Religious education in Australia

Abstract

Modern Australia is a plural, multi-cultural, multi-faith society comprising approximately 22.5 million people.1 While early religious traditions include the 40,000 years of Australia’s Indigenous culture and brief contacts with Islam via Indonesia in the last 300 years, today, through EnglishEuropean settlement,2 more than half of Australians identify as Christian. At the 2006 census,363.8% of Australians identified themselves as Christian,4 2.1% as Buddhist, and 1.7% as Muslim. A small percentage (2.4%) of the population indicated that they adhere to another religion; 11.3% did not specify; and 18.7% indicated that they practice no religion, up from approximately 16% at the 2001 census.5 Australia’s governmental and political structure-a constitutional monarchy combined with a federal parliamentary democracy6 which comprises a federal,7 six state, and two territorial governments8-affects the place of religious educational freedom within this plural context.