Close Menu
    [OC] How the Importance of Religion Has Shifted Between 2004 and 2022 (Updated Based on Feedback)
    Data

    [OC] How the Importance of Religion Has Shifted Between 2004 and 2022 (Updated Based on Feedback)

    Share.
    View 21 Comments

    21 Comments

    2. oscarleo0 on

      Yesterday, I published a chart showing the shift from 1993 to 2022. Today, I wanted to post a new version with different years and using feedback from last time.

      Changing years from 1993 to 2004 added 21 more countries to the graph. It should be noted that the year means when the survey ended. The survey that ended in 2022 started in 2017.

      The primary feedback that I added was to color the bars between the dots to better show if the importance of religion is increasing or decreasing for that country.

    5. Original_Cobbler7895 on

      As a general rule of thumb. It seems like the countries with the most problems are also the same ones that religion is important.

      This might be a good investment map

    6. Jaygee133 on

      That’s a huge decrease in Canada and Chile, what is the root cause of those shifts from pretty different countries who tend to get alot of influence from other countries

    7. LivinAWestLife on

      A lot of the countries where religious importance increased were in Eastern Europe or the Balkans. Is this just a natural rebound from the more secular lifestyle/policies imposed under the USSR or Yugoslavia?

    8. dsp_guy on

      I know some will say the United States’ problems of today are the decrease in religion’s importance. I’d see it as a “last gasp” to force the will of the religious right on everyone else.

      Frankly, if people kept their religion to themselves instead of externalizing it to everyone else, many people wouldn’t care where those bars/dots were on that (awesome) graph. Your religion tells you something is wrong? Don’t do it. But don’t tell the rest of us not to do it.

    9. lazyboy76 on

      Both increase and decrease have the arrow point to the right are confusing as hell.

      Blue dot should stay on the left, and red dot on the right. So when it increase, you’ll see a red bar, and the arrow point to the right; when it decrease, the bar is blue, and the blue bar and the blue point make a blue arrow to the left.

    10. Whodean on

      The red colors lead you to believe increases are negative.

      Consider using a neutral color pallet

    12. cappuccinolight on

      Three observations:

      1. The highest proportions of people declaring themselves religious is in Islamic countries; the proportion didn’t change much in 20 years.
      2. Secularization in the Christian West.
      3. De-secularization in ex-communist countries (where religion used to be repressed), including countries still nominally Communist (China, Vietnam).

      An outlier which I don’t understand is Greece, which I would expect to be more like western countries.

    13. BeABetterHumanBeing on

      Nit: I’d swap the red and blue. Red makes it look like religiosity was decreasing b/c semiotics. 

    15. the-watch-dog on

      Agree w feedback here that the colors are reversed for rapid understanding. It’s very counter-intuitive.

    18. One_Long_996 on

      just a bar chart and questionable source as always to generalize in my life I have never been asked a survey anywhere or others I know. Just nonsense

    19. gokufire on

      For those trying to figure out, Brazil is not in the list but should be on near levels to India nowadays and increasing importance as well.

    20. mal50 on

      Religion defined as what? Any major sports team? Any perceived transcendent purpose or lifestyle?