Below is the data (which hopefully will display ok on this blog) and some of my observations, not really addressing everything:
| 2021 | 2017 | 2006 | 1991 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Religion | % of parish | Raw Number (30,951) | % of parish | Raw Number (30,259) | % of parish | Raw Number (30,977) | % of parish | Raw Number (31,028) |
| No Religion | 40.38 | 12,498 | 31.47 | 9,521 | 20.17 | 6,248 | 13.79 | 4,279 |
| Catholic | 24.22 | 7,496 | 26.48 | 8,014 | 30.85 | 9,556 | 34.28 | 10,637 |
| Anglican | 10.53 | 3,260 | 13.48 | 4,080 | 18.47 | 5,722 | 21.39 | 6,636 |
| Not stated | 4.27 | 1,322 | 7.94 | 2,404 | 8.85 | 2,741 | 9.02 | 2,800 |
| Christian, nfd | 2.76 | 854 | 2.45 | 741 | 1.92 | 594 | - | - |
| Islam | 2.67 | 825 | 1.98 | 599 | 1.47 | 454 | 0.77 | 239 |
| Hinduism | 2.20 | 680 | 0.46 | 144 | ||||
| Uniting | 2.08 | 645 | 2.70 | 817 | 4.11 | 1,273 | 5.51 | 1,710 |
| Buddhism | 2.05 | 635 | 2.23 | 674 | 2.14 | 662 | 1.43 | 443 |
| Presbyterian | 1.74 | 540 | 2.21 | 669 | 2.85 | 882 | 4.15 | 1,287 |
| Baptist | 0.92 | 284 | 0.99 | 301 | 1.39 | 430 | 1.39 | 431 |
No Religion was the category that made some headlines when the data came out. They are now at 40% and clearly the leading "religion" of Australian society. This area is a little above the Australian average which was 38.9%. Whether this was always true and more people are telling the truth (which is my position), it does indicate a shift in thinking where people are being honest in where they get their world views and myths from. Not really all of these are your hardcore militant atheist either (very few people are). There are lots of studies that show those who have no religion still may believe in a higher power or pray or identify as non-religious but spiritual.
Anglicans, since 1991 they have halved in identification. Since I attend the Anglican church in this exact area* I know that we do not see 3,200 people in any given month. The number is more like 800-850. Again, there is this sentiment of what people's religion is, even if they actually don't attend. I do think my church should run a letter box drop targeting these 3,200 people in the area and offer to buy them a beer or a coffee to talk about why they identified as being Anglican and ask if they would think about coming along to the local Anglican church. I bet you could do some highly localised Facebook ad targeting too.
Not stated, I find it surprising that more people are opting into telling the government their religion. The number of people skipping over this optional question in the census has nearly halved since 1991. With this group we can't say they are secular or mystical or devout, we just can't tell. There is a strong Jewish community in Wollongong, but that isn't reflected in any of the census data, because with your Jewish history, why would you tell the government what religion you are?
Christian, nfd is a category that was introduced in 1996. When it first came out 1.3% (426 of 32,780) of my parish were lumped into this category collecting smaller churches or those that just put "Christian" or "Christianity". This number is growing, indicating less of an adherence to a denomination but rather an identification with Christianity. In 2006 I was one of the 594 who said "Christian" rather than Anglican (and I know a few people at my Anglican church who do that too).
Hinduism. I didn't collect data for Hinduism for my essay as they were less than half a per cent in 1991 (I wasn't bothered to sift through the other years' data to see their growth). Today they make up 2.2% of my area. This has to be one of the faster-growing religions in my area, and probably mostly due to immigration rather than their zealous evangelism. With immigration, going back to your home religion gives a sense of mitigating the culture shock you make feel. In the 1960's Australia felt that with Catholicism and other mainline denominations due to their European intake.
Presbyterian and Baptist. It saddens me to see that these are shrinking, maybe more so than Anglicans, because I feel fewer people may default to one of these, unlike Catholics or Anglicans, so the number in decline may be real loss.
* Parishes. The data here collected is for the parish my church is a part of, they are (population in brackets): Wanniassa (7,885), Monash (5,644), Isabella Plains (4,329), Bonython (3,839), Fadden (3,006), Gowrie (3,140), Oxley (1,703) and Macarthur (1,405).
In theory, Anglicans have carved up the whole world and there is a local church responsible for that area. Since the invention of the car, parish borders are really never strictly adhered to. When I did my essay in 2012 I worked out from our parish directory about 50% of the people who attended my church were outside the parish. I couldn't be bothered to work that out now, but my gut is that is probably still about the same percentage. Heck, I don't even live in one of these suburbs now. I also think (and this could be wrong), my church may not have Bonython anymore, but I didn't want to readjust all the previous data and still wanted to compare fairly equal data sets.
While the No Religion category is growing at about 40%, it should be noted that the census also collates all "Christians" in one big number (with a very broad net including Mormons and JWs) and in 2021 it came out to be 14,452 or 46.69% of the area. Now I don't believe for a second that 45% of people in the area actually attend a Christan church on a monthly basis. However, I do think that it means there is about half a chance that if you did some cold turkey evangelism or door-knocking you would encounter someone who isn't hostile to Christianity, but someone who may be a little partial to the idea. Even the other 4,000 people who aren't either No Religion or Christian I know from experience are open to talking about religion, even more comfortably than those who we would consider from the West.
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