How faithful are we?
To our partners, no-one really knows. To an organised religion, less and less seems to be the answer, with not only the number of Christians set to fall, but the number of people classifying themselves as "religious" in any fashion.
Key trends in terms of religion will be Anglicanism "bouncing back" to some extent, driven by growth in immigration from the sub-Saharan region, and a particularly significant rise in the number of followers of Islam as a direct result of booming Asian (Middle Eastern) immigration.
While growth in traditional western faiths will lag behind population growth, as the younger generation becomes increasingly cynical towards organised religion, with IBISWorld projecting the number of Buddhists will more than double from the 418,754 noted in 2006 census figures, to 866,464 by 2020; Hinduism will also double its followers from 148,127 to 366,898 and
the number of Muslims will experience enormous growth from 340,389 to 1.055 million by 2020.
Overall, figures from the 2006 census show around 5.976 million Australians currently don't classify themselves as religious, or don't state their religion, compared to 13.881 million who do cite some kind of faith. In 2020, IBISWorld expects the number of non-religious will rise to 7.965 million, while the ranks of the faithful will swell to 15.741 million.
Catholicism is the most popular religion in Australia, boasting 5.087 million followers, a number which will rise to 5.611 million by 2020. In 11 years' time 3.8 million Australians will call themselves Anglican, compared to the current 3.7 million, while the number of Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Churches of Christ, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Salvation Army members will all fall. The Uniting Church will experience a sharp drop in numbers from 1.135 million in 2006 to 979,558 in 2020, while the ranks of the Pentecostal congregations will swell from 231,111 to 401,656.
http://muslimvillage.com/story.php?id=2849
Topic: Australian Muslims to reach 1 million by 2020 (Read 842 times)