Religions

Christianity is the dominant religion in Australia in the 21st century with 64% of the demographics. However, not more than a quarter of this population attend the church. Around 18 % of the population of Australia claims to have no religion while the rest of the population is diversified into a growing number of Islamic and Buddhist religions. This means the main religions that Australians believe in are Christianity, Islam and Buddhist.

Law

The Australian Constitution does not allow the commonwealth to establish their own church or interfere with the freedom of the existing church in the nation. However, the states are free to interfere and create their own church according to the constitution of the individual state. But no state in Asutralia has created a church or interfered with any religion yet. Compared with the United States of America, the religion in Australia, in relation with the commonwealth, is more free. The government of Australia works with religious groups to support education, health, and many more services.

No religion

In each census made in Australia, there were voluntary questions being asked. The instructions of each questions are properly stated in the census since 1933. However, with the “if no religion, write none” instruction introduced in 1971, more people answered none. This part of the demographics increased rapidly since then. From 1971 until 2006, there was an increase of 19% in the people who answered “no religion.”

ABS

The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006 Census has its own aim towards the development and progress of the nation. The data on religion census is done to plan for the educational facilities, care for the aged, social services from religious organizations, location of churches, assigning doctors and chaplains, and many more demographics related to sociological researches.

2006 religious census

according to the 2006 census of the ABS 64% of the Australians are Christians, 26% are Roman Catholics, 9% are non-Christians, while 18% answered “no Religion.”12% of the population in Australia did not answer the census. The active participation in churches from Australians are very low. This is the same with most western countries. Only 7.5% of the population in Australia or 1.5 million are active in their own designated churches.

Hinduism

The ABS census for religion in 2001 to 2006 shows that the fastest growing religion in Australia is Hinduism. There is a 55.1 percent growth in the population of the Hindu religion in Australia according to the census done by ABS back in 2001 to 2006. Christianity shows a negative growth in their population. The followers of the Christian faith is declining 0.6 percent. Non-religion was the biggest population increase. The increase reached 800,563 people. Islam and Buddhist religions are also growing.