The churches with the largest number of members are the Roman Catholic Church in Australia, the Anglican Church of Australia and the Uniting Church in Australia, The Pentecostal churches and charismatic movement are also present with megachurches being found in most states. The National Council of Churches in Australia is the main Christian ecumenical body.
In his welcoming address to the Catholic World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, said that Christianity had been a positive influence on Australia: "It was the church that began first schools for the poor, it was the church that began first hospitals for the poor, it was the church that began first refuges for the poor and these great traditions continue for the future." Christian charitable organisations, hospitals and schools have played a prominent role in welfare and education since Colonial times, when First Fleet chaplain Richard Johnson was credited as "the physician both of soul and body" during the famine of 1790, and was charged with general supervision of schools.
Today, the Catholic education system is the second biggest sector after government schools, with more than 650,000 students (and around 21 per cent of all secondary school enrolments). The Anglican Church educates around 105,000 students and the Uniting Church has around 48 schools. Smaller denominations, including the Lutheran Church also have a number of schools in Australia. The Australian Catholic University opened in 1991 following the amalgamation of four Catholic tertiary institutions in eastern Australia.
Catholic Social Services Australia's 63 member organisations help more than a million Australians every year. Anglican organisations work in health, missionary work, social welfare and communications; and the Uniting Church does extensive community work, in aged care, hospitals, nursing, family support services, youth services and with the homeless. Christian charities such as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, the Salvation Army and Youth Off the Streets receive considerable national support. Religious orders founded many of Australia's hospitals, such as St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, which was opened as a free hospital in 1857 by the Sisters of Charity and is now Australia's largest not-for-profit health provider and has trained prominent Australian surgeons such as Victor Chang.
One of the most visible signs of the historical importance of Christianity to Australia is the prominence of churches in most Australian towns and cities. One of Australia's oldest is the Anglican St James Church, Sydney, built between 1819 and 1824 by Governor Macquarie's architect, Francis Greenway. St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney was built to a design by William Wardell from a foundation stone laid in 1868, the spires of the cathedral were not finally added until the year 2000. Wardell also worked on the design of St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne - among the finest examples of ecclesiastical architecture in Australia. The Anglican St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne in the iconic hub of the city opposite Flinders Street Station. Adelaide is known as the "City of Churches" but churches extend far into the Australian Outback, as at the historic Lutheran Mission Chapel at Hermannsburg, Northern Territory. Along with community attitudes to religion, church architecture changed significantly during the 20th century. Urban churches, such as the Wayside Chapel (1964) in Sydney, differed markedly from traditional ecclesiastical designs. In the later 20th century, distinctly Australian approaches were applied at places such as Jambaroo Benedictine Abbey, where natural materials were chosen to "harmonise with the local environment" and the chapel sanctuary is of glass overlooking rainforest. Similar design principles were applied at Thredbo Ecumenical Chapel built in the Snowy Mountains in 1996.
The Christian festivals of Christmas and Easter are national public holidays in Australia. Christmas, which recalls the birth of Jesus Christ, is celebrated on 25 December during the Australian summer and is an important cultural festival even for many non-religious Australians. The European traditions of Christmas trees, roast dinners, carols and gift giving are all continued in Australia – though they might be conducted between visits to the beach – and Santa Claus is said in song to be drawn on his sleigh by six white boomer kangaroos.
Hinduism
Hindus are a religious minority in Australia of about 150,000 adherents according to the 2006 census. In the 19th century, Hindus first came to Australia to work on cotton and sugar plantations. Many remained as small businessmen, working as camel drivers, merchants and hawkers, selling goods between small rural communities. Their population increased dramatically from the 1960s and 1970s and more than doubled between the 1996 and 2006 censusus to around 148,000 people. Most were migrants, from countries such as Fiji, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa. At present many Hindus are well-educated professionals in fields such as medicine, engineering, commerce and information technology. Among Australia's best-known Hindus is the singer Kamahl. There are around 34 Hindu temples in Australia. Sri Mandir Temple in multicultural Auburn, Sydney was the first Hindu temple in Australia. It was established in 1977 to meet the needs of the growing Hindu community.
Islam
The first contacts that Islam had with Australia was when Muslim fishermen native to Makassar, which is today a part of Indonesia, visited North-Western Australia long before British settlement in 1788. This contact of South East Asian ethnic groups of Islamic faith can be identified from the graves they dug for their comrades who died on the journey, being that they face Mecca (in Arabia), in accordance with Islamic regulations concerning burial, as well as evidence from Aboriginal cave paintings and religious ceremonies which depict and incorporate the adoption of Makassan canoe designs and words.
In later history, throughout the 19th century following British settlement, other Muslims came to Australia most famously the Muslim 'Afghan' cameleers, who used their camels to transport goods and people through the otherwise unnavigable desert and pioneered a network of camel tracks that later became roads across the Outback. Australia’s first mosque was built for them at Marree, South Australia in 1861. Between the 1860s and 1920s around 2000 cameleers were brought from Afghanistan and the north west of British India (now Pakistan) and perhaps 100 families remained in Australia. Other outback mosques were established at places like Coolgardie, Cloncurry, and Broken Hill - and more permanent mosques in Adelaide, Perth and later Brisbane. A legacy of this pioneer era is the presence of wild camels in Outback and the oldest Islamic structure in the southernhemisphere, at Central Adelaide Mosque. Nonetheless, despite their significant role in Australia prior to the establishment of rail and road networks, the formulation of the White Australia policy at the time of Federation made immigration difficult for the 'Afghans' and their memory slowly fadedduring the 20th century, until a revival of interest began in the 1980s.
Today, over 360,000 people in Australia identify as Muslim. With diverse communities concentrated mainly in Sydney and Melbourne. Since the 1970s Islamic schools have been established as well as more than 100 mosques and prayer centres. Many notable Muslim places of worship are to be found in Australian cities, including the Central Adelaide Mosque, which was constructed during the 1880s; and Sydney's Classical Ottoman style Auburn Gallipoli Mosque, which was largely funded by the Turkish community and the name of which recalls the shared heritage of the foundation of modern Turkey and the story of the ANZACs. Notable Australian Muslims include boxer Anthony Mundine; community worker and rugby league star Hazem El Masri; cricketer Usman Khawaja and academic Waleed Aly.
Judaism
At least eight Jewish convicts are believed to have been transported to Sydney aboard the First Fleet in 1788, when the first European settlement was established on the continent. An estimated 110,000 Jews currently live in Australia, the majority being Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European descent, with many being refugees and Holocaust survivors who arrived during and after World War II.
The Jewish population has increased slightly in recent times due to immigration from South Africa and the former Soviet Union. The largest Jewish community in Australia is in Melbourne, with about 60,000, followed by Sydney with about 45,000 members. Smaller communities are dispersed among the other state capitals.
Following the conclusion of the British colonial period, Jews have enjoyed formal equality before the law in Australia and have not been subject to civil disabilities or other forms of state-sponsored anti-Semitism which exclude them from full participation in public life.
Sydney's gothic design Great Synagogue, consecrated in 1878, is a notable place of Jewish worship in Australia. Notable Australian Jews have included the Sir John Monash, the notable World War I general who opened the Maccabean Hall in Sydney in 1923 to commemorate Jews who fought and died in the First World War and who is currently featured on the Australian $100 note; and Sir Isaac Isaacs who became the first Australian born governor general in 1930. Sir Zelman Cowen also served as Governor-General, between 1977 and 1982. The Sydney Jewish Museum opened in 1992 to commemorate the Holocaust "challenge visitors' perceptions of democracy, morality, social justice and human rights".
Until the 1930s, all synagogues in Australia were nominally Orthodox, with most acknowledging leadership of the
Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. To this day the vast majority of synagogues in Australia are Orthodox. However, there is a wide range of Orthodox congregations, including Mizrachi, Chabad and Adass Israel congregations. There are also Sephardi congregations.
There had been short-lived efforts to establish Reform congregations as early as the 1890s. However, under the leadership of Ada Phillips, a sustained liberal congregation, Temple Beth Israel, was established in Melbourne. Subsequently another synagogue linked to the United States Reform Movement, Temple Emanuel, was established in Sydney. Following these two congregations, a number of other Liberal synagogues have been founded in other cities.
Buddhism
Although the first definite cases of Buddhist settlement in Australia were in 1848, there has been speculation from some anthropologists that there may have been contact some hundreds of years earlier. Buddhists began arriving in Australia in significant numbers during the goldrush of the 1850s, with an influx of Chinese miners. However, the population remained low until the 1960s. Buddhism is now one of the fastest growing religions in Australia. Immigration from Asia has contributed to this, but some people of non-Asian origin have also converted. The three main traditions of Buddhism - Theravada, East Asian and Tibetan - are now represented in Australia.
According to the Australian census in 2006, Buddhism is the largest non-Christian religion in Australia, with 418,000 adherents, or 2.1% of the total population. It was also the fastest growing religion in terms of percentage, having increased its number of adherents by 109.6% since 1996.
The Nan Tien Temple, or "Southern Paradise Temple" in Wollongong, New South Wales began construction in the early 1990s, adopting the Chinese palace building style and is today the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere. The temple follows the Venerable Master Hsing Yun of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist order.
Sikhism
Sikhs have been in Australia since the 1830s, initially coming to work as labourers in the cane fields and as cameleers, known as Ghans. At the turn of the century a number of them were working as hawkers, opening up stores. After World War I, Sikhs in Australia were given rights far greater than other Asians and made use of them by emigrating to Australia and working as labourers. As the decades passed they formed a sizable community in Woolgoolga, where the first Gurdwara, named the First Sikh Temple, was built. Following the end of the White Australia Policy there has been a great increase in the number of Sikhs from a number of countries including India, Malaysia, Fiji and the United Kingdom. The 2006 Australian Census shows about 26,500 followers, up from 17,000 in 2001 and 12,000 in 1996.
Bahá'í
The Bahá'í faith in Australia has a long history and a growing visible presence in the country since 1922. A Bahá'í House of Worship exists in Sydney, dedicated on 17 September 1961 and opened to the public after four years of construction. The 1996 Australian Census lists Bahá'í membership at just under 9000. The 2001 second edition of A Practical Reference to Religious Diversity for Operational Police and Emergency Services added the Bahá'í faith in its coverage of religions in Australia and noted that the community had grown to over 11,000. The Association of Religion Data Archives estimated some 17,700 Bahá'ís in 2005.
No religion
Australia is one of the least religious nations in the developed world, with religion not described as a central part in many people's lives. This view is especially prominent among Australia's youth, who were ranked as the least religious worldwide in a 2008 survey conducted by The Christian Science Monitor. As of the 2006 census there are 3,706,555 people in Australia categorised by the ABS as having "No Religion". This category includes just four named subcategories, namely agnosticism, atheism, Humanism and rationalism. A fifth sub-category is "No Religion, nfd" (nfd=no further definition).
According to earlier Australian Bureau of Statistics data, in 2001 15.5% of the Australian population identified themselves as having "No Religion" in a census question. This was 1.5% lower than the 1996 result but increased to 18.7% in the census in 2006.
Despite non-theistic secularists representing nearly 20% of the Australian population, the Australian Bureau of Statistics does not provide information in the annual "1301.0 - Year Book Australia" on religious affiliation as to how many people fall into each sub-category.
Data on religious affiliation is only collected by the ABS at the five yearly population census.
Atheist interests in Australia are represented nationally by the Atheist Foundation of Australia. Humanist interests in Australia are represented nationally by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. Rationalist interests in Australia are represented nationally by the Rationalist Society of Australia.
