ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rescripting of religion in two policy domains at UNESCO and at the level of a national society, Australia. By 2010, there were 20 UNESCO Chairs, many in Europe, some in Russia and its former states and latterly in Australia and New Zealand. There are still no religion Chairs in Africa, Latin America or the bulk of Asia. Religion in Australia has been rescripted several times in recent centuries, usually as a result of changes in social policy. While British penal policy changes produced a European' Australia in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, immigration policy changes in the twentieth were introduced to ensure a stable religious composition. The rise of religious diversity as a lived experience in most parts of the world has lead to an increase in the salience of religious identity and to the return of religious voices to public-policy debates at all levels of government.
