For whom the Mayor prays
Every Hills Shire Council ordinary meeting begins with an address and/or prayer from an invited guest pastor or minister or other religious representative. But the chances are about 50/50 that they are not praying for you …
We were very curious to learn how well the exclusively Christian prayer ritual at Hills Shire Council meetings reflects the religious beliefs of Hills Shire residents.
The 2021 census revealed the following about the religious affiliation of people in the Hills Shire:
51.4% identified broadly as Christian (down from 61% in 2016)
17.6% identified broadly as Non Christian (up from 11.6% in 2016)
27.0% identified as having No Religion (up from 21.4% in 2016)
Very nearly half of Hills Shire residents have either no religion or adhere to non Christian religions. (Some believe the numbers may be significantly higher - see later in this article for more information.)
Not representative
There have been 52 ordinary meetings of council so far this term. At every one of those meetings the religious representative and/or the prayer offered represented Christian religious beliefs.
Council meetings are attended by 13 councillors, around a dozen or so council staff, plus a variable number in the public gallery (interested residents and, sometimes, media).
If councillors and other attendees are broadly representative of the shire, then more than a quarter should have no religion and nearly a fifth should adhere to a non Christian religion.
Offering exclusively Christian prayers
discriminates against or excludes nearly
half of those in attendance and of the broader public.
(If councillors are as wildly unrepresentative of the shire as their prayer ritual suggests, then we should really be asking why.)
Gender Imbalance
In addition to being discriminatory on the basis of religion, there is also a very strong gender imbalance.
At only 4 of 52 meetings were the address/prayers offered by a woman - the same one in each case, from the Uniting Church.
Not relevant
Religious prayers should never be relevant to the business of council. They should have no place in the conduct of council meetings.
If some councillors and/or council staff wish to offer private prayers before meetings, then council should offer a quiet and private space for them to do so before the appointed meeting time.
There is an increasing push to remove prayer rituals from council meetings. In one example from October 2023, the non-religious councillor advocating for the move said:
“It’s about our meetings being inclusive and welcoming for all… With an official prayer, we have effectively been saying, in our past practices, to non-believers like me, and to those who belong to non-Christian faiths, that we are not equal and our beliefs are less important…
“The reality is that we should all be able to participate in the entirety of council meetings without having to participate in someone else’s religious rituals.”
In our increasingly and happily diverse community, there is no justification for this anachronistic and exclusionary ritual. It is not appropriate for our council to identify exclusively as Christian and we argue that institutionalised prayer rituals, in any case, have no place in secular government.
What can you do?
If you share our dissatisfaction with our council’s current practice you can write to your councillors to let them know. You can find their email addresses here: Mayor, Councillors & Elections | The Hills Shire Council.
Prayers at Hills Shire Council ordinary meetings, 2022-24
Of 52 ordinary meetings so far this term, these are the religions represented for prayers and the census-reported percentages they represent of the Hills Shire:
1 Census numbers for individual churches such as Hillsong and Dayspring are not available. The percentage we have shown is the sum of responses for Christian, nfd (2.7%), Pentecostal (2.1%) and Other Christian (0.0%) as shown here.
2 At three meetings there was no visiting pastor and Mayor Peter Gangemi simply read the Lord’s prayer.
Top 5 religious affiliations responses in the Hills Shire - 2021 Census
Bias in census questions may skew religiosity results
Some statisticians believe that the census responses to the religion question significantly overestimate the religious affiliation results through both presumptive and contextual bias in the census questions.
Presumptive bias arises because the existing question - ‘What’s the person’s religion?’ - assumes every respondent has a religion.
Contextual bias is created by the questions preceding the religion question which encourage people who are responding to the census to think about their cultural background – which country are they from, are they citizens of Australia, are their parents born here or overseas, what is their ancestry.
“All of those things, I think, condition the respondent to think in terms of their cultural background and a cultural religion. So, surprise, surprise, a very large number of people, in my mind, would be choosing a religion which coincides with the one they were brought up with.”
The ABS is considering revising the “What is the person’s religion?” question for the next census with one proposal being to use a two-part question: a) “Does the person have a religion?” b) “What is the person’s religion?”.
Some religious lobby groups are campaigning against such a change to the census. Presumably they fear that they will lose influence if, as many believe to be likely, the change reveals a significant decline in religiosity.
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