Australian Army Journal

RELIGION
Religious Diversity in the Australian Army:
The Next Diversity Frontier?
Current religious diversity in Australia and Army
Religious affiliation in Australia
National religious affiliation is reported in the National Census, the latest of
which was conducted in 2011, the same year as the ADF Census. The Census,
the findings of which are summarised in Table 1, indicated that, although the
population remained dominated by Christian affiliations (61.1%), the proportion
of those of no religious affiliation was also large and approached one-third of the
population (31.7%). 19 The representation of other religious groups, grouped as
non-Christian, accounted for the remaining 7.2% of the total population. 20
Table 1. National and Army religious affiliation
Religious Affiliation 21
National
Census 2011 22
ADF(Army)
Census 2011 23 Army PMKeyS 24
No religion
No religion 22.3 36.8 40.5
Unspecified 9.4 2.7 -
No religion total 31.7 39.5 41.6
Christian
Anglican 17.1 20.5 17.3
Baptist 1.6 1.9 0.8
Catholic 25.3 24.9 24.3
Eastern Orthodox 2.6 0.6 0.5
Lutheran 1.2 1.2 0.9
Pentecostal 1.1 1.5 0.3
Presbyterian/Reformed 2.8 1.9 1.4
Uniting 5.0 3.4 3.0
Other Christian 4.5 3.1 0.9
Christian Total 61.1 59.0 57.2
Other non-Christian
Baha’ism 0.0 0.0
Buddhism 2.5 0.6 0.4
Hinduism 1.3 0.2 0.2
Islam 2.2 0.3 0.2
Judaism 0.5 0.2 0.0
Sikhism - 0.0 0.0
Spiritualism - 0.0 0.0
Other non-Christian 0.8 0.3 0.4
Non-Christian Total 7.2 1.6 1.2
Australian Army Journal
Culture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 83