Responding to the census question on religion

For many years, the religion question on the Census has been "What is this person's religion?" It is a flawed question because it assumes that every person is religious. No pussy footing around with polite inquiries such as, "Excuse me, does this person happen to have a religion? Nothing as simple and direct as, "Is this person religious?"

In the last census, about 64 per cent of us ticked a box identifying us as members of a Christian religion yet other research suggests that the number of Australians who are religious — any sort of religious — is much lower than that.

The Humanist Society of Scotland reports that in response to the census question, "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?" 42 per cent of the adult population in Scotland said 'None'. But when the question was re-phrased as, "Are you religious?", 56 per cent said 'No', 8 per cent said 'Don't know' and 1 per cent skipped the question. Only 35 per cent said 'Yes'.

Note that the Scottish census question, already a huge improvement on ours because it implies that you don't have a religion unless you are part of a religious body or group, still overestimates the percentage of the population who say yes when asked the simple, straight forward question, "Are you religious?"

It's not just the coercive question that introduces error into the Australian census; it's the lack of definition about what having a religion means. Of the 9 religions that respondents can tick, all but two — Buddhism and Islam — are Christian. Most of those who get counted as a Christian in Australia do so by ticking one of these boxes: Catholic, Anglican (Church of England), Uniting Church, Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox, Baptist and Lutheran. It is also possible to tick ‘Other – please specify’ and write in a different Christian religion.

The question arises, what is a Catholic, Anglican, Uniting, etc? Do you need to believe what the religion teaches and do what it says, including attending regular worship? Or is it enough to just feel a bit Catholic, Anglican or Uniting? Or is it enough to have been brought up as one of them? Many of the people who tick one of these boxes probably shouldn't?

Most Christian religions pretty much accept the beliefs of the Nicene Creed so it seems reasonable to say that people who reject any of the Nicean beliefs could hardly call themselves Christians. Let's look at some of them:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. So to be a Christian, you certainly used to need to be a creationist and Christians who like the overwhelming logic of evolution by natural selection will need some wiggle room here. But that's alright because the smart churches are furiously revising their theology to give their rational members room to wriggle.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God…being of one substance with the Father. Christians need to accept that Jesus and God are one and the same while being quite different persons at the same time. None of this namby-pamby 'Jesus was just a man' nonsense.

Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. The problem here is with what is implied. Salvation from what? What most Christians seem to regard as the definitive Christian belief is that we all need to be saved from the eternal damnation that we deserve because one of our ancestors disobeyed God, thereby inflicting every human being ever born or yet to be born, Christian and non-Christian alike, with original, ancestral or inherited sin; but that fortunately for us, God realised that he could find it within himself to let us off the hook by following a process that involved his producing a son who would be man enough to be able to succumb to a pretty gory death while remaining God enough to be able to spring back to life after a couple of days. (It would be interesting to know what ex-PM Howard really thought about the Christian belief in inherited sin.)

On census night, those who have no qualms about accepting all of this and everything else that the Christian religions insist is true, will have no trouble with the religion question. But the not-so-sure Christians will need to think long and hard about a couple of questions: If I don't believe all of that, can I honestly claim to be a Catholic, Anglican, Uniting Church? If I don't believe all of that but still believe in some kind of God, what do I do?

It would be reassuring to think that people who can't accept the essential beliefs of Christianity would be honest enough to say that they weren't really Christians. Here's how they could proceed:

If they are not really religious — don't attend a place of worship except for funerals and weddings and never really think much about God — tick the ‘No religion’ box.

If they are not religious in the sense of being a regular church-goer but do feel that there is a God, perhaps even one a bit like the Christian God, tick ‘Other – please specify’ and write in ‘Theism’. A theist is a person who believes that God pretty much created everything and maintains an interest in what we all do with what he created, but who doesn't accept original sin, salvation, miracles, the resurrection, heaven and hell and all that.

If they are not religious in the sense of being a regular church attender but have a suspicion that that there must have been a God to get everything started, tick, ‘Other – please specify’ and write in ‘Deism’. A deist is a person who believes there was a God that created everything but that has no interest in us or what we did with it.

If you accept all essential Christian beliefs and you attend a church regularly to worship your God, that church is your religion, so tick its box. To do anything else would be inaccurate.

If you are not able to accept all the essential Christian beliefs, and you are not a Muslim or a Buddhist, but you still have strong religious feelings, tick ‘Other – please specify’ and write in what you believe in.

Don't try to be a smarty pants by writing in a nonsense religion. That will still get you counted as religious and mark you as dumb. If you are not really a religious person, tick the ‘No religion’ box. To do anything else would be dishonest.