The 2011 Census data for Australia, showing changes in Australia’s population and diversity has been released. The Census revealed a large increase in the numbers of non-Christian religious adherents and also, in the number of those reporting “No Religion”.
The ABC Religion and Ethics report recently explored what the 2011 Census of Australia was likely to reveal about religion in Australia. These explorations accurately predicted a big jump in the numbers of people identifying as Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. In fact the number of Hindus almost doubled. But overall what did the census results reveal about faith in Australia generally? Andrew West of the BAC’s Religion and Ethics Report put that question to Dr Gary Bouma, Emeritus professor of sociology at Monash University in Melbourne. Dr Gary Bouma is also an internationally recognised expert on religious diversity and he is also an Anglican priest.
Dr Gary Bouma commented on the rise in the percentage of those declaring no religion. It rose by 29% to become 22.3% of the population. However, this is balanced by some very interesting rises in groups who take their religion very seriously. The conversation went on to explore how religion is more intensely felt or practised and how that was evidenced in this census.
Gary Bouma commented that there are rising numbers in groups of people who are more likely to be serious about their religion. “Religion’s been a low temperature affair in Australia for a long time and so those who become no religion don’t feel like they’ve moved much perhaps. But those who are left in churches and those who are in new emerging religious communities are very much more likely to take their religion more seriously”.
The religion question in the Census is an optional question; it does not have to be answered. Prof. Gary Bouma commented, “We’ve had about a 10% non-response rate to the question but that fell to 8.6% this time. And that means more Australians are responding to this question even if the identity or the box you tick is “no religion” That means that religious identity is more interesting.
Exploring the replies to the no-religion question exposed a number of interesting assumptions. Gary Bouma points out that only 31,000 persons responded as “Atheist”; that is a very modest number when compared to the 4,797,000 persons who responded “No religion” to the Census question. What was this indicating about the respondents? Gary Bouma has some very interesting observations about this topic.
You can listen to this interview on the ABC Religion and Ethics website. A transcript of the interview is also available.
There is an extended interview with Gary Bouma on the Religion and Ethics Website.
