Dr Paul Allen

The Uniting Church stopped its controversial sale of 21 church buildings half-way through the auction on Wednesday after reaching its $56 million financial target, acknowledging the sale process had caused ‘‘significant’’ pain for its congregation. Members of the church’s faithful mingled with 200 prospective buyers looking to snap up property at a ‘‘never to be repeated’’ fire sale of church buildings and land scattered across metropolitan Melbourne, Ballarat , Echuca and Bendigo. The church resolved in May to sell about 1 per cent of its substantial property holdings to recover debts of about $36 million it lost after the collapse of its school, Acacia College , last year. Twenty-one properties were to be auctioned on Wednesday.The assets up for sale included many historic churches, as well as vacant land, suburban tennis courts and commercial buildings. Advertisement One heritage church hall in Parkville sold for $1.25 million but another majestic cathedral-sty

English: Uniting church at Hamilton, Victoria (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Catholics   5,439,268 No religion 4,796,787 Anglican 3,679,907 Uniting Church   1,065,795 Presbyterian and Reformed  599,515 Hindu  275,535 People professing to have no religion have moved past Anglicans to become the second-largest grouping after Catholics in the 2011 Census. Almost 4.8 million people said they had no religion, up 29 per cent from 2006, but the number of people not answering the question dropped by 2 per cent. This suggested that more people were claiming a religious identity (including no religion), said Monash University sociology professor Gary Bouma. Advertisement: Story continues below The total Christian population is 13.2 million, or 61 per cent, down three percentage points. Catholics have dropped half a percentage point to 25.3 or 5.4 million, Anglicans are down 1.6 percentage points to 3.7 million, while the Uniting Church is down to 5 per cent, or 1.1 million p