As a Social Work student in Australia in the late 1980s, there was the occasional mention of matters associated with religion when discussing cases involving service users who were Jewish or Muslim. Otherwise, and similar to other Anglophone countries, unless there was a member of the Social Work teaching staff with a particular interest in religion, a curriculum of omission was the norm (Furman et al, 2005; Moss, 2005). The often implicit, but sometimes explicit, message was that there was no place for discussion of religion in Social Work education (Lindsay, 2002). This is perhaps unsurprising given a 1999 survey of Australian Social Work educators that found two thirds claiming no religious affiliation (Lindsay, 2002), at a time when at least three quarters of all Australians identified with a religion (ABS, 2001).

Although the majority of Australians nominally align themselves with a religion, only a small percentage regularly attends religious services (Bellamy and Castle, 2004). For occasional attenders, particularly those going to events where religion and an immigrant culture are closely intertwined, reasons for attendance may be more cultural than religious. With migration resulting in a diversification of religion in the Australian community (Bouma, 2006), unless they are have a particular interest, most Australians rely on the media for knowledge of other religions, and even for news about their own religion. At a time when media interest in religions is often associated with scandals such as the abuse of children by religious officials, or claims that terrorist acts are the work of those with fanatical or fundamentalist religious beliefs, many Australians have little knowledge of the key beliefs and practices of other religions, and sometimes even of the religions they claim as their own.

Despite a lack of knowledge, in recent years it has been argued that Australians are more likely to acknowledge that religion, or more likely, spirituality, has a place in their lives. At the same time, there has been a growing recognition that religion is not just concerned with privatised beliefs, but also plays a prominent role in civic life (Boer, 2008). Nevertheless, in Australia, the term ‘religious literacy’ has mostly been confined to debates concerning Religious Education (RE) among school students (see, for example, Goldburg, 2006; Hemmings and Butcher, 2012).