When Religion Declines

One of the most striking developments in Australian society in recent decades has been the sharp decline in religious belief and observance, especially among the various denominations of Christianity. This decline in Australia has been mirrored throughout the Western world. This has occurred at a time when there have been extraordinary and unprecedented changes in attitudes towards social behaviour, especially sexuality, in the direction of greater liberality. One key question which may be asked of these changes is if either caused the other, a question whose answer may not be straightforward. An even more important question is what effect the decline of religion will have on Western democracy and on the philosophical and spiritual underpinnings of Western civilisation itself.

We have apparently accurate statistics about the decline of religion in Australia from the federal censuses, which are held every five years and which have always included a non-compulsory question about the religion of all respondents. Below are the national results from the 1986, 2011, and 2021 (the most recent) censuses, together with the results for the three largest Christian denominations and the two largest non-Christian religions. For each religion, the number of its adherents found in that census and the percentage of the total Australian population are also given.

These statistics simply record what respondents stated on the forms they filled out, and not on formal membership in a religion or actual attendance at religious services. Figures for membership or attendance are much more fragmentary than the census statistics, and also much more dire for the major Christian denominations. No official statistics are kept by the Anglican Church in Australia, but Anglican sources have estimated the number of those attending an Anglican service, anywhere in Australia, during a typical week in 1991 at 192,000 and in 2011 at 155,000; given the decline in Anglican numbers found in more recent censuses, this figure is presumably even lower today. The Roman Catholic Church in Australia has done better, with 662,276 attending a typical Mass in 2011, and 623,356 in 2016. The attendance figures for the Uniting Church are the worst, with numbers attending a typical Sunday service estimated by that church at 97,000 in 2013, but only 63,000 in 2021, for the whole of Australia.

It is possible to view these figures, and the inferences one may draw from them about the future of religion in Australia, in a more positive light. For instance, most private schools in Australia are, at least in a formal sense, connected to a religious denomination, whose students thus absorb at least a smattering of their beliefs. Today, there are 1756 Catholic schools in Australia, with, in total, 804,761 students. Victoria has 500 Catholic schools, with 212,608 students overall; New South Wales has 592 Catholic schools, with 212,608 students. Most of Australia’s most prestigious (and expensive) private schools are connected with a Protestant denomination, among them such elite institutions as Geelong Grammar School (Anglican), Scotch College (Presbyterian, Melbourne), and Methodist Ladies’ College (Uniting Church, Melbourne), ensuring that the upper tiers of society are likely to retain some religious linkages at least for decades to come. Smaller denominations often founded their own private schools as a central means of survival. For instance, there are eleven Jewish day schools in Melbourne and seven in Sydney, ranging in orientation across the Jewish spectrum, and apparently doing well.

And if the level of religious enthusiasm may be declining, both here and overseas, it also seems clear that the kind of militant agnosticism (or atheism) represented in the past by figures like the American Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) or the Briton Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) have also greatly diminished in number and visibility. So, too, has hostility among the Christian denominations, especially between Catholics and Protestants. On the other hand, recent changes in laws and lifestyles in Australia may well have contributed to the decline in religion. For instance, until 1991 in Victoria (and presumably in the other states), all major shops and shopping centres were shut from 12.30 p.m. on Saturday until Monday morning—precisely the only times when many people could visit them—and only “milk bars”, which sold only some necessities and newspapers, were open—a type of shop now all but extinct. Since then, all major shops as well as shopping centres have been open on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday, a change which may well have decreased religious attendance and has clearly diminished the special nature of Sundays.

Regardless of these caveats, however, it seems undeniable that Christianity has systematically declined in membership in recent decades, and not merely relatively but absolutely. Some readers will also be concerned at the dramatic increases of non-Western religions, especially Islam, and also Hinduism, which have grown substantially through both heavy recent immigration, and birth rates which are higher than the Australian norm. Ironically, in view of the discussion below, Muslims in Australia would in many cases be among those opposing liberalisation in societal values, especially in sexual behaviour and in the role of women.

It is a reasonable inference from these statistics and others not set out here that left-liberal religious denominations have declined faster and more consistently than more traditional denominations. This is clear from the sharper decline in membership in the Uniting Church, which is known for its open support of “social justice” issues. In fact, it appears to be a rule that the more a religious group openly supports left-wing causes, the emptier its pews become, as they are deserted by its conservative members, who are looking for their church to promulgate traditional values and beliefs, and not to operate as a de facto branch of the Greens or some other radical group.

The point should also be made that exactly the same decline in religious belief and membership found here has occurred throughout the Western world. In Britain, there has been a dramatic decline in the Church of England, its official membership and its rites de passage such as baptisms and marriages in church, and a catastrophic decline in membership in Nonconformist denominations such as the Methodists.

The decline of organised religion in Australia and elsewhere has been clearly paralleled by dramatic and, indeed, previously almost unimaginable changes in mainstream attitudes to behaviour and lifestyles previously regarded as utterly beyond the pale and, in many cases, illegal. The most obvious example of this are the extraordinary changes in mainstream attitudes to sexuality, especially homosexuality, but also to premarital sex in any form, birth control, abortion, and gender change and ambiguity, as well as to the open discussion and depiction of sexual matters previously taboo. It is not an exaggeration to describe these changes as revolutionary, compared with the situation of, say, seventy-five years ago. In particular, the widespread acceptance of homosexual “pride” and visibility would have been unthinkable—and illegal—sixty or even forty years ago. That 61 per cent of the Australian electorate voted in 2017 to legalise same-sex marriage is evidence of a far-reaching change in attitudes, as is the lack of vocal opposition to the acceptance of homosexuality by Australian conservatives, including its conservative churches.

Of course, some qualifications are needed in any discussion of this process. Lesbianism, for instance, was never criminalised. Older unmarried women regularly lived together in order to share the rent, without a single eyebrow being raised. In complete contrast, “two gentlemen sharing” almost automatically and invariably implied that they were gay, even if they were not. The change in attitudes towards male homosexuality may have occurred in part because of a crucial change in the image of male gays, largely engendered by themselves. At some time in the 1960s or 1970s male gays did what they could to bury their former image as effeminate, mincing pansies, so repellent to most straight men, and substituted its precise opposite as their image, the hyper-masculine half-naked muscleman. It is also of course the case that down the ages royals, aristocrats, millionaires, as well as writers, artists, musicians, and others in the intelligentsia have often—at least in private—lived a lifestyle in which “anything goes” and apparent increases in the volume of unorthodox modes of sexuality simply reflect their greater visibility. Many would also link these changes to the growth of feminism and to women’s role in society, although most feminists (and other women) would oppose changes in women’s sexuality which exploits them, such as pornography and prostitution.

A central question is just how the decline in religion is actually related to the vast change in traditional and previously almost universally accepted mainstream attitudes to sexual behaviour. There must, it seems clear, have been a relationship of some kind between the two changes, but the question of which came first and influenced the other, or, on the contrary, whether there were previous changes which produced both shifts, is unclear. It is quite possible that both changes may be related to greater individual autonomy in Western society, especially among the affluent and better educated, or simply a refusal to remain secretive about modes of behaviour which have always existed in private. The growth of highly individual-oriented forms of entertainment and communications, with the ubiquity of the internet and the move away from a handful of press and media outlets to those tailored to the particular interests of individual persons, may well be a factor, as well as the fact that sexual behaviour of any kind is, as a rule, no longer legally punished if it represents the voluntary behaviour of adults in private. No adult today is jailed for homosexual acts in private with another consenting adult, a vast change from sixty years ago.

Whether these changes should be welcomed, or should be regarded not merely as regrettable and harmful, but as undermining Western society, is a valid question. The Christian religion has been the central pillar of Western civilisation since the Dark Ages, and certainly many have thought that extreme and widespread sexual permissiveness would inevitably lead to societal collapse à la ancient Rome. So far, however, this has really not occurred, possibly because private behaviour is involved, and the right of a person to have individual autonomy and freedom is upheld by conservatives as well as radicals, in the sexual sphere as well as in the economic realm. It is also the case that conformity in personal behaviour has, in the past century, been a notable hallmark of totalitarian regimes.

But how far this can be taken remains unclear, and those who champion the values of Western civilisation should be on their guard. Small religious sects, which deliberately cut themselves off from the increasingly liberal values of the outside world in order to maintain their traditions and traditional modes of behaviour, may have grown in size, as, for instance, the remarkable growth in Charedi (“Ultra Orthodox”) Judaism shows. This does not mean that Western society may not commit suicide through excessively strong libidos or from some other factors, only that this has not yet occurred and its enemies lie in other directions.

William Rubinstein held Chairs of History at Deakin University and the University of Wales.