Ostara 1997 Newsletter 1996 Census - Preliminary Data |
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I have been lucky enough to obtain some preliminary statistics from the 1996 census, in relation to the "religious affiliation" question. You may remember that this was the only optional question on the census, so figures may be somewhat unreliable.
| Religious Group | 1996 Census | % |
| Total Christians | 12,582,764 | 70.88 |
| Buddhism | 199,812 | 1.13 |
| Hinduism | 67,279 | 0.38 |
| Islam | 200,885 | 1.13 |
| Judaism | 79,805 | 0.45 |
| Other Religions | 68,647 | 0.39 |
| Total non-Christian | 616,428 | 3.47 |
| No Religion | 2,948,888 | 16.61 |
| Inadequately described | 54,164 | 0.31 |
| Population | 17,752,829 | |
| Religious Group | Number | |
| Witches | 1849* | |
| Nature Religions | 1618 | |
| Pagans | 4353 | |
| Rastafarians | 1023 | |
| Spiritualists | 8100 | |
| Born again Christians | 10,116 | |
| Ancestor veneration | 654 | |
| Druidism | 556 | |
| Zoroastrianism | 1518 | |
| Pantheism | 835 | |
| Satanists | 2093** | |
| No religion | nearly 3 million | |
| Agnostic | 8801 | |
| Atheist | 7496 | |
* 1242 females, 607 males
** 315 females, 1778 males
(Source: Australian Bureau of Statistic and the Herald Sun 20/8/97)
If I get any further information about these figures, I will publish them in the future. Does anyone have any comments observations about these figures that they would like to share?
