Not losing faith: Cairns religious landscape thriving says faith leaders

Following newly-released census data revealing that Aussies are ‘losing their religion’, Cairns religious leaders disclose Far Northerners’ attitude about faith. SEE THE INTERACTIVE MAP.

CAIRNS religious leaders have disputed the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021 census data and insist that their congregations are keeping the faith.

The ABS has revealed the number of ‘non-religious’ Aussies is on the rise, but FNQ religious communities appear to going strong, with the number of attendees either remaining the same, or increasing.

The ABS data reported Australians identifying as ‘non-religious’ increased to 38.9 per cent, up from 29.6 per cent in 2016, with Christianity experiencing the largest decline of all religions in Queensland, falling from 2,635,351 in 2016 to 2,357,398 in 2021.

Catholic Bishop James Foley said the decline in people identifying as Christian is no surprise, but insisted these numbers aren’t directly correlated to the amount of church attendees.

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“The decline really is no surprise,” he said.

“Over the last 100 years there has been a growth in people saying that they have no religious affiliation, and that’s probably because for a long time, people would just tick the box and say ‘I’m Roman Catholic, I’m Anglican, Church of England or Protestant,’ that would have had very little connection with church life and church going.

“Now, understandably, many of those people decide after a couple of generations, well, I’ll just tick the box that says, no religious affiliation rather than claiming a nominal affiliation.”

Bishop Foley said in some instances, the pandemic helped increase attendance.

“I was live streaming services from the chapel and that was very effective, it probably reached more people than it would have reached by physical presence,” he said.

“I think that was a fairly general experience across churches and religious bodies.”

Cairns Baptist Church families pastor Jeremy DeVries, said the church had to adapt when Covid rules meant congregation numbers were restricted.

“Overall it’s been a blessing as we were not online before Covid,” he said.

“Now we are doing quite well, you can watch live on Facebook and we have podcasts through the website.”

Cairns campus pastor at Calvary Church Josh Douglas said contrary to what the census data shows, they’ve experienced a rise in attendance, especially among the youth with the addition of their Big Day Out school holiday program.

Attani Enosa (13), Luanna Grego (13), Israel Smith (9) and Kayem Kuman (9) at the Calvary Christian Church’s Big Day Out. Picture Emily Barker

“This year, in comparison to last year, we’ve seen a 98 per cent growth in attendance, so there’s definitely an increase, and lots of new people too” he said.

“It’s great to see so many kids coming along, and loving this environment, just last week we had 100 teenagers from Cairns that came to our youth camp.”

But Rabbi Ari Rubin says the 10 per cent increase of Queensland residents identifying as Jewish in the latest census, is not due to more people attending a synagogue, but because more Jews are now openly identifying with their beliefs.

Rabbi Ari Rubin is the only practising Jewish Rabbi in the Far North, servicing a region from Mackay to Cairns.

“I think, at least in the Jewish faith, they feel more comfortable identifying themselves as being Jewish, I think a lot of factors might come into play, especially with the public support of the swastika ban that happened recently,” he said.

“In regards to the wider trends of people losing the faith, I think what’s really happening is people are solidifying their faith, either they believe, or they don’t.

“You have the people that are on the fence that kind of went to church once in a while, but didn’t really believe it inside, so now, they’re just kind of are saying ‘screw it, I’m just gonna say I’m not religious’.

“On the other extreme, we now also have people who identify more strongly and I think with time, people are just going to lean more the extreme, either in identifying with the faith or not.

“But I don’t think there’s more of a trend, so to speak of people leaving, I think it’s just more of an identifying fact.”

Greek Orthodox Parish Cairns priest Father Menelaos Hatzoglou, agreed that there had not been an exodus from the church.

Fr Menelaos Hatzoglou, Parish Priest of St John the Baptist Parish of Cairns.

“I haven’t noticed any difference whatsoever, I’ve actually seen more people coming through,” he said.

“You get your weeks where you get a lot of people, sometimes you get a bit less because of Covid, but nothing to do with them not identifying as Christians or Orthodox.”

The newly released census data also shows a clear religious divide between the north and south of the Cairns area, with the region’s ‘Bible Belt’ surrounding the majority ‘non religious’ northern beaches, Port Douglas and Daintree.

Although a majority of suburbs in and around Cairns still identify as predominantly Christian, it’s only by a few people.

For some areas like Brinsmead, the difference between ‘no religion’ and all the other religions added up is on par.

However, the one standout locality in the region, Yarrabah, has less than 10 per cent of its population identifying as having “no religion”.

Originally published as Not losing faith: Cairns religious landscape thriving says faith leaders