of the Federation of Australia in the , to 43.9% in the a full century later. According to the 2021 census, religious distribution is as follows: Protestant Anglican 9.8% Uniting Church 2.7% Presbyterian and Reformed 1.6% Baptist 1.4% Pentecostal 1.0% Lutheran 0.6% other Protestant 0.5% Catholic 20% other Christian 3.7% Muslim 3.2% Buddhist 2.4% Orthodox 2.3% Eastern Orthodox 2.1% Oriental Orthodox .2% Hindu 2.7% other 1.7% none 38.9% Jewish 0.4% Sikh 0.8% unspecified 9.6%. Post-war immigration has grown the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia and there are large and growing Pentecostal groups, such as Sydney's Hillsong Church. According to the , Queensland (56.03%) and New South Wales (55.18%) had Christian majorities, while the lowest proportion of Christians were found in the Northern Territory (47.69%) and the Australian Capital Territory (45.38%). History Introduction of Christianity Before European contact, indigenous people had performed the rites and rituals of the animist religion of the Dreamtime. Portuguese and Spanish Catholics and Dutch and English Protestants were sailing into Australian waters from the seventeenth century. Among the first Catholics known to have sighted Australia were the crew of a Spanish expedition of 1605–6. In 1606, the expedition's leader, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, landed in the New Hebrides and, believing it to be the fabled southern continent, he named the land: Austrialis del Espiritu Santo ("Southern Land of the Holy Spirit"). Later that year, his deputy Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through Australia's Torres Strait. The English navigator James Cook's favourable account of the fertile east coast of Australia in 1770 ultimately ensured that Australia's Christian foundations were to reflect the British denominations (with their Protestant majority and largely Irish, Catholic minority). The permanent presence of Christianity in Australia began with the arrival of the First Fleet of British convict ships at Sydney in 1788. The Reverend Richard Johnson of the Church of England was licensed as chaplain to the Fleet and the settlement. In early colonial times, Church of England clergy worked closely with the governors. Johnson was charged by the governor, Arthur Phillip, with improving "public morality" in the colony, but he was also heavily involved in health and education. According to Manning Clark, the early colonial officials of the colony had disdain for the "consolations of religion", but shared a view that "the Protestant religion and British institutions were the finest achievements of the wit of man for the promotion of liberty and