It’s hard to escape religion in Australia even though it plays an increasingly minor place in Australian society.

Our parliaments open with prayers despite many MP’s – like many among the general public – having no religion.

Yet the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute has recently published a report on religion and social cohesion in Australia, which found that religious affiliation has been declining in Australia with a deep decline in affiliation with Christianity over the past five decades.

There has been a concurrent increase in people who say they have no religion. There has, however, been a modest but noticeable increase in other religions.

As the long-running Rationalist Society of Australia campaign has indicated the proportion of religious is probably inflated by the nature of the Census question on the Census questionnaire.

The Scanlon report – Religiosity in the Mapping Social Cohesion study, finds that among the Australian-born population, the proportion saying they had ‘no religion’ more than doubled from 22% to 46% between 2006 and 2021.

Every major religious group saw a decrease in representation among the Australian-born population – except Islam which rose from 1% to 2%. This is hardly the horror story Pauline Hanson believes although some of her followers may.

Those who identified with Buddhism or Judaism stayed constant at less than 1%.

The number of Catholics (Australian born) has declined between 2006 and 2021 as has Anglican, other Christians and Pentecostals.

Among the overseas born around 40% of the population have no religion. There have been increases in the proportion of overseas born respondents saying they have no religion, but the proportion is lower than that for Australian born people. Catholic, other Christian, Buddhism, Islam, Hindu, Sikhism, Pentecostal (very slight changes) have seen increases in religious affiliation since they 2026.

Among the overseas born Jewish population they are double those who have no religion,  compared with those who actually practise Judaism. The numbers are very low however. The proportion of overseas born people who identified with Judaism declined from 1% to 0.6%.

Among the overseas born population the ‘no religion’ group has increased, though more slowly, from 18% to 31% over the same period.

Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism have grown by 5.1%, 2.3% and 1.8% respectively.

A lot also depends – as in all surveys – on what questions you ask. The Mapping Social Cohesion study also found that 58% of MSC respondents said they were “not religious at all”

If respondents are asked about just how religious they are only 5% of Anglicans said they are very religious, 4% say they are very religious and 5% of those who have other religious or spiritual beliefs.

Of course, some of this is also governed by circumstances. At one end of the spectrum, for instance, soldiers dying in a ditch are often believed to plead to God (or their gods) even though they are usually more likely to be thinking of their mothers or partners.

It was also once axiomatic that newly recruited soldiers needed to nominate a religion which would accompany all the documentation of their careers. But today, thankfully Australia’s troops have not yet had to embrace the messianic Christian Nationalism of the US Far Right as practised by US Secretary of War, Pete Hesgeth.

At the other end religious observance, it also often more a matter of social behaviour and expectations than religious commitments.

What is clear, however, is that prayers at the opening Parliament and prayers at places such as the Australian War Memorial are often out of step with the realities of Australian demographics.

More inclusive approaches are needed.