Religion In Australia Essay

Decent Essays
The patterns of religious adherence in Australia have been changing since 1947. That change has detected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the census data shows significant changes in the religious affiliations. Fig1 shows that the Christians represent the biggest part of the Australian population; it also illustrates the percentage of religious affiliation in 2001-2006-2011 which has been steadily changing. Some of the changes are: the decline in the numbers of Christian believers from 87.3 % in 1947 to 61.7 % in 2011, the increasing of Non-Christians from 0.5 % in 1947 to 7.3 % in 2011, and the increasing in the total population of the others who don’t have religion or not stated from 11.2 % in 1947 to 30.8 % in 2011. Firstly, Fig2 shows the Australian Christian denominations in 2011 and by comparing it with the 1947 census; a big decline can be seen, in the Anglican denomination from 39.0 % in 1947 to 17.1 % in 2011 and also a decrease in the Presbyterian & Reformed where they represented 9.8 % of the …show more content…
The Catholics were increasing regularly from 20.9% in 1947 to 27% in 1996 then started to drop and reached 25.3 % in 2011. The 2011 census stated that the Orthodox denomination shows a good increase in numbers with population of 2.6 % while it was 0.2 % in 1947. In addition, the Methodists dropped by 8.1 %, from 1947 until 1981, then their church united with other churches to form the Uniting church, which first appears in the 1981 census with 4.9 % and progressively increased to 5.7 % in 2011. Secondly, the immigration from South-East Asia, the Middle East and Pacific nations caused an increase in the numbers of Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus in

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