Nigeria, Brazil, India and Morocco are among the most religious nations in the world, according to a major study on faith released Tuesday.
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(Photo: AP Images / Andre Penner)Thousands of Christians gather during the annual March for Jesus on Corpus Christi in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, June 7, 2007.
More than 96 percent of the population in these countries described themselves as religious in the survey conducted by the German think tank Bertelsmann Foundation.
The study distinguished between religious and highly religious people. People that are classified as highly religious are those that worship and pray regularly and attach a high relevance of faith in their lives.
“Highly religious people are those for whom religious ideas play a decisive role in their personality,” the study explained, according to Pakistan’s The News. “They often see experiences and behavior in a genuinely religious light.”
Guatemala, Brazil and Indonesia have the greatest percentage of deeply religious people among the 21 countries polled, according to the survey.
In Nigeria, a country roughly evenly split between Christians and Muslims, 92 percent of the population said they are highly religious.
The United States also had a notably religious population with 89 percent of its people describing themselves as such. Moreover, the majority of Americans (62 percent) consider themselves to be highly religious.
However, Europeans overall were significantly less religious than Americans and the rest of the world. The most religious nations in Europe were Italy and Poland – overwhelmingly Catholic countries – with about 87 percent of their citizens claiming to be religious.
Moreover, 40 percent of the citizens in these two countries said they were highly religious – a statistic higher than that of Turkey which has a Muslim majority.
Meanwhile, Germany, Austria and Switzerland had an average 70 percent religious population and about 20 percent highly religious population.
Interestingly, in Germany, nominalism is high with one in six church members describing themselves as non-religious. One in three citizens with no religious affiliation consider themselves religious.
The least religious country in Europe is Russia with 50 percent saying they are religious and only seven percent, highly religious.
Besides Russia, the study found that Thailand and France were other nations with the smallest percentage of people who said religious belief was important in their lives.
The worldwide opinion poll questioned 21,000 adults in 21 countries and presented the detail results in Berlin on Tuesday.
Comments
Squeekywheel- Thailand and India ARE Asian countries. So is Russia (Russia is both European and Asian).
Otherwise, I agree with Daniel on this one. Religious is only a matter of how your unique (albeit right or wrong) view point affects how you choose to live your life.
I somewhat dislike studies like this because I see them as somewhat disingenuous and misleading. "Relgious" is a slippery word. If "religious" simply refers to accepting certain propositions by faith and acting upon them, then we are all equally religious: Billy the Kid is as religious as Billy Graham, and Charles Finney as religious as Charles Darwin. The truth is, there are no "brute" facts. Every "fact" is an interpreted fact as seen through a pre-theoretical grid of one's presuppositions and/or unprovable axioms. This holds true for the beliefs and conclusions of the most atheistic or skeptical anti-supernaturalist scientists as it does for the greatest Christian evangelists and theologians.
There's no mention of any Asian countries. It would be interesting if a survey was done in Communist China.
The only item in the story that really surprised me was Thailand being basically same low interest level with France. I would like to see how they worded their questions in the survey.
Interesting article - thank you