This report is from a year ago (and the data go up to only 2011), but I thought I’d put it up anyway, because, although secularism is on the rise in nearly ever Western nation, but it’s particularly pronounced in Australia. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports, in a census of what looks to be nearly everyone in Oz, that every index of religiosity is declining—and sharply. The data appear to be part of a general Australian census, in which people are asked to tick a box describing their religious affiliation.
The census gave people options of reporting which faith they adhered to, and here’s the statistics for those reporting “no religion”. The proportion of Australians choosing that category has increased from 0.4% in 1911 to 22% in 2011. The increase was particularly striking in the decade between 1961 and 1971, and perhaps some Aussie readers can explain that:
Here are the data for the last forty years: an increase from about 7% to 22%.
Here are the data for the “no religion” reporters broken down by any information they added to explain their choice. As the survey says:
Most people who reported no religion selected the ‘No religion’ box on the Census form (98%), however some provided additional information about their views, including the belief that a god or gods do not exist (Atheism), or cannot be proven to exist (Agnosticism). Other responses included Humanism, which rejects religious beliefs and centres on humans and their values, capacities, and worth; and Rationalism, which states that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or an emotional response.
It’s not clear what this means except for the heartening result that those self-described as “atheists” were by far the most common: twice as commong as “agnostics.” (Look at the numbers corresponding to those views, implying that the number of people surveyed in total (4,796,791/0.22) was nearly 22 million!:
In the last decade, every “established” religion has declined in proportional membership except for “non-Christian religions” (are those Muslims?) and “no religion,” as we’ve seen above:
As expected, older people are likely to have a definite religious affiliation, almost certainly because they’re clinging to the faith of their youth, a time when more people had a formal affiliation. For those over 25 years old, we see the familiar pattern that women are more religious than men, a result substantiated for other parts of the West. That is at least one explanation for why “movement atheism” is more weighted with males than females.
The proportion of those reporting no religion—and remember, these could be people who still believe in God but don’t see themselves as part of a church, or people who are “spiritual but no religion”—goes up as education goes up, another familiar pattern:
Finally, two more bits of information from the survey. The figure below shows the proportion of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher that report having “no religion”, divided up by the field of study defined by their highest degree. I was surprised to see “creative arts” at the top, where I expected “natural and physical sciences” to be. But it’s no surprise to see “health” and “education” at the bottom, where (as I recall) they also rank in the US. I have no psychological explanation for the bottom-rankers, though:
One possibility is that the proportion of people reporting “no religion” simply reflects a greater willingness of people to respond positively now, and that the a-religionists have always been about the same. Even if that were true it would reflect a changing climate in Australia about the willingness to “go public” about the issue, even in a survey, but the data below show it’s unlikely. For example, only about 2-3% of people surveyed refused to respond to the question about religious affiliation between 1901 and 1921, which means that 97-98% of people answered. And yet now 22% of Aussies do answer with “no religion”. That implies either a sea change in religiosity, or that Aussies of the early 20th century were lying on the survey.
The survey gives a funny comment on how people answered in the earlier censuses:
Others choose to answer in such a way that the question is not really answered (like an informal vote in an election). A hundred years ago, as now, there were responses to the question on religion that may or may not have been intended to be taken seriously, and as now, they were classified as ‘not defined’. With such responses as ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘infidel’, ‘single taxer’, ‘calathumpian’, ‘idolater’ and ‘wowser’, were these people the Jedis of 1911? There was even one person who put their religion as ‘scientist’, and may have seen (with some satisfaction?) their single response published in the list of religions.
h/t: John S.
It is very good that things are looking up in Australia, however it seems we will have to look to the young people to pull us out of this faith business. Would hope to see more older people coming to their senses.
It’s a shame our Prime Minister can’t lose his faith. Seriously, a guy with imaginary friends is making big decisions for me and my country?!
But who voted for him? The older people on the right side of the age curve? Or younger people unaware of his stance on these matters?
There is no way to know, because when you ask you can’t find anyone who voted for him! It’s a mystery.
Yeah I hear ya. My PM is all religious and says stupid things like “God bless Canada”. Canadians see this as amusing, infuriating & just weird. We’re used to Americans saying “God bless America” but “God bless Canada” is just unCanadian.
The Canadian “no religion” stats are similar to the Aussie ones.
Of course, your PM and my PM are buddies and your PM told my PM that he looked to him as a good conservative leader – you have my condolences.
Just to show off, NZ has had atheist PMs continuously since 1999.
The first of these, Helen Clark, is now head of the UNDP, and is one of those strongly tipped to be next UN Secretary General.
I’m jealous, but…
As a separate contest, I believe our first openly atheist PM (Gough Whitlam) was elected in 1972. Can you go earlier?
NZ also has excellent “No religion” figures.
In the 2013 census, 37.6% had no religion.
They took a big jump when the census started offering “No religion” as an option. Until then (when everyone had to fill in their own religion), atheists, agnostics, freethinkiners rationalists, humanists and others were divided, and also a lot of people would have reflexively put “Anglican” just because that was what they’d been brought up in. Seeing their own (lack of) religion as a legitimate option with a box to check freed up their minds to choose it.
Abbott has been very sure not to publicly express his faith except for the usual ‘prayers & thoughts’ type statements … oh … and the horrendous non-secular chaplaincy schools program, which is a nightmare (and I inadvertently voted for). Previous PM, Rudd, made sure he was always door-stopped coming out of church on Sundays. Cabinets of both sides of politics here heavy with Cat-o-licks.
Religion questions have always been included in the Australian census, however, for the first time “in 1971, the instruction ‘if no religion, write none’ was introduced in the Australian census.” http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Australia#Post_1970
The census is national in Australia, and compulsory, with large numbers of people also employed to help people complete it who have difficulty.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_in_Australia
Hope that helps 🙂
Those kind helpers are not Jesuits, I presume?
Also 1971 was the first year that all Australians were asked. Prior to that year Aborigines or those with mostly Aborigine ancestry were not counted.
Note also that the numbers in some of the charts do not include those who refused to answer the question (there is no legal obligation and that info has also been explicitly given since 1931 [hence the leap then]). Looking at the combined chart, a big change happened in the 1970s. One must also consider the ‘White Australia’ policies that lasted until the 1970s that restricted immigration (today about 1 in 4 Australians was not born in Australia, in the US it is about 13%).
There was a big exodus from the Catholic Church too in Australia in the 1960s when the Church reaffirmed its opposition to contraception.
It seems particularly clear from the last chart that most of the “nones” in 1971 were people who chose not to reply in 1961, when “none” was not an explicit option.
Did they actually poll children ages 2-10, or did they ask the parents? At any rate, no wonder religiosity dips as they become teenagers (where they start to make their own choices).
I predict that the ‘top’ between ages 20-25 is likely to shift to the right over the coming years, possibly even increase a bit. This would gradually push the average percentage of Nones to over 30%.
There are two parts to the young kid poll. First, it’s disgusting that think that children are being distilled with prejudice and scientific ignorance. Second, it is creepy to think that someone actually polled the kid (or the kid’s parent) not thinking that this was clearly child abuse. Interesting data, nonetheless.
I agree about the ‘top’ peak moving to the right. Like Jefferson’s wall…build that wall up and forward.
I can imagine that with the suspicion of government in the US that a five-yearly universal census is unimaginable, but they’re normal for many of us. The data is used to make policy decisions by government, such as where to build schools, hospitals and other infrastructure structure, and is also useful to businesses. There is a long history of being able to trust that the data remains confidential.
In NZ when it’s published, there are wee tweaks done to make sure no one can be identified too e.g. the occupation data always shows three prime ministers and three governors general, although there’s only ever one of each.
So, yes, parents answer the religion question for young children. Children answer for themselves as soon as they’re able. Those who help others to answer are specially trained to make sure it’s the view of the respondent, which means unlike many private surveys, various disabled groups are properly surveyed.
In NZ, our atheist numbers are even higher than Australia, and rising, according to census results.
One of the write-in religions people put in here is Bush Baptist. Use your imagination.
Yes, I was going to point out that NZ is very atheistic. I think it’s those red stars in your flag! 😉
I think it’s the Toothbrush Fence: nothing so absurdly beautiful could exist in a god-created world.
Not the giant carrot at Ohakune then?
“Toothbrush Fence”??
OK, this had better be good.
Hmmm. Weird. Rather what you’d expect from the country that brought us the “Attack of the Cannibal Jumbucks“, but definitely weird.
Never heard of the toothbrush fence. The bra fence at Cardrona, however, was justly famous. Unfortunately some puritan wowsers on the local council vandalised it recently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardrona_Bra_Fence
Way to go, Godzone. Oh, wait…
Yes, bit ironic isn’t it? And our national anthem, ‘God Defend New Zealand’. And parliament opens each sitting day with a prayer. And the English Queen is nominally still our head of state.
Nothing in our history has condemned women more than religion. It is important to think of reasons why there are fewer woman atheists than men atheists.
I have seen American couples where the wife is religious, but the husband is not. I am not sure what all of the reasons could be that sustain the beliefs that woman must hold in these situations, but the impediments for sustaining that belief are growing. If the main reason is to raise children in a purportedly ‘moral’ environment it is a good thing that society has shown there are significantly better alternatives than religion.
I often ponder why the females are less atheistic. Part of me wonders if they’ve been raised to get along with people and proclaiming you are atheist will offend someone, where saying you belong to whatever religion is acceptable.
I wish some social scientist would study this phenomenon.
I think your idea about girls being raised to get along has some merit, especially in older generations. They would not want to rock the boat, both familial and societal.
I think women just don’t have time to think about it often. Also, in the past, women were always less educated than men. In NZ at least, stats show that younger women are on average better educated than their contemporaries now, so it’s likely to change.
There’s also the possibility it is linked to the “hypersensitive agency detection” hypothesis for the origin of religions. Women are less likely to be autistic, and hence (perhaps) for that reason more likely to be religious.
I also wonder why women stay in the church, given the essential mysogny of the middle-eastern monotheistic religions. How do women maintain a healthy self-image when their religion says women are the source of all evil in the world, and that because of that they need to submit to men and be controled by men? How in the world can these women pass that idea along to their daughters?
I think it must require something more than being brought up to be polite. Although I do have some sympathy with the argument that women find a useful support network in the church. It would be interesting to know what the research says about this — I’m sure there have been studies.
The most misogynistic religion is Islam, closely followed by Catholicism. The Prophet Mohammed who received the word of God was illiterate so he repeated the words to his wife Khadija who wrote them down, though why she wrote such cruel words is beyond belief. See Sura 4:34 and many others
It has been shown that religion is more popular amongst the least economically secure, and women are less economically secure than men, so it makes sense that they are more religious.
Of course, this is all Ken Ham’s fault. He should never have left Australia, now look what happens!
Maybe if you ask him kindly, he’ll return 🙂
Paging Mr Ham, paging Mr Ham!!
Grab your passport and get your bag packed…your country needs you!!
I think you’re looking at it backwards. This is why he split.
Yes, it’s also why Ray Comfort left NZ. They’re jokes in their own country, and unable to get any media attention.
Poor America gets stuck with all the foreign religious nut jobs, making their religion problem worse!
America attracts them I reckon – they know they’ll find fertile ground for their theories there! The old saying – “Only in America”.
Ha ha 😀 !
I’m oozing sympathy.
Oh, no hang on, my whitlow has burst.
I asked my wife, without revealing the subject matter, which college major would have the greatest number of nonconformists. Then I read her the majors in the seveth chart and she chose creative arts – as I would have. Which is the basis of my rationalization for the results that you show in that chart.
…seventh chart…
When I was in school completing a couple Humanities degrees, pretty much everyone was openly atheist. It was the first time that I actually found other atheists! I remember that in one of my senior English courses on Blake, one of my peers went to a Catholic church on Sunday just to see what happens there & then reported back to us. We talked about Blake’s religious views, so the experiment was valid to a certain level to the course but it is telling that he had no idea what going to church was about.
I’m proud to say that New Zealand’s numbers are even better: almost 40% claiming no religious affiliation in the 2013 census (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_New_Zealand). And over 1.5% of the population claimed “Jedi” as their religion.
I must visit someday.
I want to know more about the faith of the wowsers.
I’ve heard a “wowser” is a scold; an American example would be Carrie Nation. We’ll never know what the census respondent meant – sincere or trolling?
I did not know that!
“A wowser is a person who is haunted by the fear that someone, somewhere may be enjoying themselves.”
The nearest translation would be Puritan perhaps.
From this page:
“The term wowser – surely one of the most impressive and expressive of Australian coinages – is used to express healthy contempt for those who attempt to force their own morality on everyone. The person who abstains from alcohol (for whatever reason) is not thereby a wowser: s/he’s just probably very fit. But when s/he tries to force everyone else to do as s/he does, then s/he is a wowser. Or as C.J. Dennis defines the term: ‘Wowser: an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder’.”
It’s hardly a word anyone would apply to themself except as a joke, but the census form would often be filled out by one adult on behalf of all residents, so you can imagine how it might be attached (by an Australian, don’t forget) to a more straitlaced spouse or house-guest.
“Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
“The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think.”
– H. L. Mencken
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
I thought the term wowser sounded familiar.
It may be currently used in Australia but I first encountered it in a short story by Robert A. Heinlein titled “– All You Zombies –“* which was written in 1959, 55 years ago.
And it is used in the same sense that you describe it:
It was when they first admitted you can’t send men into space for months and years and not relieve the tension. You remember how the wowsers screamed ?
* The movie Predestination (2014) is based on this short story and manages to remain true to the original given the translation from short story to screen.
They captured the bar scene where the protagonist recruits his earlier self so well that it only took me a few seconds to realize that the movie was based on this story despite have last read it years ago.
AFAICT the earliest known use of the term in print was in 1899, in the Truth, a Sydney newspaper.
But there is lots of interesting Aussie folk lore about it’s origins, including the Monty Pythonesque suggestion that it is a mispronunciation of rabble rousers, or maybe religious rousers.
I read somewhere that it came from “We Only Want Social Evils Rectified”.
Sounds reasonably plausible to me.
I find this wisible:-)
The relationship is the other way around. The slogan was an attempt to own the term of opprobrium, and was coined by W. H. Judkins. Judkins campaigned against Labour in the 1906 Federal election.
Judkins then ran for the Victorian Alliance on an anti-liquor, anti-gambling, anti-prostitution, anti-Catholic, anti-union, and anti-socialism platform in the 1907 State election.
To some extent Judkins’ sectarianism backfired, and while Catholics previously voted as they liked, in 1906 the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne blessed the formation of the Catholic Voters Registration Society to oppose the Protestant Electors Committee. A Catholic voting block was formed that strongly favoured the Labour movement, which was nonsectarian, as the alternate was militantly Protestant.
Here endeth the Australian History lesson.
There is a rather sanitised summary of Wowserism here: http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM01643b.htm
The story behind the word is reported here: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11795386
But I still prefer the folk law version.:)
Thanks, Steve, for the reminder to finally get around to reading that story, after seeing it discussed and analysed in several places. Not surprisingly, there are free pdfs out there…
Twitter. That is where the New Wowsers are. Do something inappropriate like where a silly shirt after you have landed a probe on a comet 330 million kms away and the New Wowsers will let you know your offences against humanity.
Seems like a lot of trouble for me to go to to get the attention of the “wowsers”. 😉
One point on that page that may be surprising: in the rankings for ‘percentage reporting no religion by country of birth’, the USA beats Denmark! Of course, the Americans pass through a couple of filters to show up in the data: leaving the US at least once, and not having gone straight home (temporary residents are included in the census).
We like the kind of Americans that come out to Oz and stay, because they agree with us on so many things about their country.
In pretty much every Western country, Obama is much more popular abroad than at home.
Anti-Obama propaganda isn’t nearly as prevalent elsewhere, I’m guessing.
Just to point out, in the “by Age and Sex” graph, that kink at age 45 roughly corresponds to the start of Generation X.
If “college radio” music reflects and/or influences the target demographic, then that kink would be expected: New Wave and Post-Punk were leftist themes and associated with anti-Thatcher, anti-Reagan, anti-nuke, anti-apartheid, pro-gay, and other trendy pro- and anti- movements of the 80’s. Anyway, say what you will about the absurdities of Gen X, and the paltriness of our movements relative to those of the 60’s and 70’s, that cultural milieu was a good one for knocking the God right out of you!
I had hoped to work in a shout-out to New Wave bands from Down Under, but I’ll just tack them on the end: Midnight Oil, Split Enz and Crowded House (the latter two behind essentially the same Kiwi-led group).
Perhaps Generation X, like the graph, are broken down by age and sex. Some of us Boomers feel the same.
I’m Gen X. A lot of the move away from religion started with us and Y took it up. Of course, Gen X, being a small generation, is largely forgotten.
Depending who you ask, I’m either Gen X or a tail-end Boomer. That’s probably partly why I don’t use the discrete-generation terminology; I prefer continua anyway.
Also, a lot of the violence that started up in the 60s, finally calmed by the time Gen X started having influence in the 90s.
Jerry, surely that should be “The proportion of those reporting no religion … goes *up* as education goes up”, not down.
Indeed! Fixed, thanks.
South of the equator, up is down and vice-versa.
Sub
As usual, this will be blamed on the New Aussie-ists.
… oh, wait.
A potential factor in the startling rise of “Nones” in Australia between 1961 and 1971 may be the Australian experience in Vietnam.
Australia sent advisors there in 1961, and left by 1972. 529 dead and 3000+ wounded, over 60,000 having served in Vietnam,from a country of under 12 million in the ’60s.
As a Vietnam Vet myself, who had a few Aussie pals over there, I can attest to the diminishment of faith from such an experience, and not just of the spiritual kind.
Just a hypothesis, but hey.
Diana is quite correct in Canada’s non religious numbers – Even more encouraging is the British Columbia number of 44% non religious. Yea.
Yay BC!! ( before christ??)
Those figures may be even higher now Jerry. We had a state election here in Victoria on Saturday, and if you looked at for instance the suburbs of Melbourne online it gave demographics for each. I didn’t see a single suburb with ‘No Religion’ less than 20%, and most were 30% and over. Very encouraging.
Yes, but that’s Melbourne.
(Seriously, whenever I go there the place seems to belong to a different country – a better one.)
The creationist organisation Creation Ministries International who run the website http://www.creation.com is based in Brisbane so perhaps as the numbers of believers declines their fervour increases.
Quickly scanned comments and didn’t see any other Australian also point out that although filling out the 5-yrly Census is compulsory, the one question that is not compulsory is the one on religion.
And in 2011, “No religion” was the equal second biggest group overall, with the Anglicans. Catholics came first, but not by a huge number from memory.
In the Australian education system about 35% of the K-12 students attend private schools. These are largely catholic and Anglican with an rapidly increasing number of non-denominational christian schools. They generally have a requirement of staff to be of the faith. So you have a solid 35% of teachers who will give a religion. If you then add the general population % for the rest, None looks like 20%.
The catholic and other faith based Hospital systems are also significant in Australia accounting for about 30% of total available beds. They have less strict requirements [these days] for staff to adhere to their faith but that possibly explains part of the relatively low None rate in Health.
I’m confused by the notion of having to select one of Atheist, Agnostic, Humanist and Rationalist, with no “all of the above” option. Not only are they not mutually exclusive, they’re not even religions.
I recently had to complete a form where one had to check (only) one box in a list, with Atheist and Agnostic as options along with a whole bunch of actual religions. I ended up checking “Other” and wrote “None”.
From memory if you tick the “No Religion” box in the original Census form, you can then write down something more specific, eg “Atheist”, “Jedi”, whatever.
Goof to see calathumpian there. My grandfather always maintained that he was a calathumpian jew which basically meant “no religion”
Today our prime minister talked about the theology of nuclear power. I’m not sure Australia is all that secular really.
The problem is participation in the census is mandatory. If you refuse to participate, you are fined. So… how reliable is the data? People like myself who are bullied into participation put any old think on their form in protest and to avoid being fined.
I’d like to guess as to why education and health are at the bottom. Both are going to include a high proportion of people in religious institutions such as Catholic hospitals and schools.
2011 was the first year I remember a public campaign urging people to be honest: “If you’re not religious for God’s sake say so.”
I know religious leaders got in on earlier censuses, arguing the other way. The most egregious were rabbis and other Jewish leaders, who have routinely done an excellent job of persuading (ethnic) Jews to give their religion as “Jewish”. Census results have an effect on the funding available for religious education (it shouldn’t, but it does).
This means rabbis were effectively asking (ethnic) Jews to lie about their religious beliefs, to help them collect money, to help rabbis propagate beliefs contrary to the ones actually held by the people whose help they were soliciting. (And it works!)
There are far more atheists in Australia than these data suggest, due to a strong tendency to misconstrue the question as one about labels rather than beliefs. I have never been other than an atheist, but in years gone by I would often answer this question with “Anglican” in spite of the fact that I’m not even baptised. An attempt was made at the recent census to get people to answer “atheist” where appropriate to get more accurate figures, but old habits die hard. Many people who don’t believe in gods still think of themselves as Catholic or Methodist etc, just because that’s how they were brought up, when the distinction was important. There was a considerable catholic/Protestant apartheid in Australia until the 1970s. Nowadays some people say Christian to counter the rise of Islam I gather. Church attendance is at 9%, I think that shows how many people take religion seriously.