Keeping the faith: These religious groups are flourishing as atheism takes hold

Australians are fleeing faith at a record pace as Christianity declines and secularism takes hold, but religion is growing faster than ever in Victoria’s Pentecostal megachurches, temples and mosques.

The Age has analysed a decade’s worth of census data for a series exploring how Victoria’s religious communities are keeping the faith in an increasingly secular Australia.

More than 10 million Australians (39 per cent of the population) and 2.5 million Victorians report having no religious affiliation, according to census data from 2021.

The number of people identifying as Christians has tumbled by almost 20 per cent in the decade to 2021, hovering at 44 per cent of the population, as Catholic and Anglican churches have battled rapidly shrinking congregations in once-grand houses of worship.

But as secularism grows, Pentecostal or charismatic churches are emerging as outliers. Pastors in jeans and leather jackets are preaching to hundreds of thousands of worshippers each week in Pentecostal churches.

The number of Pentecostals in Australia has risen to 414,882 from 237,986 in 2011, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. More than 54,400 Pentecostal Christians live in Victoria, an increase of 17 per cent since 2011.

“Pentecostalism has gone bananas around the world,” says Andrew Singleton, a religion expert from Deakin University.

“They get the bums on seats. In many places, it has overtaken Catholicism, and migration has been a huge factor here in Australia.”

The professor of sociology and social research points out there is no other Christian tradition in Australia that includes so many worshippers born overseas. More than a third of Pentecostals hail from abroad and they span 150 nationalities.

When Pentecostalism first arrived in Australia in the 1980s, it was a small religious revival, but it has since been catapulted into the mainstream following the emergence of Hillsong.

Pentecostal Christian Chantal Morrill.

“Before this, Pentecostalism was just little congregations in school halls or community halls,” Singleton says.

“Their religious expression was pretty full-on, with lots of speaking in tongues and people shaking with the spirit and falling over.”

Singleton says the movement is now attracting people who may have been Anglican or Presbyterian – particularly those under 35 – drawn to its ability to communicate ancient messages in a contemporary way.

Melbourne woman Chantal Morrill is one of the tens of thousands of Victorians who identify as Pentecostal.

“I don’t walk around with a badge saying ‘I’m Christian’, but my faith is something that causes me to reflect inward about my life and how I’m living,” she says. “Everything around us changes all the time, but to have a constant is really anchoring.”

Meanwhile, a surge in migration has also led to an increase in the number of Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and those in state’s fastest growing religion, Hinduism.

About 2.5 million Australians, or about 10 per cent of the population, reported an affiliation with a minority religion in Australia in the last census, equal to a 3.5 per cent increase in the past 25 years.

About 680,000 Hindus live in Australia, and Victoria is home to more than a third of them.

Hindu Society of Victoria president Sabaratnam Kathirkhanthan at the Shri Shiva Vishnu Temple in Carrum Downs.

The number of Hindus living in the state has soared from about 42,300 in 2006 to more than 214,000 in 2021, as growing numbers of people from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Malaysia and Singapore migrate to Victoria.

Hindu society of Victoria president Sabaratnam Kathirkhanthan says temples give new migrants an opportunity to connect with other Hindus from all over the world.

“Hinduism is more than just religion,” Kathirkhanthan says. “For us, it is indivisible from our everyday life.”

The number of Muslims in Victoria has more than doubled from 109,369 in 2006 to 273,028 in 2021, equal to about 4.5 per cent of the state’s population, ahead of Hindus (3.5 per cent) and Buddhists (3.4 per cent).

Zeinab Mourad in a prayer room of the Quba mosque in Craigieburn, which is under construction.

Zeinab Mourad, 30, academic mentor at the Islamic Sciences and Research Academy, says Islam gives her purpose, but she is aware of the challenges of being devout in an increasingly secular society.

She says her faith makes it easier “to think ‘that person’s perception belongs to them’, and I have this purpose that I’m working towards in this life”.

More than 210,400 Sikhs live in Australia, and about 90,000 call Victoria home – the highest number of any state in Australia – the legacy of waves of Punjabi and Indian migration.

Buddhism is also on the rise as waves of migrants from Asia arrive in Victoria. The number of Buddhists soared from 132,632 in 2011 to 204,493 in 2021.

But some religions are stagnating.

There are nearly 100,000 people who identify as Jewish in Australia, and almost 46,650 live in Victoria – the highest number of any state in the country.

In Victoria, the Jewish population has increased by just over 5500 people in the past decade.

It is a trend Andrew Singleton, religion expert at Deakin University, attributes to dwindling migration of Jewish people and conversions to the faith.

Professor Cristina Rocha, of Western Sydney University, says the growth of other religions in Victoria is a reflection of migration.

Rocha, the director of the Religion and Society Research Cluster, says the most significant change to faith in Australia has been an increase in religious complexity and diversity.

Many people have abandoned institutional religion, while there has been a rise in atheism and a boom in Pentecostalism and minority religions. Others are turning to meditation and mindfulness.

These shifts are not without risks, Rocha says, pointing to the rise in Christian nationalism infiltrating global politics, and the rapid growth of the “conspirituality” movement: a merger of conspiracy theories and spirituality.

The latter led to a flood of misinformation fuelling anti-vaccination sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Rocha says there are many benefits of religion and spirituality.

“The connection with the spiritual world has always been this idea of hope,” she says. “That there is something more than everyday life that can sustain you in the seemingly difficult and turbulent world we live in.”