Australia’s religious landscape has
changed dramatically since 1945. The most significant changes, which
contributed to the currant religious groups, are immigration, denomination
switching, and new age religions. Today I will talk about the present religious
landscape in Australia since 1945, through the group of Christian adherence and
no religion group.
The number of
Christian adherence’s percentage has been decreased from 1945 to 2006. There
are a number of reasons for this. Following World War II many Europeans from
countries with a catholic tradition such as Italy, Germany, and Netherlands
immigrated to Australia. Also the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 led to a big
increase of the refugee migrants in Australia. All these led to an increase in
the number of Catholics; because of immigration changed, catholic became the
largest and the most multicultural denomination in Australia. By comparing the
1947’s census to 2006’s census we can see an increase in the number of
Catholics, and a decrease in the percentages of Anglicans. Due to immigration,
Non-Christian adherences are steadily increased largely. Islam and Buddhism
have rapid growth from 1976 to 2006. From the census data we can see that in
1947 Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam were not on the census because their numbers
are too few to be shown, but in 1986 Buddhism became the largest Non-Christian
adherence in Australia and in reference of ABS in 2006 Buddhists comprised 2.1%
of the Australian population. Besides immigration there’s another main reason
which is denominational switching. Denominational switching is the phenomenon
of people switching from one denomination to another. There are many kinds of
reasons for why people were changing denominations, for example, people dislike
some of the rules of Catholics; there’s a better choice of church where the
average of congregations are younger, their music are modern and the messages
are clear. In reference of the census, from 1947 to 2006 there’s a big decline
of the proportion of Christians, it went down by 24.0%, there’s also an
increase in the category of No religion, and the number went up from o.3% to
18.67%. So this led to a big change in No Religion group as well.
Within no religion
group there’s a big increase between 1961 and 1971; after 1971 the percentage
of no religion group has been rising steadily. Also the not stated group has
grown up from 10.9% in 1947 to 11.20% in 2006. There’s a big difference between
“no religion” and “not stated”. No religion means the person who does not
believe in a religion tradition, he does not associate with religion. However
not stated means that a person who choose to not give his religion, it doesn’t
mean that he has no religion. The total number of these two groups has grown up
a lot since 1947. Some of the reasons for the growth of these groups are really
simple, it could be the impact of immigration changed, more and more people
who’s coming into Australia does not have religion; it could be people just
didn’t really take it seriously, or it could be some people choose to believe
in themselves instead of believe in God.
In conclusion, on
the latest census which is the 2006 census, we can see that the Christian
adherence is the largest group in Australia, it has the total of 63.89%; the
non-christian group has 5.57% in total percentage; and there are 29.87% people
who did not have religion or not stated. There are multiple reasons for the
changes in Australia’s religious landscape. Immigration, denomination switching
and new age religions has really made a big difference and helped in reshaped
Australia’s religious landscape.
Reference
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