Australians who said they had “no religion” rose to 38.9 per cent (from 30.1 per cent in 2016). This makes them the second-largest ‘religious’ group after Christians.
Commuters in Sydney. PICTURE: burroblando/iStockphoto.
Dr Ruth Powell, director at NCLS Research which runs the National Church Life Survey, said in a statement that the increase in “no religion” was part of a growing trend, but not the entire story.
“We know that people who don’t identify as belonging to a particular religious group can still have spiritual or religious lives,” Powell said. “When you choose a religious affiliation in the national Census, it is a statement of belonging or identity. When Australians choose ‘no religion’ it tells us about a group for whom it is not an important part of their personal, social or cultural identity”.
According to Powell, the number of Australians in the ‘no religion’ category has increased since the option was first introduced in 1971, but this has to be contextualised as a more complex shift in cultural identification, rather than a drop in belief itself.
“Many young Australians do not claim to affiliate with a particular religion as it is not part of their social or cultural identity,” Powell said. “But it does not mean that they are hostile or closed to spiritual life. The evidence from our detailed research shows an openness to spirituality, including the Christian faith – perhaps more than people would expect.”
Powell pointed to data from the NCLS’s Australian Community Survey that found that a majority of Australians, 55 per cent, believed in a God or higher power.
In a column for the Sydney Morning Herald, Michael Jensen, rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church at Darling Point in Sydney, similarly opined that the results reflected a broader shift in Australia’s cultural identity, rather than a drop in belief per se.
“It is no longer the case that “to be Christian is to be moral”, for many Australians,” Jensen wrote.“Not that many people dispute the teachings of Jesus (who remains much admired), but the behaviour of the institutional church, especially over child sexual abuse, has meant that our moral authority has waned.”
“It is well known that this loss of trust has impacted institutions of all kinds, from political parties to newspapers to banks to sporting clubs to trade unions. We are simply less inclined to join these groups and less likely to go along with them. We are a more individualistic society (and more lonely with it).”
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In a piece for The Conversation, legal academic Renae Barker said the results indicated that Australia is becoming more religiously diverse. This, she said, meant that
“It is tempting to argue that, given the number of Australians who don’t have a religion, religious belief should give way to the secular,” Barker wrote.
“However, it is important to remember that a large portion of the population still identify with a religion.”
“It is also important to note that Australia’s religious diversity is increasing.”
Barker, who is also the Advocate for the Anglican Diocese of Bunbury, said that this increased diversity means, “It is therefore more important than ever to have a robust and respectful debate about freedom of religion and the place of religion in secular Australia.”
The 2021 Census also found more Australians are people born overseas than was the case previously and that the age category often referred to as ‘Generation Y’ or ‘Millennials’ has for the first time outnumbered the number of people in the ‘Baby Boomer’ category.
