The 2021 census results have been released, with some eye-opening insights for our city.
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Amongst them - 47.5 per cent of residents, or 54,034 people, stated they had no religion.
That's a huge jump from the 2016 results, where just 36.9 per cent of residents said they had no religion.
READ MORE: Ballarat's census results at a glance
In Ballarat, Secular Beliefs and Other Spiritual Beliefs and No Religious Affiliation was the largest broad group religious group reported overall at 51.0 per cent.
In 2016, the largest broad religious group was Christianity, at 56.3 per cent.
After no religion, the next biggest percentage reported in 2021 was Catholic, at 21.3 per cent, which dropped from 24.3 per cent in 2016.
Ballarat is still above the state average for people identifying as Catholic, which is at 20.5 per cent.
The next largest was Anglican, at 7.9 per cent - a drop from 10.6 in 2016 - and "not stated", at 6 per cent.
The Uniting Church was at 4.8 per cent, dropping 2 per cent from 2016.
The question about religion is optional.
No religion, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, does not include those who reported Secular and Other Spiritual Beliefs such as Atheism, Agnosticism and Own Spiritual Beliefs.
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Secular and other spiritual beliefs comprise other groupings that are useful but don't satisfy the criteria of being a religion.
There is no information available on Jedi followers in Ballarat specifically at this time.
You can dive into the numbers yourself via the Australian Bureau of Statistics' census dashboard, and check out a snapshot of the Australia-wide figures here.
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