Religious demographics in Melbourne, Australia

On the face of it, it might look like Melbourne has become less religious. Just under half of us are Christian.

But there are still pockets where the faith is strong - very strong.

In the city’s north-west, something of a ‘‘Bible ring’’ has formed in the suburbs surrounding Melbourne Airport and Essendon Airport, where about two thirds of the population are Christian.

With 71 per cent of its population adhering to Christianity, Keilor is Melbourne's most Christian suburb. It's surrounded by suburbs with a similarly high proportion of Christians, such as Taylors Lakes (70 per cent), Keilor East (68 per cent) and Gladstone Park (63 per cent).

The new pastor of Gladstone Park’s Church of the Good Shepherd, Father Dishan Candappa, said he was becoming used to the much larger congregation sizes in the north-west.

“We get an average of 1300 to 1400 people coming to Masses over Saturday and Sunday,” he said. “That’s compared to 320 at my previous parish in Blackburn South.”

Demographer Glenn Capuano, of consultancy .id, said the inner north-west had a high proportion of Christians because it was home to a large number of migrants from Orthodox Christian and Catholic backgrounds.

Father Candappa, who has been at the Gladstone Park parish for three months, said he had been blown away by the area’s community spirit.

“This parish has been exceptional. The warmth and acceptance has been pretty much immediate,” he said. “If you have a community that you belong to in your church, then you are more likely to keep coming back and spend extra time to help the church yourself.”

But a high proportion of people identifying as Christian in the census in an area does not necessarily translate to large numbers attending religious services, says Philip Hughes, a research fellow at Alphacrucis College.

“In the western and northern suburbs, you tend to get high levels of identification, but comparatively low levels of involvement,” Dr Hughes said. “In the eastern suburbs, you get much higher levels of involvement, but lower levels of identification.”

Dr Hughes, who has researched trends in religion for more than 30 years, said suburbs in Melbourne’s east that were traditionally known as the city’s ‘‘Bible belt’’ had a high level of involvement among residents. This was despite the proportion of Christian residents not being as high as in some other suburbs.

A map of the common religion by area shows that Christianity is the predominant religion in vast stretches of Greater Melbourne.

People claiming  ''no religion'' form the majority in a cluster of trendy inner-city suburbs such as Brunswick, Northcote, St Kilda and Richmond. Mr Capuano said that was because large numbers of young people call these areas home, and they tended to be less religious than their parents and grandparents.

There are also pockets of atheists and agnostics in the Dandenong Ranges, as well as in Clayton and in Box Hill.

Islam is the main religion in Dallas, Broadmeadows and Meadow Heights in Melbourne’s north, as well as Dandenong in the city’s south-east.

Judaism is most common belief system in the Caulfield area, while Buddhism predominates in just one suburb - Springvale South.