Losing our religion: the inner-city suburbs where the faithless seek sanctuary

[GF Edward]

A heavenly sign, or the work of the devil? If you could look down from above on the parts of Sydney where most people told the 2016 census they had "no religion", the faithless have sought sanctuary in a cluster of suburbs with an uncanny resemblance to the Cross.

A rood of inner-city suburbs taking in Glebe, Newtown, Camperdown, Enmore, Redfern and Erskineville seem to have been losing their religion.

Father Peter Maher, Parish priest at St Joseph's Newtown. Photo: Anna Kucera

 

Erskineville is now officially Australia's most ungodly suburb.

Close to 55 per cent of people living in Erskineville said they had no religious affiliation in the 2016 census, just ahead of Melbourne's North Fitzroy.

Father Peter Maher at St Joseph's Newtown. Photo: Anna Kucera

 

Erskineville and the other inner suburbs that are proving a rust belt for the religion industries have a shared history in displacing the poor. They are all somewhat youthful, well paid and better educated than the people they priced out of town. 

 

Father Peter Maher, the parish priest at St Joseph's in Newtown, said when he first arrived nearly 20 years ago, the bulk of his parishioners were workers in low-paid jobs who were either single or had large families; many though attended Mass.

 

"Newtown had many boarding houses when I came. Of course they have been sold up for lots of money, and the people who bought them must be exhausted working to pay for them," he said.

 

"They don't seem to come to church. I guess affluence seems to squeeze out belief."

The inner-city suburbs have concentrations of the LGBTQIA community, but Fr Maher said many had not lost their religion and in fact bolstered the number of people attending services at St Joseph's.

"We hold a gay and lesbian service on Friday nights," he said.

"So our Mass attendances have remained pretty constant, although I guess the numbers are kept up by gays and lesbians coming from outside the parish to attend."

If youth, sexual identity and wealth are driving the rush from religion, how to explain the mid-north coast town of Bellingen, a mixed retirement/dropout/farming community, were nearly one in two residents told the census they had no religion?

Maybe they are just part of a trend where the number of Australians who said they had "no religion" in the census jumped to 30 per cent in 2016, from 22 per cent in 2011. Between 1911 and 2011, the number of Australians marking "no religion" on census papers rose from 0.4 per cent to 22.3 per cent.

But Australia is not only country growing increasingly godless.

The number of New Zealanders who refused to list religious affiliation in the 2013 census jumped from 35 per cent to 42 per cent.

The following year, 48.5 per cent of England and Wales marked "no religion", up from 25 per cent in 2011. In Scotland last year, 52 per cent said they had no religion; 17 years earlier 40 per cent of Scots had lost or not found god.

Some Australian commentators have partly attributed the 2016 increase in the "no religion" response to the option being moved to the top of the list of responses on the 2016 census form.

It used to sit on the bottom of the religion section.

Seizing on the change, the Atheist Foundation of Australia conducted a strong campaign last year urging Australians to mark "no religion" on the census form.

Not only did the atheists have apparent success in inner Sydney and Melbourne, but people in South and West Hobart and Canberra's inner suburbs clustered around the Australian National University lost faith or never found it.

But belief in god in various forms was alive and well in Sydney's south-west, where more than 80 per cent remain true believers.

The most religious live around Bossley Park and Abbotsbury where 88 per cent – largely Catholic, but with populations of Buddhists and Assyrian Apostolic – registered religious affiliations.

The original inhabitants are Australia's most faithful citizens.

Almost 90 per cent of Aboriginal communities on former missions Yarrabah (Anglican, far north Queensland) and the Tiwi Islands (Catholic, Northern Territory) said they had religion. So too did the descendants of the people of Palm Island in far north Queensland, who were rounded up after a cyclone 99 years ago and cared for by Anglican missionaries.

 

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/losing-our-religion-the-innercity-suburbs-where-the-faithless-seek-sanctuary-20170630-gx1yhj.html

Edited August 18, 2017 by South Edward

[Elena]