Are the TV people right?

The Census data is out now!

Headline stats

The fraction of Australians who identify as Christian has gone from 61.1% to 52.1%.
"No religion" at 30.1% is now higher than any one denomination.
Catholics is highest with 22.6%.

My stats

I compared denominations. e.g. Catholics went from 25.3 to 22.6%, shrinking by a tenth.

Here is each denomination's shrinkage over 5 years.
Catholics: 10.7% smaller
Anglicans: 22.2% smaller
Uniting Church: 26% smaller
Presbyterian & Reformed: 17.9% smaller
Eastern Orthodox: 19.2% smaller
Other Christian: 2.4% smaller

TV people guessing

The TV talk that suggested that the child abuse crimes played a big part in the decrease seems to off-base given that the Catholic church (the most publicised during the child abuse investigations) showed the smallest decrease. The 'Other Christian' is a mixed bag of various small denomination and people who write just "Christian".

The ABC does a great interactive visualisation of the census - This is Australia as 100 People. Here's a screenshot of the religion bit.

Time ticking for Uniting Church

The Uniting Church is now just 4 dots. Even that is generous. It is 3.7% of Australia, down from 5.1% last time. This is not new news.

It is the church's biggest drop so far, and since 1991 it loses about one dot per census.

With just 4 dots left, its future is interesting.
Perhaps my projection of a 2041 end was too generous.