Article on US Religious Trends

you might also be interested in the analysis of how quickly people are leaving religion.

Alberta, my home province…

2001
image

2011

2021

No chart yet :smiley:

JUST realized that don’t mean much without this:


AND

Population: 4,262,635
Non-religious: 1,676,045

39% that’s us atheist/secular NOT the “spiritual but not religious” crowd

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"Wales had a greater fall in people reporting their religion as Christian than across England and Wales as a whole - a 14 percentage point fall from 57.6% a decade ago to 43.6% in 2021. Those giving a response of “no religion” saw a 14.5 percentage point rise from 32.1% in 2011 to 46.5% in 2021."

One need only take a look around and see the number of churches and chapels fallen into disrepair really to see that trend has been ongoing for years…

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And here in Australia the same results are coming through: The 2016 Census found that Protestants outnumbered Catholics while the irreligious population was also substantial. In an optional question in the 2021 Australian National Census, 43.9% of respondents declared some variety of Christianity, with the Christian denominational distribution as follows: Catholicism 20.0%, Anglican 9.8%, [Uniting Church] 2.7%, Orthodox_Christian 2.1%, Presbyterian and Reformed_Presbyterian_Global_Alliance) 1.6%, Baptist 1.4%, Pentecostalism 1.0%, Lutheran 0.6%, other Protestant 0.5%, and ‘other Christian’ 3.7%.

Other religions affiliations in 2021 were: Muslim 3.2%; Hindu 2.7%; Buddhist 2.4%; Sikh 0.8%; Jewish 0.4%; other religions 1.7%. 38.9% declared ‘No Religion’, and unspecified or not declared represented a further 7.2%.

As the No Religion numbered 38.9% it leaves the “No religion” as the largest single group for the first time.
Polling indicates that with the waves of religious scandals, prosecutions, sexual crimes and religious affiliations with right wing extremists the " No religion" is growing the fastest. Will be very interesting reading next census.

Like the UK empty churches are now being snapped up for redevelopment or just left to fall down.

Norway: Although a big majority of the population are members of a church or denomination, official statistics from 2020 is that 47% of the population aged 16+ report that they are religious (i.e. 53% non-believers). The main reason for the dissimilarity between member rates and actual self-confessed belief is that DNK (the major state-sponsored lutheran church, which holds 63.7% of the population as members) has a rather questionable membership policy, wherein children are automatically included as members if their parents are. Thus, it is for the most part based on passive recruiting, not active recruiting. And since there really are no downsides of being a passive member, a lot of people just can’t be bothered to terminate their membership, even though it is ridiculously easy to do so. That being said, DNK saw a sharp drop in membership and a sharp increase in the membership termination when they opened up for online membership termination.

There are independent statistics validating this. Statistics from 2011 indicates that 55% of the population define themselves as non-religious, plus 13% that are “not sure”. In addition, 46% of DNK members define themselves as non-religious. As with all such statistics, the differences in numbers might be due to the actual questions asked, but the conclusion is clear: Religious people are no longer dominating number-wise.

As for membership practices, there was a case a few years ago where the catholic church cast a fine-masked net over the phone book and other registers, and registered as members persons with names that “sounded catholic”, mostly persons from Spain or South America, as well as Poland. They didn’t even bother to tell the persons involved that they were being included in the register. When this was discovered, they played innocent, claiming that (assumed) catholics from abroad were included because “it’s the same church”. The authorities didn’t buy that excuse, pointing to the fact that being a member of a non-DNK church requires active sign-up, so the catholic church was required to go through their registers with a fine-toothed comb, and state funds were withheld. Religous god-given morals, my ass!

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The decrease in religious people in Norway are seen quite clearly in the following graph covering 2011-2020. Affiliation with a religion or religious denomination decreases in all age groups:

Another interesting piece of official statistics is the membership numbers and rates for denominations outside the state-sponsored DNK church. The increase in membership is highest among humanist organizations, with almost 9% from 2021 to 2022, while hindu denominations had a 5% increase, with islam at around 4%. I suspect a large part of the increase in memberships among muslim denominations are due to immigration.

Source.

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Yes that is very much same statistical evidence we are getting in Australia. A large part of Muslim and Hindu increases are due to immigration and then mature increase( those who have been in the country 20plus years) as first generation breeding rates. These tend to reduce quite quickly as assimilation takes place in a peaceful well regulated society. After 3 or more generations the bell curve reverts to the prevailing trend for “no religion”.

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