Author: Kelly Burke, Religious
Affairs Writer
Publication: The Sydney Morning
Herald
Date: June 18, 2002
URL: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/17/1023864406040.html
It's official. There are now more
Buddhists in Australia than Baptists.
The census figures show that we
have not become more godless in the past five years. If anything we have
become more spiritual or more confused, depending how the data is interpreted.
What is both undisputed and expected
is that all main Christian denominations are in continued decline, with
significant desertion from Anglican and Uniting Church denominations and,
to a lesser extent, Roman Catholicism.
Somewhat surprisingly, however,
is that fewer of us are prepared to label ourselves atheists or agnostics
than we were five years ago. In 2001 just over 15 per cent of the population
classified itself as having no religion, compared to 16.5 per cent in 1996.
The winners in the spirituality
stakes are the eastern religions, but with immigration factors accounting
for much of the increase, most notably with Islam and Hinduism.
There are now more Australian Hindus
(.50 per cent) than Australian Jews, (.44 per cent) at least in a religious
as opposed to cultural context.
Not even migration patterns, however,
can account for the growth in Buddhism. In 1996 just under 200,000 people
identified themselves as followers of the Buddha. That number has since
risen to 360,000, outnumbering Baptists by more almost 50,000.
The president of the Baptist Union
of Australia, the Rev Tim Costello, said yesterday that the figures were
not surprising.
"The Christian churches' failure
to deal with sexual abuse has enormously damaged their credibility, and
that's where I think Buddhism has gained the edge," he said.
"Buddhism is personal, not collective,
it doesn't have a heavy institutional framework - at least not in Australia
- so on the surface it's probably much more appealing today.
"And there has not been betrayal
of trust, which has happened with the clergy."
Roman Catholicism remains the largest
single religion with more than one in four Australians identifying themselves
as Catholic, lapsed or otherwise. And one in five cite Anglicanism as their
faith of choice.
Somewhat inexplicably, however,
is a noticeable growth in the number lumped into the "inadequately described"
category, which jumped from 54,000 in 1996 to more than 350,000 in 2001.
This does not include the undisclosed
number of saboteurs who chose to list Jedi Knight, despite pre-census warnings
of possible prosecution. The undisclosed number of Star Wars Jedi worshippers
was apparently included in the "other [non-Christian] religions" category.
So have many of us just become less
articulate in describing our religious status?
Possibly not, says Paul Molloy,
assistant director of the Bureau of Statistics' economic and population
statistics unit, who admits the jump in invalid entries is more than a
little perplexing.
But it is likely to have more to
do with the failure of the bureau's new computerised handwriting-recognition
system, he said, than any inability on the part of people to adequately
express their burgeoning spirituality.
