Catholic Religious Australia - national assembly: Changing ethnic and religious profile

An issue whose time has come - multiculturalism in the Australian Catholic Church - was broken open for more than 100 leaders of religious congregations when they gathered in Melbourne earlier this year for Catholic Religious Australia's national assembly. So they might have a better, more factual understanding of what for many was only a vague hunch, Australia's leading Catholic voice on multiculturalism, PROFESSOR DESMOND CAHILL, from Melbourne, presented the leaders with a detailed look at Australia's multicultural Church in a globalizing multi-faith world.

In absorbing presentations, he left no-one in any doubt that the face of Australia is changing as globalisation takes hold, leaving the Church in unchartered waters that must be journeyed across. He contends that the Australian Catholic Church is the most multicultural Catholic Church in the world and suggests that its future will be as an immigrant Church with an Anglo-Irish remnant.

Due to the length, detail and importance of Professor Cahill's address, pathways will present the material in the segments over several editions.

In this segment, Prof. Cahill considers Australia's changing ethnic profile ...

Language laboratory

Australia is continuing to evolve as a culturally and linguistically diverse country.

I want to begin by reflecting upon the ethnic, linguistic and religious profile figures from the 2006 census and to use 1996 as a baseline because the longer-term trends become more apparent.

The recent census figures have brought home how recent global population flows are impacting upon Australia.

According to the 2006 census figures, the top 12 birthplace countries were the UK (representing 23.5 per cent of the total overseas-born), followed by New Zealand (8.82 per cent), China (inc. Hong Kong) (6.30 per cent), Italy (4.51 per cent), Viet Nam (3.62 per cent), India (3.33 per cent), the Philippines (2.73 per cent), Greece (2.49 per cent), Germany (2.41 per cent), South Africa (2.36 per cent), Malaysia (2.09 per cent), and the Netherlands (1.79 per cent).

In examining Australia's birthplace profile over the past decade, there are several points to be highlighted:

Australia is becoming more diversified culturally, linguistically and religiously, including with the entry of immigrant and refugee groups from Africa, but more particularly from Asia and the Middle East.
The proportion of the U.K.- born continues to decline slowly, but this trend is being offset by the growth of those from New Zealand (+33.68 per cent), and the U.S.A. (+24.61 per cent), and especially by the arrival of South Africans (+86.75 per cent) who have moved disproportionately into regional and rural areas with their professional and agricultural skills.
The continental European-born groups are in their twilight years with significant declines in the numbers of those born in Italy (-16.47 per cent), Greece (-13.07 per cent), the Netherlands (-10.20 per cent) and Poland (-19.75 per cent)
The growth of those coming from those countries where English is an associate language (i.e. those countries colonized by English-speaking colonial powers) has been very strong, especially from India (+89.75 per cent) in the last five years but also from the Philippines (+29.68 per cent), Malaysia (+21.10 per cent) and Sri Lanka (+32.50 per cent)
China has now become the most numerous, non-English-speaking source country after 50 years of dominance by the Italy-born group. This has interesting implications, given that Australia's continuing prosperity is very dependent upon trade with China.
The China-born growth is complemented by the growth from Asia generally, including from Viet Nam (+5.83 per cent), but especially from the Republic of Korea (+75.34 per cent), and from the Middle East - by the next census, Viet Nam and India will have surpassed Italy as major source countries

The birthplace trends are complemented by the 2006 language profile of Australia which is showing greater diversification. The clear trends are:

As in 2001, the numbers of those speaking and writing the Chinese languages (+45.83 per cent), especially Cantonese and Mandarin, when aggregated, have surpassed those speaking Italian which for 50 years was Australia's most widely spoken language after English
Of the major 20 languages, the biggest growth has occurred with Hindi (+106.02 per cent), reflecting the number of Indian immigrants in the last five years, together with Persian (+95.21 per cent) and Korean (+82.50 per cent)
Arabic (+7.74 per cent) and Spanish (+7.38 per cent), whose birthplace countries are too atomised to be reflected in the birthplace data, continue to grow significantly
The continental European languages continue their decline, using 1996 as a baseline, with the exception of Spanish (+7.38 per cent) and Serbian (+41.21 per cent) because of the refugee intakes from Krajina and Serbia itself
There has been strong growth in the languages spoken by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (26.04 per cent)

Australia has become one of the great language laboratories of the world.

Its linguistic profile over the past two decades has become more interesting. The figures highlight that, since 1947 Australia has been transformed from being a British to a European to a Eurasian country.

Australia is now walking down this Eurasian path that is its probable future - it was always inevitable that Australia would one day have to confront its Asian destiny. Increasingly, with its participation in the Asian Cup being a most recent example, Australian is being drawn into the Asian world.

Australia's emergence as a multifaith country

From the 1860s to 1947, Australia's religious profile had remained relatively stable.

The Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists, together comprising just over 60 per cent of the population dominated this period of Australian religious life.

In the same year of 1947, Roman Catholics comprised one fifth (20.7 per cent) of the population at 1.57 million, compared to 2.96 million Anglicans and 1.68 million belonging to the Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational and Reformed Churches. Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs did not rate on the demographic map.

Since 1947, Australia's religious profile has changed in five profound ways:

(1) The decline in the Protestant ascendancy and the rise of a secularized Australia

(2) The impact of migration intakes on mainstream Christianity, especially Catholicism

(3) The rise of evangelical and charismatic Christianity and New Age Movements

(4) The rise of a multifaith Australia and

(5) the repositioning of the relationship between religion and state (Cahill, Bouma, Dellal & Leahy 2004).

In 2006, Christians represent about 65 per cent of the Australian population led by the Catholic cohort representing just over one quarter - the number of Catholics continues to grow but in proportional terms their percentage has dropped. This conclusion also applies to Orthodox Christians.

Mainstream Protestantism has been in decline for more than four decades after peaking in the early 1960s and is almost now in freefall, especially in regard to the Uniting Church of Australia (-14.94 per cent over the past 10 years), Presbyterianism (-11.30 per cent) and the Church of Christ (-23.12 per cent)

This is part of a global shift away from a rational and global form of Christianity to a more experiential and feeling-oriented form. It also results from the global impact of secularization in the developed world.

Anglicans have been part of this decline inasmuch as they have become more sacramentally oriented and less 'protestant' than they were with the major exception of the Anglican Archdiocese of Sydney with its continuing commitment to 'Low Church' theology. Those who have drifted away now tend to tick the 'no religion' box, resulting in the exponential rise in this category, which has also a youthful profile.

Over the past decade, a major increase has occurred in the evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic Churches (+33.92 per cent) and they also figure in the 'other Christian' category (+72.18 per cent) and this has been part of the religious revitalization in Australia.

This represents a backlash against the dry rationality of mid-20th century British Protestantism and the ever-growing demand for experiential spiritualities. In many cases, such as the Catch the Fire Ministry in Melbourne, they have become exclusivist, encapsulated into a theology that rejects interfaith dialogue and may be aggressively anti-Muslim with lines such as "other religions are the work of Satan". In other cases, this Christian extremism expresses itself as aggressively pro-Zionist which again is unhelpful.

Allied with this has been the rise in various forms of privatised eco-spiritualities and the importation of various Earth-based religious groups such as Gaia, Goddess religions and Witchcraft. These latter groups are small, but their power to attract is attested by the religion section of mainstream bookstores.

Regarding the youth, a recent study by Michael Mason and his colleagues at the Australian Catholic University has detailed the religious beliefs of Generation Y, born between 1976 and 1990, from all different family backgrounds.

Half claim not to have any religious affiliation. However, almost a third (29 per cent) have a belief in reincarnation while about a quarter believe in astrology and seances though these beliefs are also strong amongst their parents.

The authors comment, "Belief in reincarnation is more like a folk belief that circulates widely in the culture ... than a seriously understood article of faith connected to its original Eastern religious heritage" (Mason et al. 2006: 18).

This important and complex study also highlights the drift away from theistic beliefs. "We noted more than 250 comments on why people no longer believe. The most common reasons for no longer believing include: 'doing further study, especially science' (16 per cent of verbatim responses); 'no convincing evidence or proof (13 per cent); disillusionment with the churches (11 per cent) and a category we called 'couldn't accept that God allows suffering (9 per cent)".

Hence, Australia has become more secularized and, in that sense, can be described as a post-Christian society. But this is only part of the present story.

Australia has paradoxically become more religious - but religious in a different way with the rise of multifaith Australia. The 2006 census shows that one person in 18 practices a religion other than Christianity.

The following points are to be noted:

Those affiliated with religious Judaism has increased recently in actual numbers and remains static proportionally.
Buddhism is the largest of the religious groups that are not Christian with the numbers doubling in 10 years - the Australian-born is the largest group among Buddhists followed by the Viet Nam-born and the China-born.
Hinduism has grown proportionally even more than Buddhism, especially since 2001, and this is also true of the Sikh group.
Over the 10-year period, Islam has grown by 69.45 per cent with the largest group being the Australian-born followed by those born in Lebanon and Turkey.

references:

Australia Bureau of Statistics, 1996 and 2006

Mason, M., Webber, R., Singleton, & Hughes, P. (2006) The Spirit of Generation Y (ACU, Melbourne)

Educated in Melbourne and Rome, Des Cahill is Professor of Intercultural Studies at RMIT University and has been one of Australia's leading researchers in the areas of immigrant, cross-cultural, interfaith and international studies for almost three decades. His many publications and research projects have focussed on immigrant and multicultural education, ethnic minority youth, immigrant settlement, ethnic community development, intermarriage and, more recently, religion and globalization.

Since the events of September 11, 2001, he has played a major role in researching and bringing together the various faith communities in Australia and across the world through his research and community activities. With Gary Bouma, he was commissioned by the Australian Government after S11 to examine its implications in Religion, Cultural Diversity and Safeguarding Australia (2004) and to prepare the resource book, Constructing a Local Multifaith Network (2004).

Since 2001, he has chaired the Australian chapter of the World Conference of Religions for Peace (WCRP), and represents Australia on the executive committee of the Asian Conference of Religion and Peace. He was the leader of the City of Melbourne's successful bid to stage the Parliament of the World's Religions in December 2009.

Cahill, D. (1990) Intermarriage in International Contexts: A Study of Filipino Women Married to Australian, Japanese and Swiss Men (SMC Center, Manila)

Cahill, D. (2004) Missionaries on the Move: A Pastoral Study of the Scalabrinians in Australia and Asia 1952 - 2002 (CMS, New York)

Cahill, D. (2005) The conundrum of globalization. Australian Mosaic 12, 4, 6 - 11.

Cahill, D. (2007) From dagoes to doers: accommodating Australia's Italian migrants by church and state. In A. Paganoni (ed.) Pastoral Care of Italians in Australia: Memory and Prophecy (Connor Court Publishing, Victoria)

Cahill, D., Bouma, G., Dellal, H. & Leahy, M. (2004) Religion, Cultural Diversity and Safeguarding Australia (DIMIA with the Australian Multicultural Foundation, Canberra), also available on the AMF website in the research folder.

See also: national assembly: Our Multi-Cultural Australian Church
and national assembly: Global context

There will be further articles from this address in the next edition of pathways, to be posted early December 2008.

Background reading: GRACED BY MIGRATION: Implementing a national strategy in pastoral care for a multi-cultural Australian Church (2007)

a paper for the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference through the Bishops Commission for Pastoral Life and the Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office

COMMENT AND EXPERIENCES ARE WELCOME.

Should anyone which to comment on these or other pathways items, please email the editor, Penny Edman

or if you have an experience of our multi-cultural Australian Church you would like to share, please contact Penny.