ABSTRACT
Beyond a focus on its conventional religious understandings, this research has come to observe and study religion in its expanded capacities to include the identification of the secular sacred category. The sacralisation of objects, persons, ideas and institutions was found plurally manifested in the Australian data and warrants further scholarly investigations. Secular sacred references have been found to be far more positively used when compared to the other two. Neutral references make up 47.3 per cent and increased to 64 per cent when compared across both years. Negative references remained similar, at 9.9 per cent and 8.9 per cent. A decrease of positive references was discovered, from 42.8 per cent to 27.1 per cent. Although it has been argued earlier that religion, and especially conventional religion, was predominantly made visible through a rigid, conservative interpretation of Christianity, when viewed as a spectrum, religion is far more diverse and pluralistic in its manifestations on the program.
