Recent data by Statista Research Department confirms previously published figures showing a decline in Australians identifying with the Christian faith - but churches are still motivated to reach the nation with the gospel.
The 2021 Australian Census showed under half of all Australians, 44 percent, saying they are Christian. This is eight per cent less than five years earlier in a similar national census.
At the same time, more people do not identify with any religion at all–10 million in 2010, which is a two million increase from the previous census. This equates to 40 percent of respondents in the survey having no religion.
“The younger age groups of people in Australia are more likely to have no religious affiliation or hold other spiritual or secular beliefs,” stated Statistica. “This move away from religion is also highlighted by the rise in civil celebrant marriages instead of religious ceremonies, with the vast majority of marriages performed by a civil celebrant.”
More than 120 faiths exist in the country but the traditional “Christian” label is arguably less relevant, with Statistica deeming it a “secular country with a diverse migrant population.”
Meanwhile other majority world religions have grown in Australia with a boost in Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.
“While the Christian faiths in Australia are in slow decline, there has been a steady growth of other religions in the country,” confirmed Statistica.
Muslim numbers have grown “significantly” in all age groups, since the last national census.
Attitudes towards certain religious groups is fairly neutral but the report highlighted “more negative attitudes in the country towards Christians and Muslims than any other religion.”
Although there is less affiliation with known religions, Australians are showing “a high satisfaction with religious faith or spiritual life.” Religious beliefs of some sort are still a key tenet for identities and daily living.
Despite the seemingly negative facts of the recent Census, some churches and church networks in Australia are intensifying efforts to reach people with the gospel.
Reach Australia, a network of 260-plus churches, is working hard to reach Australians with the gospel. At the network’s national conference in May (2024), Derek Hanna, Director of Plant, and an advocate for gospel-focused church leaders, addressed the issue of keeping a consistently positive outlook on evangelism in the time ahead.
In a talk entitled “State of the Nation in Church Planting.” Hanna outlined a vision for planting 300 churches in Australia by 2030. The network has planted 145 to date, leaving a need to start 155 churches within the next six years, requiring 800 new gospel work leaders.
Hanna acknowledged the psychological challenges in seeing the scale of the vision as either impossible or improbable.
“You might be thinking that’s impossible but we are sitting in a room where every one of us believes God raised Jesus from the dead,” he told the delegates at the conference in May. “That’s impossible! Every one of us is convinced that we were dead but we are now alive in Christ.”
Looking at the rate of multiplication for the network in the past 20 years is, however, encouraging for imagining the future. Hanna calculated that an average rate of multiplication for churches in the network was four percent annually and via that trajectory, the target of 300 new churches will be achieved.
“The lie is, ‘We believe in a God who can but probably won’t',” he said. “Look across this room. There are 1,300 people here this week across denominations with a shared gospel conviction about reaching Australia. That is the work of God.
"This is not triumphalism, this is just acknowledging what God is doing at this point, at this moment in history.”
