Every five years we have a census in Australia, and last month was this year’s turn. As I reflect on my answers over the years it’s a reminder of how much I’ve changed - particularly when considering religion.

Leaving religion - just like my peers

After the 2016 census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) summary said:

The growing percentage of Australia’s population reporting no religion has been a trend for decades, and is accelerating. Those reporting no religion increased noticeably from 19 per cent in 2006 to 30 per cent in 2016. The largest change was between 2011 (22 per cent) and 2016, when an additional 2.2 million people reported having no religion. (SOURCE)

In 2021, the summary explicitly noted the effect of people leaving religion:

An increase in people reporting to have No religion between 2016 and 2021 was highest for young adults, particularly those aged in their twenties. In general, the likelihood of people becoming unaffiliated with a religion decreased with age. (SOURCE)

Regular readers will know this describes me to a T. From earliest childhood I’d known the Christian God was the one true god, the Bible was his message to humanity, and Christadelphians were the only ones to correctly understand it. Then I reached adulthood, learned more about the world, and started making my own choices.

That led to doubts which increased, and ultimately led to me quitting the family religion. How has that affected my census answers?

The last four censuses

Here are the last four censuses:

  • 2011: I don’t remember this census at all. I was still living at home at the time, so I assume my parents filled in the census for the entire family. I would have been listed either as “Christian” or specifically as “Christadelphian”, depending whether the census had a proper “Other” field that year and whether my parents used that field.

    There’s no doubt it was the right answer for me at the time, either. At the time I attended religious services multiple times a week as well as being a lay preacher. I’d go on to spend much of the rest of the year in India on my final mission trip.

    Yes, I had plenty of doubts, and yes, that mission work was just about the last chance to dispel the doubts (it was my final mission trip for a reason…). But Christadelphia was clearly my religion, and it also governed how I used my time, shaped many of my values, and provided a lot of my community. Just what the ABS wanted to know.

  • 2016: 2016 was the year I officially quit the religion, and so should have been the year I first put “No religion”. However, there was a snag. Shortly after quitting the religion, I left Australia to spend a few months in the UK. The day of the census I climbed Scafell Pike, the tallest peak in England, completing my UK Three Peaks quest. As a result, my Christianity disappeared from the numbers - but so did I.

    I’d been glad a couple of months before to vote for the first time, and I’d have been equally glad to have been able to declare myself “No Religion”. The five years since the previous census had mostly been filled with increasing doubts, with feelings of being trapped in the religion, and with having to figure out the best way to make the change public. Quitting had literally been a life changing experience, and I’m sure I wanted to stand up and be counted. But I was probably happier still to be on holiday on the other side of the world and not having to worry about religion.

    Instead, not too long after I got back to Australia I started this blog, and particularly in that first year spent a lot of time writing and working through my feelings about religion. That allowed me to stand up and be counted in a far more public way than an anonymous entry in the census would have done. What’s more, the proportion of people putting “No Religion” grew just fine without me…

  • 2021: This census came in the middle of yet another long Covid lockdown in Melbourne, which probably put a bit of a damper on the census. But it was still the first time I’d been able to put “No Religion” on a census. It felt good. It felt really good. I’d been officially out of the religion for more than five years, I’d been writing about the process for nearly five years, and so yes, it was nice to be counted.

    This census was also the first time I remember waiting eagerly for the results to be published. Given that “all Christians” had dropped to 52% in the 2016 census, it seemed likely that in 2021 it would drop below 50%. So many times over the years I’d heard about Australia being “a Christian nation” - mostly when demanding a government program should follow the speaker’s personal view of what True Christianity looked like or censor something that made them uncomfortable - and dropping below 50% would make it even clearer that this was nonsense.

    However, when the results came out in June 2022 I was struggling with Covid, as well as preparing to travel to the US for a few months. I wrote a few rough drafts of a reaction post, but never got to finishing it.

  • 2026: Last month, I did my census, came to the “Religion” question, ticked “No Religion”, and moved on. It wasn’t a big deal - that’s just who I am. Then I moved on to to questions of occupation and earnings and transportation methods and physical health and sexuality and marital status and I don’t know what else. And the answers to some of those other questions felt more significant to my life than the religion question.

    As far as being more specific, if they’d given me the option I’d have said “Atheist”, but I was fine with just being counted as “No Religion”. (to be fair, I think I could have picked “Other”, specified Atheist, and then been included in the overall “No Religion” bucket as well as having my specific affiliation counted - but I didn’t bother).

Moving into the mainstream

Growing up, I always knew we were different. My religion influenced the way I spent nights and weekends, the kind of books I read and movies I watched, the moral stances I held, and how I related to people around me.

Leaving religion has also been a strongly life-defining choice - but not a choice that shows in day to day interactions with co-workers and people around me (Christian nation or no Christian nation, religion doesn’t come up that often). Being Christadelphian had meant feeling that I should be trying to convince people around me that they needed to join my religion, or to make it clear to themthat the moral stances imposed by my religion were the only valid ones.

In practice I’d reduced those intrusive practices long before I quit, but making it official makes me much closer to the mainstream. The increasing percentage of Australians choosing “No religion” on the census underscores that, but I’m pretty sure even before I quit “My religion is super important to me and I need to make everyone else Christians” was a small percentage of the population.

As a result, ten years later my stance on religion feels pretty unremarkable. It fits well with Australian culture. I’m comfortable with it. I’ve got nothing left to prove - and thus, ticking the box this year wasn’t that big a deal.

That’s not why I quit, of course - I quit because I decided none of it was true. I didn’t choose my religion to fit in with “the World” any more than I chose my sexuality, relationship status, leisure activities or housing just to fit in. Each of those things reflect a little of who I am, what I value, and how I see the world. And as a result each of them are also subject to change as I discover more about myself and make the choices I think will work best for me. I’m sure there are many ways in which I’m unusual, and I’m not planning to change them just to fit in better.

This is actually something that in a way I value about my Christadelphian upbringing: Learning to be myself and stand up for what I believe even when it’s unpopular. It’s just ironic that that can also be expressed in rejecting the religion when the majority of your family and friends are still part of it.

I have a stake in Australia

A major reason for doing the census is planning for future services needed - things like schooling, health care, and aged care. Religion is likely to have some influence on this - for example, self-declared Christians are more likely to want to send their kids to a Christian school and ultimately to go to a Christian aged care home.

As Christadelphians, we were in an awkward limbo - Jesus’ return was supposed to be any day now, so theoretically there was no need to plan years or decades ahead. And yet, by planning for their kids to qualify for a vocation and then let them loose on the world, parents were tacitly accepting that it might not be for a very long time. And any adult who had benefited from their parents planning for their education should realise that that long term planning is valuable if their apocalyptic expectations don’t come off. I personally am very glad that my parents valued education and learning, and that they supported me in making the choices that led to the job and career I have now.

It went further, though - Christadelphians were supposed to be “strangers and pilgrims”, citizens of a heavenly kingdom. Citizenship of Australia might have been convenient, but it wasn’t where our ultimate allegiance lay. Some parts of Australian citizenship were prohibited, perhaps most particularly voting. And Jesus’ return was supposed to sweep away our world and replace it, so we weren’t to get too attached.

I’m not a temporary resident of Australia waiting for a better world. I’m an Australian citizen, born and bred. That matters to me, and leaving the religion meant I was free to acknowledge that it matters to me.

When I talk about having a stake in Australia, this is part of it: Unless something significant changes, I expect to live the rest of my life in Australia and eventually die here. I expect to pay taxes for many years, and I expect to use government services for many years. I expect to vote for the people and parties I think best able to take Australia forward, and I expect the right to advocate for or against policies I have strong opinions about. I don’t expect some power outside Australia to step in one day and fix everything, and I certainly don’t owe allegiance to that separate power.

And so, when it comes to using government services, I expect not to want specifically religious services. For example, I don’t have any children - but if I did, I’d be hesitant to send them to a Christian school. Personally, I went to a Christian high school and overall had a good time there. But I feel it cocooned me and made things like belief in the Bible and rejection of evolution make sense (wasn’t that what everyone thought?).

I certainly don’t have plans to move to an aged care home any time soon - but if I were having to, I wouldn’t be choosing one because it was run by my religion. And in that I can see the contrast with some of my still-Christadelphian relatives. For them, the Christadelphian aged care home in Melbourne may be perfect - after all, many of the residents are fellow believers they’ve known most of their lives, and it also allows easier access to Christadelphian services and activities. But none of this would be true for me.

A done, not a none

In 2021, 38.9% of respondents said they had no religion, including me, and it will likely be higher in 2026. But that doesn’t mean that every respondent has the same reasons for giving that answer.

I was deeply involved in religion from childhood. I knew the Bible from cover to cover and still do (though the knowledge is a little rusty). As well as a Bible student, I’ve also been a lay preacher, a Bible software developer, and a missionary. And it still affects me today - after all, most people don’t run a blog in which they sometimes write on religious topics.

Leaving the religion was a difficult decision, and one that I worked through carefully. I find it hard to see what would get me to return to religion.

In the words of Neil Carter, I’m a Done, not a None. I’ve been there, done that, and got the T-shirt. I understand the religion better than many Nones, and have experiences with the problems of the religion that many Nones don’t have.

Some of those who put No Religion on the census will have left a strongly held religion, like I did. Some will have drifted away from a religious upbringing which was never very strongly held. Still others will have been raised without religion, and not really see the point. That’s all fine.

Lack of religion doesn’t define me

As I’ve discussed before, “Ex-Christian”, “Ex-Christadelphian”, “Atheist” and “Unbeliever” are all different labels that capture part of my life. Whether or not they’re captured on a census, they’re important to me. “No Religion” can easily be included in that list.

They tell something about me, and it’s something that might be useful for planning a future Australia with me in it. But they don’t define me, any more than my occupation, my use of leisure time, or my sexuality does. When considering where I spend my time, some of it will be thinking about or even writing about religion. But other time will be spent on non-religious writings, or on reading, or in the workplace, or hiking, or photography, or perhaps at a theatre, a museum, or an art gallery.

Some of those activities will be captured by census questions. Other activities won’t. When put together it’s likely that few Australians - if anyone - answered a majority of the census questions the same as I did, or use their time in exactly the same activities as me. And that’s fine.