The faith landscape in Australia is changing – not just amongst the general population, but also amongst university students. The recent census highlighted nearly a third of Australians have ‘no religion’, while the percentage of Christians has dropped to around half. What is growing are the ‘spiritual but not religious’ group, atheism, and religions such as Hinduism and Islam, and to a lesser extent, Buddhism.
We are definitely ethnically diverse but less religious, as we can see from the census results in this article.
Looking at multi-faith expression across campuses, ABC Radio show God Forbid recently interviewed me as UTS Multi-Faith Coordinator on this whole topic of faith. Whilst, as the ABC point out, evangelicals may be the largest Christian groups on campuses, the landscape is changing, and more and more people across a variety of faiths, and those with no faith, are seeking a spiritual life, and not necessarily along conventional lines.
You can listen to the ABC program on The Future of Faith here – for the discussion about university students, jump to around 34 minutes into the recording.
Feature image by: Igor Ovsyannykov