Professor Andrew Singleton (Deakin) presents the annual Hans Mol Memorial Lecture in Religion and the Social Sciences

This public lecture revisits Hans Mol’s 1985 book The Faith of Australians, a major sociological analysis of religion and Australian society. The Faith of Australians saw Mol update and re-examine his 1971 masterpiece¸ Religion in Australia, and together these books offer precious insight into the conventional religious mood of the post-war era, grounded in Mol’s outstanding quantitative data and erudite analysis.

Mol seemed to have missed the social upheaval of 1970s, however, and The Faith of Australians is curiously silent about the ways in which the Whitlam Government, the Vietnam War, women’s liberation, the occult revival, migration and the Baby Boomer generation remade Australian spirituality in the time between his books. This lecture reframes The Faith of Australians considering these historical developments and with survey data that Mol knew about but was unable to access. In doing so, it will highlight the enduring utility of Mol’s pioneering sociology of religion in understanding post-war religion in Australia.

Presenter

Andrew Singleton is Professor of Sociology and Social Research at Deakin University. He is author of three books: Freedoms, Faiths and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity (with A. Halafoff, M.L. Rasmussen & G.D. Bouma, 2021); Religion, Culture and Society: A Global Approach (2014) and The Spirit of Generation Y: Young People’s Spirituality in a Changing Australia (with M. Mason & R. Webber, 2007).