Gary Bouma

• BA, MDiv, MA, PhD
• Chair at Monash University (Australia)

OPEN ACCESS CC BY-NC-ND-PAID African communities in Australia reflect the rich cultural and religious diversity of the African continent. Despite their persistence and agency, many members from these communities continue to experience a ‘fractured belonging’ due to persistent issues of racism and exclusion; issues that have been exacerbated during...

In 2020, as infections of COVID-19 began to rise, Australia, alongside many other nations, closed its international borders and implemented lockdown measures across the country. The city of Melbourne was hardest hit during the pandemic and experienced the strictest and longest lockdown worldwide. Religious and spiritual groups were especially affec...

Large-scale population studies surveying young people in relation to their worldviews have tended to frame their identities in a fixed and limited capacity while also treating the topics of religion/spirituality and sexuality/gender as discrete categories of scholarly analysis. We highlight the affordances and limitations of foregrounding fixed rel...

Recent scholarly and media perspectives on religion and youth have often depicted young people as being apathetic when it comes to religion. The methods used in research on religion are also typically informed by outdated, fixed idea of religious identity that are no longer applicable, especially to young people. This paper confronts these issues b...

Ongoing global issues relating to the decline of the popularity of institutional religions, the rise of numbers of non-religious persons, and new models of spirituality in superdiverse societies have resulted in the need to reconceptualise religious diversity as worldviews diversity, and to critically examine increasing calls for the provision of w...

This paper argues for a reconsideration of social cohesion as an analytical concept and a policy goal in response to increasing levels of religious diversity in contemporary Australia. In recent decades, Australian has seen a revitalization of religion, increasing numbers of those who do not identify with a religion (the “nones”), and the growth of...

Australia is a culturally, religiously and linguistically diverse country, however, learning about the religious dimensions of this superdiversity is inadequately reflected in the national school curriculum, notwithstanding recent attempts to address this at the state level in Victoria. Debates regarding the role of religion in school have raged ac...

In a context of increasing ethnic and religious diversity, Australia’s future prosperity may depend, in part, on the ability to maintain social cohesion. Drawing on the framework developed by the Scanlon Foundation Social Cohesion Research Program, this study examines data from the 2016 National Church Life Survey and the 2016 Australian Community...

Since the mid-2000s soft power approaches to counter and prevent violent extremism (C/PVE) have increasingly been implemented by civil society, state actors and UN agencies internationally. Education is a critical and previously undervalued component in PVE, as it has only recently begun to attract significant scholarly and policy attention. This a...

This study examines diversity in how different religious groups and people with different levels of religiosity see the value and roles of women in Australian society through an examination of their gender beliefs. This addresses a significant gap in knowledge in the Australian scholarship in religious diversity and the impact of religion in family...

In 2017, the Australian Government commissioned a national vote on same-sex marriage legislation, which elicited substantial debates dominated by religious voices. We examine the associations between religious identification, the importance of religion to one’s life and frequency of attendance at religious services and support for same-sex couples...

The use of intercultural dialogue (ICD) to promote intergroup understanding and respect is considered as a key to reduce tensions and the likelihood of conflict. This paper argues that understanding the differences among religions – those between packaged and lived religion – enhances the chances of success and makes the effort more challenging. Re...

The 2016 Australian Census reveals continued change in Australia’s religious diversity. While reviewing some of the highlights of this develop- ment-the continuing increase in the ʼno religion’ category, the first ever decline in Catholic numbers, and the rise of Hindus and Sikhs-several reli- gious groups, which are not usually combined in the cens...

The Research Process, sixth edition, is an easy-to-use introduction to research methods. The book emphasizes the process of research in an accessible and readable way, taking a non-statistical and non-mathematical approach for new students.This book will guide students through the research process, analysing and demonstrating a variety of research...

One of the critical factors shaping any understanding of the reception of Islam and Muslims in the West is an overarching anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim discourse. Basic elements include the insistence that Islam is a violent religion, promotes coercive forms of conversion, grew by the sword, is associated with heightened sexuality and perverted prac...

As societies have become religiously diverse in ways and extents not familiar in the recent histories of most, the issues of how to include this diversity and how to manage it, that is, questions about how to be a religiously diverse society have come to the fore. As a result religion has become part of the social policy conversation in new ways. I...

Narratives like paradigms offer explanations of some aspects of life which are largely self-contained, self-sustaining, self-validating, and impervious to disconfirming evidence. Anti-Islam discourses in the West and anti-Western discourses among Muslims are two such discourses. That such discourses can legitimate violence is clearly evident in the...

Religious diversity and social cohesion have long been seen to be at odds with each other. Classical sociology, grounded in the Westphalian solution to religious conflict in Europe presumed that a single religion was necessary for social cohesion. The issue of religious diversity and social cohesion has come to the fore as once religiously monochro...

The sociology of religion has been a moderately strong theme in Australian sociology. Most Australian sociologists of religion have been trained in Australia with a smattering of those trained in the USA, the UK or elsewhere. While Christian churches once maintained research offices including sociologists and some seminaries once included the socio...

The debate about same-sex marriage in Australia is used as a lens through which to examine the challenges to social policy debates produced by increases in religious diversity, on the one hand, and the re-entry of religious voices in the public sphere on the other. Moreover, it has now become necessary for non-religious so called secular voices, on...

Mapping and measuring religious diversity has become critical to the management of interreligious relations in the 21st century. The data about religious identification provided by the Australian census since the formation of Federal Government in Australia, and prior to that in the Colonies, has provided detailed information about the extent of an...

Religious Diversity both within and between religious groups has long challenged Anglicans. The demographics of religious diversity shape interreligious relations. Societies where one group dominates numerically and adds to this cultural domination and state support are very different from societies where no one group dominates. In Australia, Angli...

Religious Diversity both within and between religious groups has long challenged Anglicans. The demographics of religious diversity shape interreligious relations. Societies where one group dominates numerically and adds to this cultural domination and state support are very different from societies where no one group dominates. In Australia, Angli...

The essentialization of identity coupled with its confused association with loyalty has ensured that issues related to identity are at the forefront of politics, and are used as a platform to generate moral panics which are fuelled by the mass corporate media. Different socio-political contexts affect identity construction among Turkish Muslims in...

The increase in religious diversity produced by the global movement of people and cultures and the proliferation of internal difference within religious communities raises social policy issues. Consideration of these issues is facilitated by understanding that religious groups intersect with social policy in four basic ways: as objects, sources, cr...

One of the critical factors shaping any understanding of the reception of Islam and Muslims in the West is an overarching anti-Islam and anti-Muslim discourse. This article takes Islamophobia to refer to a discourse that reifies and essentializes negative images of Islam, Muslims and their cultures, resulting in unfounded fear of actual Muslims. Th...

New Caledonia is a set of islands and atolls in the Pacific Ocean located about 2,000 km northeast of Sydney of which the main island is Grand Terre. Other islands within New Caledonia are the Loyalty Islands group, the Ile des Pins and the Belep archipelago. New Caledonia is a ‘special territorial entity in the French republic’ (SBS 2004; Zocca 20...

All nations have religions whose adherents might be called ‘religious minorities’. In Australia, a mainly Christian nation (ABS 2007a) Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism, are ‘minority religions’ because relatively small numbers of people adhere to these religions. As groups, adherents of minority religions may be socially vulnerable to marginalisation or...

Palau is in the Northern Pacific ocean located South East of the Philippines. It is the most western part of the Caroline Islands and has over 300 islands in six groups. Its area is relatively small at 458 km2 and is about two and a half times bigger than Washington DC (CIA 2008). It is a constitutional republic (SBS Palau 2004). The estimated popu...

Tuvalu is a chain of nine coral atolls in the central Pacific lying north of Fiji. The largest island is Vaitupu while the capital island is Fanafuti. The islands are spread over an area that is 580 km in length and covers 26.6 km2. In size and position, Tuvalu is ‘one of the smallest and most remote countries on Earth’ (CIA 2008; Tenten 2006). The...

The Northern Marianas lie in the Pacific Ocean above the equator and include 14 islands. The main islands are Rota, Tinian and Saipan. In 2006 the estimated population was 86,600, median age being 30 years and life expectancy 76.5 years (BBCNews 2008; CIA 2008). The Northern Marianas form a political unit that has a very close relationship, indeed...

The Marshall Islands are a chain of 30 atolls and 1,152 islands in the North Pacific Ocean. The estimated population in 2008 was 63,200 with median age of 21 years and life expectancy of 71 years. The overwhelming ethnic group is Marshallese at 92.1% who are of Micronesian stock. The official languages are Marshallese and English. There are major c...

Nauru is a phosphate-rich island in the South Pacific located 42 km south of the Equator (DFAT 2008). It is 21 km2 in area and is ‘one of the world’s smallest independent, democratic states’ (DFAT 2008). Nauru’s population is estimated to be 13,800 in 2008 with ethic groups being Nauruan 58%, other Pacific Islanders 26%; Chinese, 8% and Europeans,...

French Polynesia is a set of archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean that lie across over 5 million km2 or the area of Western Europe. The country has five major island groups: Tubai Islands; Tuamotu Archipelago; Society Islands, Gambier Islands and the Marquesas Islands. Within these there are also minor island groups such as the Austral Islands. The ma...

Malaysia’s territory spreads between two major land masses with a total area of 329,750 km2. Apart from some small islands Malaysia consists of West Malaya on the Malay Peninsula and East Malaya which is a large section of the island of Borneo. The population in 2007 was 27.2 million (DSM 2007) 42% of whom lived in urban areas (SBS 2007). Malaysia...

Japan has a long history of religious and spiritual diversity. Besides its own indigenous and folk religions Japan has assimilated religions and spiritual views such as Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism and Christianity and shown a significant propensity to germinate ‘new’ religious groups. Historically Japan is a nation where religions are constantly...

The Democratic Republic of Timor Leste takes up the east side, and a small section of the north-west coast of the island of Timor, which is about 430 km from north of Australia. The word, ‘Timor Leste’ is a Portuguese term and the country is also referred to in Tetum as ‘Timor Lorosa’e’. In the island’s long history, invaders and migrants have arri...

The idea of competition between religious groups may seem awkward or even disrespectful of religion. However, like commercial organisations, biological organisms and sports teams, religious groups operate in environments where they compete to survive, consolidate and adapt to change. Competitive action by religious groups can include public critici...

Among the many aspects of religion within the Southeast Asia and Pacific region that today command attention, two things stand out. The first, as this book amply demonstrates, is that there is a very full and rich diversity of religious identity, expression and life present in the region. Indeed, the religious milieu of most nations is impressively...

Sri Lanka is an island republic of about 65,000 km2 located 22 miles south of India. (CIA 2008; ABC Radio Australia 2008) In 2005 the population was 20,743,000 (United Nations Statistics Division 2008). Sri Lanka has been a multi-ethnic and multi-faith society for two millennia and currently has three national languages Sinhala, Tamil and English....

The Philippines is an archipelago of over 7,000 islands with a total population of about 80 million people. The Philippines were ruled by Spain from the late 1500s, the United States from 1902 and the Japanese for 3 years of World War II. It then gained independence from the United States in 1946 (Government of the Philippines 2007a). The two large...

Known also as ‘the Friendly Islands’ (CIA 2008), Tonga has about 170 islands in an area comparable to that of Japan. Religiously, Tonga is a ‘deeply conservative Christian country’ BBCNews (2008). The 2006 census reports Tonga’s population as 101,991 with a median age of 22 years and life expectancy of 70 (Tonga Department of Statistics 2009). Almo...

The Solomon Islands are a chain of 922 islands and atolls (AusAid 2007) east of Papua New Guinea. The major islands are Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Malaita, Santa Isabel, Choiseul and Makira (Global Education 2007). The capital city is Honiara. The CIA’s (CIA 2008) estimate of the national population for 2007 was 566,842 with a median age of only 19....

Australia is, as of the 2006 census, a multi-ethnic nation of 19.8 million people (ABS 2007a). European colonisation began in 1788 when Britain created a convict settlement in the area of modern Sydney and continues to be a migrant destination country. For the previous 50,000 years Australia was inhabited by Indigenous people (Roberts et al. 1994)...

Aotearoa–New Zealand is a nation in the southern Pacific comprising two main islands. A former British colony it became a self governing dominion in 1926 accepting full independence in 1947 (SBS 2004). The 2006 Census reports that New Zealand’s population was approximately 4 million of whom 67.6% described their ethnicity as ‘European’, 14.6% as Ma...

Singapore is a rapidly changing city state with a significant transient population. The 2000 Census counted 4.02 million people, 18% of whom were non-residents. Between the last two Censuses in 1990 and 2000 the resident population increased from 2,735,900 to 3,263,200 or by 19.2%. For the 2000 Census Singapore’s major ethnic groups were Chinese 76...

Kiribati is a group of atolls and islands on the equator. Formerly called the Gilbert Islands Kiribati accepted independence from Britain in 1979 when it also became a republic. In the same year Kiribati also acquired the nearby Phoenix and Line Islands from the United States. Kiribati is geographically dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres...

The Cook Islands lie in the South Pacific Ocean and are about 240 mi2 in area. There are 15 islands in the group and the capital is Avarua, on the island of Rarotonga (CIA 2008; SBS 2004). The 2008 estimated population is almost 22,000 people most of who are Maori-Polynesian and live in the southern eight islands. The median age in 2001 was 25 year...

Thailand is a constitutional monarchy on the western Indo Chinese Peninsula. Formerly Siam, Thailand has 73 provinces and borders Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia. In 2004 Thailand’s population was about 64.9 million. In the same year, 75% of the population were ethnic Thai, 14% ethnic Chinese and the other 11% were Khmer, Mon and Indigenous (S...

Samoa is a mainly Polynesian nation whose territory comprises nine volcanic islands. It is located roughly 3,000 km north-east of Auckland, New Zealand. Two islands, Savai’i and Upolu, comprise 99% of the nation’s territory (BBCNews 2007). The capital is Apia. Formerly known as Western Samoa and located near to modern American Samoa the territory a...

Fiji is an archipelago of 332 islands and 500 islets lying north of Auckland, New Zealand by approximately 1,770 km. The largest and most populated islands are Vitu Levu and Vanua Levu. In 2007 Fiji’s Census counted a population of 835,230, almost evenly distributed between urban and rural areas. The major ethic group at 57.0% were Indigenous Fijia...

The unanticipated rise of religious diversity and the re-entry of religion to the public sphere have radically increased the need and demand for education about religions – how they contribute to social and cultural capital – and about the management of religious diversity. The global movement of people and cultures has brought religious diversity...

Religious diversity is now a social fact in most countries of the world. While reports of the impact of religious diversity on Europe and North America are reasonably well-known, the ways in which Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific are religiously diverse and the ways this diversity has been managed are not. This book addresses this lack of informatio...

In Southeast Asia and the Pacific, as in the rest of the world, it is undeniable that women form the major part of members of faith communities, yet invariably the formal organizations of these communities are predominantly run by men. How does the differing experience of men and of women in communities of faith in the region influence the growth o...

Indonesia is an archipelago of over 17,500 islands. Of its 245 million people, 86% – about 210 million – are Muslim which is the largest population of Muslims in any single nation (CIA 2007; Encyclopædia Britannica 2007). Since colonial independence in 1945 Indonesia has been a secular state that recognises religious freedom. The preamble of the 19...

Vanuatu is located over 2,000 km north east from Sydney, Australia, and has a total area of 14,800 km2. It has 13 islands and 70 islets. The majority of the population lives on the four main islands of Tanna, Efate and Espiritu Santo. The capital, Port Vila, is on Efate. Vanuatu frequently has volcanic eruptions and earthquakes (BBCNews 2008; CIA 2...

The Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) is a 1,700 mi section of the Caroline Islands which lie north of the equator in the Pacific Ocean between Palau and the Marshall Islands. FSM’s 607 islands constitute four states: Yap is the most western; Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae, the most eastern. The capital city and seat of national government is Paliki...

Brunei Darussalam means ‘Brunei, Abode of Peace’. Known more simply as ‘Brunei’, the nation is a small, young and prosperous coastal state of almost 5,800 km2 on the island of Borneo. Islam is Brunei’s official religion, and ‘plays a central role in the life of every Muslim in Brunei Darussalam’ (Trumbull 1984; SBS Brunei 2007; Government of Brunei...

Papua New Guinea (PNG) includes the eastern half of the large island of New Guinea and about 600 surrounding islands. Larger islands are Bougainville, Buka, New Britain, New Ireland and Manus. PNG’s estimated population in 2008 was just under 5.8 million. The last Census in 2006 found the population to be largely regional with only about 16% living...

The nature of the settlement and integration of Muslims in Australia has been of interest to government, media and the general population for a number of years, and yet comparatively little evidence-based research has been conducted on the hopes, aspirations, concerns and worries of Muslim Australians themselves. This report is a first step in addr...

This article on religious diversity questions the utility of the nation-state as the primary focus of the analysis of contemporary forms of this phenomenon, which is mostly global. Notwithstanding its increasingly complex nature, the discussion maintains that religious diversity offers the researcher a useful conceptual tool for examining how chang...

In the wake of terrorist attacks and increased social and cultural diversity, many societies, particularly post-industrial societies, are concerned about social cohesion. The rise of religious diversity, the resurgence of religious life and the return of religious issues to the political sphere are seen as part of the problem, but in so far as this...

Challenging the view of Islamic extremists and critics of Islam, this book explores the very topical issue of Islam's compatibility with democracy. It examines: principles of Islam's political theory and the notion of democracy therein. the notion of democracy in medieval and modern Muslim thought. Islam and human rights. the contribution of Islami...

The unanticipated rise of religious diversity and the re-entry of religion to the public sphere have radically increased the need and demand for education about religions – how they contribute to social and cultural capital – and about the management of religious diversity. The global movement of people and cultures has brought religious diversity...

This project documented the impact of international events on community relations and identified processes and models which can be used by a range of stakeholders to protect and support community relations whien global and local crises may lead to tensions between communities in Australia.

This project explores issues, challenges and successes surrounding the settlement and social integration of Muslim settlers in Cobram, Moira Shire in Victoria. It looks at relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims particularly in regard to services, programs and resources that have been offered to assist settlement and promote social cohesion.

Australian Soul challenges the idea that religious and spiritual life in Australia is in decline. This fascinating book describes the character of religious and spiritual life in Australia today, and argues that, far from petering out, religion and spirituality are thriving. Gary Bouma, the leading expert on the state of religious life in Australia...

A persistent interest in the scientific study of religion has been to assess the impact of religious beliefs and values on human behavior and social structure. The methodological prerequisites for making such an assessment, including the criteria for valid causal inference, are described. Attempts by American social scientists to determine the impa...

Drawing on data from Australia's 1996 and 2001 Census of Population and Housing, this paper enumerates and examines the distribution of Victoria's population according to people's religious identification. The number of both Christians and non-Christians increased over this five-year period, but the Christian proportion of the Victorian population...

: The study of the management of religious diver-sity has largely proceeded non-comparatively at national and organizational levels. As a result it is not yet possible to declare what promotes and what hinders the emergence of harmonious inter-religious relations in religiously diverse societies. This article compares the management of religious di...

This paper investigates how Islamic doctrine conceives the place of work by outlining the notion of an Islamic work ethic and by discussing a number of human resource issues in relation to Islam. Knowledge of these issues has become an urgent need given the high level of discrimination Muslim workers suffer in modern workplaces. The paper argues th...

The amount of religious and spiritual activity in a society is usually estimated by surveys, census data, participant records, and membership data. Most of these do not provide a comparison of religious with other activities and suffer from significant halo effects. Time–budget data provide the basis for estimating religious activity as a percentag...

Religious settlement refers to the process whereby a religion moves from one place to another and becomes incorporated into the religious economy of the new place. In this process, both the migrating religion and the society in which it settles are changed. This process, described in detail by several studies, results in an increase in religious di...

Rev. Ed Bibliogr. na konci kapitol

New religions, both those arriving by way of the cultural baggage of migrants and those which are part of the panoply of recent New Religious Movements and the New Age, have challenged and changed Australia's religious demography, but have been incorporated into Australian society in a comparatively peaceable way due to Australia's very tolerant re...