Percentages of people who say religion is very important in their lives per country — pew research center surveys, 2018

Posted by unreal-habdologist

36 Comments

  1. And that’s why we’re poor. Religion encroaches on so many decisions that could make our countries progress.

  2. 27% in Canada? I don’t know anyone who believes in God. Maybe it’s mostly immigrants who come from religious countries…or the elderly.

  3. Ethiopia checks out, it was incredible how religious it was. Even in central Addis Ababa you’ll see pedestrians, taxi drivers, and light rail passengers do the hand cross thing every time they pass by a church.

    As a Korean the most common question I got while I was living there was “Korea is Christian right?” because of how active Korean evangelicals were in much of Africa. I’d let them know, to their disappointment, that we’re probably one of the least religious societies on the planet.

  4. It is interesting that Norway is considerably more ‘religious’ than Sweden or any of the other Northern European countries cited in this survey.

    The real surprise for me is Uruguay on 29%. It has a very strong secular tradition, by global as well as Latin American standards; I can testify to this from experience as I spent time there as a (British) postgrad student. One of the main political parties, the centre-right Partido Nacional (aka Blanco) has Catholic roots, but many of its voters are not devout Catholics and some are agnostic. Most Uruguayans I met were agnostic, atheist or deist; only a small minority were practising Catholics. I admit to a metropolitan bias as I was based in Montevideo, but I did see a survey stating that Uruguay had one the highest (possibly the highest) global percentage of atheists and agnostics!

  5. Incredible how well this correlates with lattitude. Almost as if cold knocks God out of you. Yes, correlation is not causation and yes, it’s not really just the cold. Still, the *apparent* correlatiin is striking.

  6. Ubiquitous1984 on

    Massively out of date when it comes to accounting for European immigration. 2017 hardly accounts for any of the mass migration of the last decade.

  7. For a country that doesn’t care about religion we sure have a lot of fuckwits in politics still.

  8. I’d like to see another poll by the same organization today, I imagine a lot of countries have dropped

  9. I feel like this is much different in 2026. Despite republicans in charge of US government, religion is plummeting in the US

  10. Who-said-that- on

    Interesting how it’s mostly (Brazil I can’t explain but maybe because it’s Christian based) low socio economic countries that are highly religious…
    I am making assumptions but would that be because they turn to a “god” because life is pretty shit here and they are suffering in this life in turn for the good life in the afterlife….
    (Excuse all the lives please)

  11. This is extremely inaccurate. There is no way on earth Israel is only 36%. No way. It is much much more, like Greece let’s say

  12. I have a theory on this map’s color schemes and who makes them(if it wasn’t evident enough, white atheist western european or american)

  13. Stupid question. I may not be a religious person at all, however, the fact that I live in a country where maybe 70% are… makes religion “very important in my life”.

  14. Uhhh this was almost 10 years ago, I’m sure it has changed with important events like the covid 19

  15. I sincerely doubt China’s numbers. Religion as we view it in the West might be not very important but that doesn’t mean that religious rituals, practices, beliefs, ethics, morals and sanctified places aren’t very pervasive throughout the Chinese society. 

  16. Note how most of the religious countries are equatorial. Heat from the sun induced hysteria?