Sydney, Australia - More Australians are marrying outside their religion. Second- and third-generation family members are increasingly willing to walk down the aisle with people of other faiths.
Monash University research has found Christians have the highest rates of intermarriage, particularly with other Christian denominations, while emerging religions such as Hinduism and Islam have the lowest.
About 60 per cent of Presbyterian men and women had married someone of another faith, followed by more than 43 per cent of Uniting Church members, 41 per cent of Anglicans and more than 37 per cent of Catholics.
By comparison, 10 per cent of Hindus had married out of their faith along with just 8 per cent of Muslim men and 6 per cent of Muslim women.
A researcher, Genevieve Heard, said as Australia became a more secular society, the role of religion in some individuals' lives would also change.
"It doesn't mean an absence of religion; it means the withdrawal of religion from everyday life and practices, including partnering," she said.
The research, which appeared in last month's edition of the People and Place journal, analysed 2001 and 2006 census data. According to the 2006 census, 64 per cent of Australians identified as Christian, but this was a drop of 7 per cent from a decade earlier. Instead, non-Christian faiths experienced a rise, as did people identifying with no religion at all.
Dr Heard said smaller religious communities, especially those tied to emerging migrant groups such as Muslims and Hindus, had not had as long to establish themselves as those of Christian faiths.
Many were still in the first-generation phase of their settlement and so their second and third generations were yet to test the intermarriage theory.
"It would be unfair to say of more recently arrived religions that people of that religion are not mixing as well, because they haven't had the chance. But it will be interesting to see whether they all follow the same path."