One in ten Australians who ticked the ‘no religion’ box in the 2016 census reported they were Christian in the 2021 census.
That’s the surprising finding of a report due to be released in full this week by research company McCrindle.
It’s titled “An Undercurrent of Faith: Australia’s Renewed Relationship with Christianity.”
It highlights three key findings:
- Despite the decline in Christian affiliation, many Australians are turning to Christianity in large numbers.
- The people embracing Christianity are not always who you’d expect.
- The decline in Christian identification is driven more by dissatisfaction with its practice than a loss of belief.
The report adds a new dimension to discussion on the state of Christianity in Australia which after every census focuses on the steady decline in believers.
It has fallen from two-thirds to less than half the population in the past 20 years.
WHAT THE RESEARCHERS DISCOVERED BURIED IN THE CENSUS DATA
McCrindle’s Director of Strategy Grant Dusting explained to Sydney Anglicans: “it’s a very nuanced topic, and there’s a lot more going on.”
“We have used a little known data set that’s produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics called the Australian Census Longitudinal Data Set,” he revealed.
“That means people’s responses to the religion question would also be tracked over time.”
“One of our findings was that within the overall decline in Christian affiliation in the last census in 2021, over 784,000 of Australians who, in the 2016 census, said :‘I have no Religion,’ said ‘I’m a Christian’ five years later.”
“That’s a lot of people, so we wanted to understand who are those people and what is happening.”
THE SURPRISING DEMOGRAPHIC RETURNING TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
Mr Dusting explained that after a deep dive into the statistics, researchers found nearly 200,000 older Australians aged over 55 were coming to Christianity, either for the first time or coming back to Christianity.
“That was a stand out,” he declared.
McCrindle has been tracking faith and belief since 2011 in what its researchers call a faith barometer.
“Although the headline figure in the census is that there are fewer people identifying as Christian, the proportion of Australians who say they’re either Christian or warm towards Christianity has actually remained steady,” Grant Dusting discovered.
“Around two-thirds of Australians say that they either consider themselves Christian or are warm towards Christianity.”
“So that gives us a bit more nuance to the discussion about how Australians feel towards, and their relationship with, Christianity.
WHAT CAN BE LEARNT FROM THESE FINDINGS?
The research company hopes that by clarifying the issues and statistics, Christian leaders as well as ordinary ‘rank-and-file’ believers will see the opportunities.
“We asked people who’ve moved away from Christianity, what were the reasons that you moved away?” Mr Dusting explained.
“For a lot of people, it’s less about their beliefs changing and more a dissatisfaction with how they’ve seen Christianity practiced.”
Mr Dusting sees it as an opportunity for church leaders and committed Christians to embrace those turning to, or returning to, the faith.
There will be a webinar to explain the report and results on Thursday 20th April at 11am AEST. Registration is free and entitles participants to a copy of the report as well as access to a recording of the webinar to watch later. Registration link.
