2021 Census: Toowoomba Catholic, Anglican, Muslim religious leaders react to loss of believers

Toowoomba is the Bible Belt of Queensland, but the influence of its religious institutions is waning if the latest census is anything to go by. Here’s how they plan to try and win some back.

Toowoomba religious leaders (from left) Professor Shahjahan Khan; Bishop Robert McGuckin; Bishop Cam Venables.

Toowoomba has earned its reputation as the Bible Belt of Queensland — but not even the Garden City is immune to Australia’s growing secularism.

The city’s religious leaders have now responded to new data from the 2021 Census, which revealed nearly one in three people (31.7 per cent) in the Toowoomba region identify as non-religious.

When broken up into their separate denominations, secular people are now the plurality of the region’s 173,000 residents.

Just 10 years ago, this number was 15 per cent, and in 2001 it was fewer than one in 10 residents.

Toowoomba’s three biggest Christian sects — Catholicism, Anglicanism and Methodism (Uniting Church) — have seen a severe drop in numbers since the last census in 2016.

While Christianity as a faith is still the majority for now, both the Anglican and Catholic Churches recognise the trends and foresee a future Toowoomba where most residents have no religious affiliation.

Cam Venables, who is the Anglican Bishop for the Western region, said the organisation had been tracking church attendances and demographics for nearly a decade.

“People who were nominally identifying with a church are now choosing not to, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been declines in church attendances,” he said.

“We’ve done some good forensic work, so we have charted the trend and demographics over our congregations.

“The majority of Anglicans are older, not younger, and there’s a gap within the 20-30 year-olds.”

Bishop Venables said the church needed to be clear in its purpose and proactive in reaching younger generations.

“Historically people went to church to find a sense of community, and people now find communities in other places,” he said.

“The church is not providing what it once did, it doesn’t tell the story that it once did.

“Having clarity of purpose is a really important thing — sometimes Christian churches can be fuzzy about what they’re about.

“We need to be proactive and not wait for the last person to die and then we switch off the lights.”

Toowoomba Catholic Diocese Bishop Robert McGuckin acknowledged the trends away from religion, he said the church was taking steps to try and counter it.

“Our churches need to look at how to attract people,” he said.

“We don’t prosthlytise while we’re out there, we’re a bit slow at saying that we’re Catholics — we normally hope that people will think they want to be part of this.

“We’re trying to make our communities welcoming and caring, (but) we need to reach out to other people.

“We recently had the ordination of our two young priests (Nathan Webb and Brian Redondo), so we hope this will be a change.”

Ordination of Nathan Webb (left) and Brian Redondo (right) with Bishop Robert McGuckin at St Patrick’s Cathedral. Picture: Nev Madsen.

Bishop McGuckin said even if people didn’t follow a religion, he hoped they would follow the values of Christianity in their everyday life.

“Spirituality among young people, although they might not register themselves as Catholic, they do follow the gospel of Christianity,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s unexpected, even if people are non-religious, I hope there are some of the Christian values they are living themselves by.

Away from Christianity, organised religion is in a flux across Toowoomba.

While the region’s Hindu, Budhist, Sikh and Yazidi populations have increased since 2016, the number of Muslims has stagnated in that time.

Islamic Society of Toowoomba president Professor Shahjahan Khan said he would love to see a designated school for Muslim children.

“When kids start going to school, we don’t have an Islamic school in Toowoomba — that’s what we need to work on to maintain our population,” he said.

Professor Khan said greater scrutiny on religious institutions’ past and current abuses of power could also be contributing to a drop in people’s faiths.

“Many young people are choosing not identify themselves with any religion — this is due to scrutiny on the activities of religious organisations, that could be part of it,” he said.

The Humanist Society of Queensland was contacted for comment.