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Religion and Non-Religion among Australian Aboriginal Peoples
ISBN: 9781315604794
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Humanities; Social Sciences; Religion; Sociology & Social Policy; Religion in Context; World Religions; Sociology of Religion;

Offering a significant contribution to the emerging field of 'Non-Religion Studies', Religion and Non-Religion among Australian Aboriginal Peoples draws on Australian 2011 Census statistics to ask whether the Indigenous Australian population, like the wider Australian society, is becoming increasingly secularised or whether there are other explanations for the surprisingly high percentage of Aboriginal people in Australia who state that they have 'no religion'. Contributors from a range of disciplines consider three central questions: How do Aboriginal Australians understand or interpret what Westerners have called 'religion'? Do Aboriginal Australians distinguish being 'religious' from being 'non-religious'? How have modernity and Christianity affected Indigenous understandings of 'religion'? These questions re-focus Western-dominated concerns with the decline or revival of religion, by incorporating how Indigenous Australians have responded to modernity, how modernity has affected Indigenous peoples' religious behaviours and perceptions, and how variations of response can be found in rural and urban contexts.

James L. Cox is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh and Adjunct Professor in the Religion and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.

Adam Possamai is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Religion and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney.