The multifaith city in an era of post-secularism : the complicated geographies of Christians, non-Christians and non-faithful across Sydney, Australia

There has been a good deal of conceptual debate, especially in western countries, about how best to characterize recent trends in religiosity and belief. In the 1960s and 1970s, the growth in atheism and religious indifference was perceived as secularization, an anticipated long-running consequence of modernism and the decline of Christianity (Cox 1965 ). But in the 1980s and 1990s there have been returns to faith in many western nations, sometimes as a sustained trend, sometimes haltingly. This gave rise to suggestions that there was a de-secularization occurring. More latterly, the term “post-secular” has been coined to describe an era in which there are co-existent trends towards faith and away from faith. These trends are uneven across time, and also space. Religiosity and secularism vary across the globe (Casanova 2006 ; Davie 2006 ); it varies within nations and even across cities (Stevenson et al. 2010 ). But religiosity and secularism are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts, and could easily co-exist. Adding to this complexity, there are new trends within religiosity, with the rise of popular religions, hyper-religions and new age faiths (Possamai 2005 ). And, in countries like Australia, there is a growth of faiths associated with immigration, including non-Christian religions like Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. Immigration also feeds the growth of some Christian denominations, reviving congregations and generating new infrastructure and practices. Finally, the ancient continent of Australia retains numerous Indigenous faiths associated with the hundreds of Aboriginal language groups. These faiths include cosmologies, art and oral tradition. They also involve ceremony associated with daily life, intercultural relations and cross-species respect. Even the embracing concept of post-secularism struggles to contemplate the above diversity.