Australians Lose Their Faith
By Shani Raja http://blogs.wsj.com/dispatch/2012/06/21/australians-lose-their-faith/ Australia is turning its back on religion. That’s the latest finding from a census completed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which shows more than one-fifth of the nation’s 21.5 million inhabitants now claim to follow no religion at all. Compare that with the first census taken a century ago, when a broadly similar grouping—including agnostics and atheists—made up just 0.3% of the 4.5 million population. Or with the U.S., where a comparable 2008 survey found just 1.5% claiming not to follow a faith. Australia’s 4.8 million nonreligious in the 2011 census was also about a million more than was recorded five years earlier at the last national headcount. Proponents of religion frequently promote it as a route to happiness. But in Australia, whose prosperity has soared in recent years thanks to a mining boom fueled by developing Asia, some believe it might be the country’s rising level o...