PAGANISM AND THE AUSTRALIAN 1996 CENSUS
The 1996 Australian Census of Population and Housing was held on 6 August 1996. With regards to religion, respondents were asked to mark one of seven specified religions (Catholic, Anglican, Uniting Church, Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox, Baptist, or Lutheran), to either specify a particular religion, or to mark if they were of no religion.
About 13.2 million (73.8% of the population) indicated a religious belief of one form or another, with about 2.9 million, 16.5%, indicating no religious adherence. Despite a significant increase in non-Christian religions (from 6.7% recorded in the 1971 census to 16.5% in the 1996 census), in 1996 Australia was still largely a Christian country with 70.3% of the population indicating that they were of the Christian belief.
The largest single religious denomination in 1996 was Catholic with 4.8 million adherents (26.8% of the population). Other religions with a substantial number of adherents were:
The largest non-Christian religious denominations was Islam (201,000 adherents), followed by Buddhism (200,000) and Judaism (80,000).
It was among the smallest religious denominations where some of the Pagan traditions were mentioned. Paganism itself was recorded as having 4,353 adherents while Pantheism had 835. Spiritualism as a whole recorded 8,140 adherents. Interestingly, Satanism was recorded with having the largest following of specified "Pagan" traditions (if we are so bold as including Satanism as a Pagan tradition), with 2,091 adherents. It was followed by Wicca/Wytchcraft (1,849) and Druidism (554). Other alternative traditions of interest were:
It is also interesting to note that from the statistics supplied by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (from where these statistics were obtained) that 35,790 marked an alternate religious belief without further defining what that belief was, and 18,374 "inadequately" defined their beliefs.
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