In 2021, over 11 million people in Australia affiliated with Christianity, making it the leading religious affiliation among the Australian population that year. In the younger age groups, the number of people who affiliated with secular beliefs, other spiritual beliefs, and no religious affiliation was greater than those who affiliated with Christianity.

According to the 2021 Australian census, 43.9 percent of Australians identified as Christian. By comparison, Islam and Buddhism both represented roughly five percent of the population respectively. Over a third of the population indicated that they had no religion, however this category also included secular and other spiritual beliefs.

When asked about their personal attitude towards various religions in Australia, ** percent of Australians surveyed had a negative attitude towards Muslims. Buddhists appeared to be least likely to elicit negative responses and around ** percent of respondents responded negatively to Christians.

 Islam in Australia

Muslims represent almost a quarter of the religious diversity in the Asia Pacific region and Australia’s neighbor, Indonesia, has the largest Muslim population in the world. In Australia, Islam is the second largest religious group but less than ***** percent of the population are Muslim, compared to over ** percent of the population identifying as Christian. The Australian Muslim community is very diverse, consisting of migrants from Bangladesh, Lebanon, Turkey, as well as Australian-born Muslims of European heritage.

 Australians increasingly less religious

The 2016 Australian census revealed that an ever-increasing number of Australians are selecting “no religion” in the optional census question on religious affiliation. This drop in religious affiliation is a common trend in many economically developed countries, although some of Australia’s minority religions like Islam and Buddhism are still showing some growth. In contrast, Christianity appears to be declining, especially amongst people under the age of **, an age group that also recorded higher numbers of people with no religion.

In 2021 there were around 1.1 million people aged between 15 and 24 years who identified as being Christian in Australia. This number was down from 2016, when around 1.3 million people in the same age group identified as Christian.

In 2021, around ** percent of the Australian population attended a Christian church frequently. Although the share of people of Christian faith in Australia appears to be declining, church attendance has remained relatively stable since 2006.

Local Government Area (LGA) based data for Religion, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 1986 Census of Population and Housing. Census counts were based on place of usual residence which excludes overseas visitors, Australians overseas, and adjustments for under-enumeration. The data is by LGA 1986 boundaries. Periodicity: 5-Yearly.

This data is used with permission from the ABS. The tabular data was supplied to AURIN by the Australian Data Archives. The cleaned, high resolution 1986 geographic boundaries (cat. no. 1261.0.30.001) are available from Data.gov.au.

For more information please refer to the 1986 Census Dictionary (cat. no. 2102.0).

This dataset presents a range of data items sourced from a wide variety of collections, both Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and non-ABS. The data is derived from the November 2024 release of Data by region. Individual data items present the latest reference year data available on Data by region. This layer presents data by Local Government Areas (LGA), 2021.

The Persons born overseas theme is based on groupings of data within Data by region. Concepts, sources and methods for each dataset can be found on the Data by region methodology page.

The Persons born overseas theme includes:

Population (Census) Age (Census) Year of arrival (Census) Citizenship status (Census) Religious affiliation (Census) English proficiency (Census) Occupation (Census) Highest educational attainment (Census) Labour force status (Census) Total personal income (Census)

When analysing these statistics:

Time periods, definitions, methodologies, scope, and coverage can differ across collections.
Some data values have been randomly adjusted or suppressed to avoid the release of confidential data, this means

    some small cells have been randomly set to zero
    care should be taken when interpreting cells with small numbers or zeros.

Data and geography references

Source data publication: Data by region Geographic boundary information: Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Edition 3 Further information: Data by region methodology, reference period 2011-24 Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

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In the 2016 Australian census, women who identified with the Islamic faith had an average birth rate of **** children by the age of 45 to 49 years. By comparison, Buddhist women had the lowest birth rate at ****.

Regression model for trust in people with different religion in Australia.

The 2009 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) is the fourth in a biennial series that studies social attitudes and behaviour of Australian citizens for the Australian and international research community. AuSSA provides cross-sectional data on the social attitudes and behaviour of Australians, repeating a core questionnaire for each cross-section and fielding specific modules relevant to the changing needs of the social research community. AuSSA is Australia's official survey in the International Social Survey Program and regularly includes ISSP modules. AuSSA 2009 uses two survey instruments (Version A and Version B) and includes both the ISSP's Religion III and Social Inequality IV modules. The 2009 Survey includes attitudes and behaviours that are organised into fourteen categories - Religion, Birth Control and Sex Education, Australia's Population, Environment, Crime and Criminal Justice, Religiosity and Spiritual Life, Social Inequality, Old People in Society, Body Image, Elderly Care, Loneliness, Dental Care, Government Services, and Politics and Society. AuSSA 2009 also includes demographic and behavioural categories (Personal Background) that survey: sex, year born, income, education, employment, union membership, languages spoken, birthplace, household composition and religion. There are also questions about the partner of the respondent: employment, highest-level of education and income.

In the 2021 Australian census, just under 40 percent of the Australian population indicated that they did not identify with a religion. This is over 20 percent higher than the share of people in the 2006 census that identified as having no religion.

In 2018, marriages performed by civil celebrants accounted for 79.7 percent of marriages in Australia. Civil celebrants are performing an increasing share of marriages in Australia as opposed to marriages performed by a minister of religion.

 Marriage and religion

Marriages in Australia and most English-speaking countries have traditionally been performed in a church by a Christian minister or priest. However, preferences are changing to suit Australia’s diverse population. Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu weddings ceremonies are becoming more common but the biggest change is in the number of people having secular weddings. This separation from traditional church weddings may have something to do with the increasing numbers of Australians who do not identify with a religion.

 Same-sex marriage

At the end of 2017, the Marriage Act 1961 was amended to allow same-sex couples to legally marry in Australia. This came after a nation-wide postal survey asking Australians to give their opinion on whether the law should be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry. Australians voted in favor of the legislation change and in the following year, over 2,000 same-sex marriages were officiated by civil celebrants in the state of New South Wales alone.

The two countries with the greatest shares of the world's Jewish population are the United States and Israel. The United States had been a hub of Jewish immigration since the nineteenth century, as Jewish people sought to escape persecution in Europe by emigrating across the Atlantic. The Jewish population in the U.S. is largely congregated in major urban areas, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, with the New York metropolitan area being the city with the second largest Jewish population worldwide, after Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel is the world's only officially Jewish state, having been founded in 1948 following the first Arab-Israeli War. While Jews had been emigrating to the holy lands since the nineteenth century, when they were controlled by the Ottoman Empire, immigration increased rapidly following the establishment of the state of Israel. Jewish communities in Eastern Europe who had survived the Holocaust saw Israel as a haven from persecution, while the state encouraged immigration from Jewish communities in other regions, notably the Middle East & North Africa. Smaller Jewish communities remain in Europe in countries such as France, the UK, and Germany, and in other countries which were hotspots for Jewish migration in the twentieth century, such as Canada and Argentina.