Irreligion

Absence, indifference to, rejection of or hostility towards religion

"Irreligious" redirects here. For the album by Moonspell, see Irreligious (album).

See also: Secularity and Secularism

Part of a series on

Irreligion

Irreligion

* Antireligion
* Anti-clericalism
* Criticism of religion
* Freethought
* Organized secularism
* Secular humanism
* Secular liberalism
* Secular state
* Secularism
* Secularity
* Secularization
* Separation of church and state

Atheism

* History
* Demographics
* Discrimination/Persecution
* Criticism
* Lists of atheists

Forms and variations

* Implicit and explicit
* Negative and positive
* New
* State

Aspects

* Antitheism

* Relationship between atheism and religion
* Existence of God

Agnosticism

* Strong
* Weak
* Agnostic atheism
* Apatheism

* List of agnostics

People

* Atheists
* Agnostics
* Humanists

Books

* The Age of Reason
* Breaking the Spell
* The Demon-Haunted World
* The End of Faith
* The God Delusion
* God Is Not Great
* Letter to a Christian Nation
* The System of Nature
* Why I Am Not a Christian
* Why I Am Not a Muslim
* Why I Am an Atheist

List of irreligious organizations

* American Atheists
* American Humanist Association
* Atheist Alliance International
* Center for Inquiry
* Freedom From Religion Foundation
* Humanists International
* Humanists UK
* Rational Response Squad
* Recovering from Religion
* Brazilian Association of Atheists and Agnostics

Related topics

* Countries by irreligion
* Disestablishmentarianism
* Secular ethics

* Irreligion by country

* v
* t
* e

Irreligion is the absence or rejection of religious beliefs or practices. It encompasses a wide range of viewpoints drawn from various philosophical and intellectual perspectives, including atheism, agnosticism, religious skepticism, rationalism, secularism, and non-religious spirituality. These perspectives can vary, with individuals who identify as irreligious holding diverse beliefs about religion and its role in their lives.[1]

Relatively little scholarly research was published on irreligion until around the year 2010.[2]

## Overview

[edit]

Over the past several decades,[when?] the number of secular persons has increased, with a rapid rise in the early 21st century, in many countries.[3][4]: 4 [1][5]: 112 [6] In virtually every high-income country and many poor countries, religion has declined.[5]: 112 Highly secular societies tend to be societally healthy and successful.[7] Social scientists have predicted declines in religious beliefs and their replacement with more scientific/naturalistic outlooks (secularization hypothesis).[8] According to Ronald Inglehart, this trend seems likely to continue and a reverse rarely lasts long because the trend is driven by technological innovation.[9] However, other researchers disagree (contra-secularization hypothesis).[8] By 2050, Pew Research Center (Pew) expects irreligious people to probably decline as a share of the world population (16.4% to 13.2%), at least for a time, because of faster population growth in highly religious countries and shrinking populations in at least some less religious countries.[1][10] Many countries may also be gradually becoming more secular, generation by generation.[10] Younger generations tend to be less religious than their elders.[10][11]: 5 They might become more religious as they age, but still be less religious than previous generations if their countries become more affluent and stable.[11]: 13 Nonetheless, secularization is compatible with religion since most versions of secularity do not lead to atheism or irreligion.[12] Religious congruence, that is consistency between beliefs and behaviors, in individuals is rare.[13]: 2 Religious incongruence is not the same thing as religious insincerity or hypocrisy.[13]: 5 The widespread religious congruence fallacy occurs when interpretations or explanations unjustifiably presume religious congruence.[13]: 19 This fallacy also infects "New Atheist" critiques of religion.[13]: 21

Estimating the number of irreligious people in the world is difficult.[14][1] Those who do not affiliate with a religion are diverse. In many countries censuses and demographic surveys do not separate atheists, agnostics and those responding "nothing in particular" as distinct populations, obscuring significant differences that may exist between them.[15]: 60 People can feel reasonable anxieties about giving a politically ‘wrong’ answer – in either direction.[14] Measurement of irreligiosity requires a high degree of cultural sensitivity, especially outside the West, where the concepts of "religion" or "the secular" are not always rooted in local culture and may not even be present.[4]: 31–34 The sharp distinction, and often antagonism, between "religious" and "secular" is culturally and historically unique to the West since in most of human history and cultures, there was little differentiation between the natural and supernatural and concepts do not always transfer across cultures.[4]: 31 Forms of secularity always reflect the societal, historical, cultural and religious contexts in which they emerge, and distinctions are sharp in religiously dominant contexts.[4]: 31 Also, there's considerable prevalence of atheism and agnosticism in ancient Asian texts.[16] Atheistic traditions have played a significant part in those cultures for millennia.[16] "Cultural religion" must be taken into account: non-religious people can be found in religious categories, especially where religion has very deep-seated religious roots in a culture.[15]: 59 Many of the religiously unaffiliated have some religious beliefs and participate in religious practices.[17][18][19][20]

In 2016, Zuckerman, Galen and Pasquale estimated there were 400 million nonreligious or nontheistic people.[21] A 2022 Gallup International Association (GIA) survey, done in 61 countries, reported that 62% of respondents said they are religious, one in four that they aren't, 10% that they're atheists and the rest are not sure.[22] In 2016, it found similar results (62%, 25%, 9% and 5%), also in 2014.[22][23]: 1 : 3 People in the European Union, East Asia and Oceania were the least religious.[22] In 2010, according to Pew, the religiously unaffiliated numbered more than 1.1 billion, about one-in-six people (16.3% of an estimated 6.9 billion).[24][18][25]: 24 : 25 76% of them resided in the 60 countries of Asia-Pacific.[18][25]: 25 : 46 : 66 China, officially an atheist state and considered to be the world's first or second most populous country,[note 1] alone held the majority (62.2% or about 700 million).[26][27]: 1 [28][1][18][25]: 25 : 46 : 66 Nevertheless, several smaller countries, especially in Europe and Asia, eclipse China's percent of residents who are irreligious with even higher proportions.[28] Shares were relatively similar in three of the six regions: Asia-Pacific (21.2% of more than 4 billion), Europe (18.2% of more than 742 thousands) and North America (17.1% of more than 344 thousands).[18][25]: 25 Men, younger people, and whites, Asians, and people of Jewish heritage are more likely to be secular.[7]

## Etymology

[edit]

Irreligion is either a borrowing from French or from Latin.[29] The term irreligion is a combination of the noun religion and the ir- form of the prefix in-, signifying "not" (similar to irrelevant). It was first attested in French as irréligion in 1527, then in English as irreligion in 1598. It was borrowed into Dutch as irreligie in the 17th century, though it is not certain from which language.[30]

## Definition

[edit]

According to the encyclopedia Britannica, the term irreligion is frequently characterized differently depending on context.[1] Sometimes, surveys of religious belief use lack of identification with a religion as a marker of irreligion.[1] This can be misleading: in some cases a person may identify with a religious cultural institution but not hold the doctrines of that institution or take part in its religious practice.[1]

Some scholars define irreligion as the active rejection of religion, as opposed to the mere absence of religion.[1] The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society defines it as: "Active rejection of religion in general or any of its more specific organized forms. It is thus distinct from the secular, which simply refers to the absence of religion. [...] In contemporary usage, it is increasingly employed as a synonym for unbelief [...]"[31][32] Sociologist Colin Campbell also describes it as "deliberate indifference towards religion", in his 1971 Towards a Sociology of Irreligion.[33]

The Oxford English Dictionary has two definitions, one of which is labelled obsolete (first published in 1900).[29] It is want of religion; hostility to or disregard of religious principles; irreligious conduct.[29]

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines it as "the quality or state of being irreligious" and "irreligious" as "neglectful of religion: lacking religious emotions, doctrines, or practices", also "indicating lack of religion".[34]

Also for "religion", there is no universally agreed-upon definition, even within the social sciences.[4]: 15

## Types

[edit]

* Agnostic atheism is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not believe in the existence of any deity and agnostic because they claim that the existence of a deity is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact.
* Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, the divine, and the supernatural are unknown or unknowable.
* Alatrism or alatry (Greek: from the privative ἀ\- + λατρεία (latreia) = worship) is the recognition of the existence of one or more gods, but with a deliberate lack of worship of any deity. Typically, it includes the belief that religious rituals have no supernatural significance and that gods ignore all prayers and worship.
* Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters.
* Antireligion is opposition to or rejection of religion of any kind.
* Antitheism is the explicit opposition to theism. The term has had a range of applications. It typically refers to direct opposition to belief in any deity.
* Apatheism is the attitude of apathy or indifference toward the existence or non-existence of any deity.
* Atheism is the lack of belief that any deities exist; in a narrower sense, positive atheism is specifically the position that there are factually no deities. There are ranges of negative and positive atheism.
* "Cultural religion"[15]: 59
* Deism is a philosophical position and rationalistic theology that rejects revelation as a source of knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe.
* Freethought.[4]: 14 It holds that positions regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism rather than authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma.
* Ietsism is an unspecified belief in an undetermined transcendent reality.
* Ignosticism, also known as igtheism, is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent, unambiguous definition.
* Naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the universe.
* New Atheism is the position of some atheist academics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.
* Nones can be used to refer to those who are unaffiliated with any organized religion. This use derives from surveys of religious affiliation, in which "None" (or "None of the above") is typically the last choice. Since this status can be chosen because of lack of organizational affiliation or lack of personal belief, it is a more specific concept than irreligion. A 2015 Gallup, Inc. poll concluded that in the United States "nones" were growing as a percentage of the population, while Christians were declining and non-Christians also increasing but to a much lesser degree, since the 1950s.[35]
* Nontheism[4]: 14
* Post-theism is a variant of nontheism that proposes that the division of theism and atheism is obsolete and that the God-idea belongs to a stage of human development now past. Within nontheism, post-theism can be contrasted with antitheism.
* Religious skepticism is a type of skepticism about religion.
* Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties, such as logic, empathy, reason, and ethical intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in many religions.
* Secular humanism is a system of thought that prioritizes human rather than divine matters.
* Secular liberalism is a form of liberalism in which secularist principles and values, and sometimes non-religious ethics, are especially emphasized.
* Secular paganism is an outlook that upholds the virtues and principles associated with paganism while maintaining a secular worldview.
* Secularism.[3][4]: 14 It is also used to describe a political conviction in favor of minimizing religion in the public sphere that may be advocated for regardless of personal religiosity. Sometimes, especially in the United States, it is also a synonym for naturalism or atheism.[36]
* "Spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) is a designation coined by Robert C. Fuller for people who reject traditional or organized religion but have strong metaphysical beliefs. The SBNR may be included under the definition of nonreligion,[37] but are sometimes classified as a wholly distinct group.[38]
* Theological noncognitivism is the argument that religious language—specifically, words such as God—are not cognitively meaningful. It is sometimes considered synonymous with ignosticism.
* Transtheism refers to a system of thought or religious philosophy that is neither theistic nor atheistic but beyond them.

## History

[edit]

In the early 1970s, Colin Campbell began a sociological study of irreligion.[4]: 13

## Human rights

[edit]

Main article: Freedom of religion

In 1993, the United Nations Human Rights Committee declared that article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights "protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief."[39] The committee further stated that "the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views." Signatories to the convention are barred from "the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers" to recant their beliefs or convert.[40][41]

Most democracies protect the freedom of religion or belief, and it is largely implied in respective legal systems that those who do not believe or observe any religion are allowed freedom of thought.

A noted exception to ambiguity, explicitly allowing non-religion, is Article 36 of the Constitution of China (as adopted in 1982), which states that "No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion."[42] Article 46 of China's 1978 Constitution was even more explicit, stating that "Citizens enjoy freedom to believe in religion and freedom not to believe in religion and to propagate atheism."[43]

## Demographics

[edit]

Main article: List of countries by irreligion

Nonreligious population by country, in 2010[44]

Women, when in the labor force, are similar to men in their religiosity. When out of the labor force, women tend to be more religious.[45]

In many countries censuses and demographic surveys do not separate atheists, agnostics and those responding "nothing in particular" as distinct populations.[15]: 60 Both "religion" and "secular" are Western concepts and are not universal across cultures, languages, or time.[46]

In 2020, of the global atheist and non-religious population, 78% live in Asia and the Pacific, while the remainder reside in Europe (10%), North America (6%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), sub-Saharan Africa (1.5%) and the Middle East and North Africa (.1%).[47] Eleven countries have nonreligious majorities. In 2020, the countries with the highest percentage of "Non-Religious" ("Term encompassing both (a) agnostics; and (b) atheists") were North Korea, the Czech Republic and Estonia.[48] According to the 2018 Chinese General Social Survey, China had the largest count of unaffiliated people: about one billion adults.[49] According to Pew Research in 2025, China alone makes up 67% of the global religiously unaffiliated demographic.[50] Some broadly religious practices continue to play a significant role in the lives of a substantial shares of the Chinese population.[49] The Asia-Pacific region alone accounts for 78% of the global unaffliated demographic.[50]

Determining objective irreligion, as part of societal or individual levels of secularity and religiosity, requires a high degree of cultural sensitivity from researchers. This is especially so outside the Western world, where the concepts of "religious" and "secular" are not necessarily rooted in local culture or even exist.[4]: 31–34 "Cultural religion" is a vivid reality.[15]: 59 It must be taken into account when trying to ascertain the numeric strength of atheism and agnosticism in a country.[15]: 59 It is generally not considered more important than self-identification measures.[15]: 59 Non-religious people can be found in religious categories.[15]: 59 And many of the unafflilated still hold religious beliefs or practices.[17][20][19] This is especially the case where religion has very deep-seated religious roots in a culture, such as with Christianity in Europe, Islam in the Middle East, Hinduism in India, and Buddhism in South-east Asia.[15]: 59 For instance, Scandinavian countries have among the highest measures of nonreligiosity and even atheism in Europe. For example, 58% of the Swedish population identify with the Church of Sweden.[51] Yet, 47% of atheists who live in those countries are still formally members of the national churches.[52] In much of East Asia, ritual behavior holds greater salience than belief.[4]: 31 China has state atheism and is a Leninist religious state, which maintains dominance over all other religions.[1][26][27]: 1 About 85% of its population practice various kinds of religious behaviors with some regularity.[27]: 2 Many East Asians identify as "without religion" (wú zōngjiào in Chinese, mu shūkyō in Japanese, mu jong-gyo in Korean), but "religion" in that context refers only to Buddhism or Christianity. Most of the people "without religion" practice Shinto and other folk religions. In the Muslim world, those who claim to be "not religious" mostly imply not strictly observing Islam, and in Israel, being "secular" means not strictly observing Orthodox Judaism. Vice versa, many American Jews share the worldviews of nonreligious people though affiliated with a Jewish denomination, and in Russia, growing identification with Eastern Orthodoxy is mainly motivated by cultural and nationalist considerations, without much concrete belief.[53] In the United States, the majority of the "Nones", those without a religious affiliation, have belief in a god or higher power, spiritual forces beyond the natural world, and souls.[54] Even 23% of self-identified atheists believe in a higher power, but not a god as described in the bible.[55] A 2024 report by Pew on Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam found that though many in those countries are not affilated to any religion, many of the unaffiliated still have beliefs in gods or unseen beings and engage in religious practices.[19] According to Pew in 2023, many unaffilaited Chinese believe in deities or other religious beliefs and participate in religious practicies.[49][56]

Secular people are complex and not always devoid of religious or spiritual involvement.[57] They persist in various forms of religiosity and spirituality.[58] "Secular churches" or "atheist churches" such as Sunday Assembly and others have emerged in multiple countries (e.g. USA, Britain, Australia) which deal with community needs that religious services often provide.[59][60][61][62] Atheists are diverse with some engaging spiritual practice and others having strong beliefs in that they seek to evangelize to others.[63] Nontheistic religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, along with atheistic schools in Hinduism, and other Indian schools like Carvaka, Ajivika have played a significant part in Asian cultures for millennia.[16] Anthropologist Jack David Eller states that "atheism is quite a common position, even within religion" and that "surprisingly, atheism is not the opposite or lack, let alone the enemy, of religion but is the most common form of religion."[64]

In 2016, Zuckerman, Galen and Pasquale estimated there were 400 million nonreligious or nontheistic people.[21] In their 2013 essay, Ariela Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera estimated there were about 450 to 500 million nonbelievers, including both "positive" and "negative" atheists, or approximately 7% of the world population.[65] These estimates come from the International Social Survey Programme 2008 survey in which 40 countries took part.[66] In 2010, the religiously unaffiliated numbered more than 1.1 billion (around 1,126,500,000 persons), about one-in-six people (16.3% of an estimated 6,9 billion world population), according to Pew Research Center.[24][18][25]: 24 : 25 In Pew reports, "unaffiliated" are atheists, agnostics, and people who checked "nothing in particular".[15]: 60 76% of them resided in one of the six regions: Asia-Pacific.[18][25]: 25 A 2012 WIN/Gallup International report on a poll from 57 countries reported that 59% of the world's population identified as a religious person, 23% as not a religious person, 13% as "convinced atheists", and also a 9% decrease in identification as "religious" when compared to the 2005 average from 39 countries.[67] A 2015 WIN/Gallup International poll found that 63% of the globe identified as a religious person, 22% as not a religious person, and 11% as "convinced atheists".[68] Their 2016 survey found that 62% of the globe identified as a religious person, less than 25% as not a religious person, 9% others as "convinced atheists" and 5% others "Do not know/no response".[23] Keysar and Navarro-Rivera advised caution with these figures since other surveys have consistently reached lower figures for the number of atheists worldwide.[69]: 553 : 554

Inverse association between intelligence and religiosity, and the inverse correlation between intelligence and fertility might lead to a decline in non-religious identity (contra-secularization hypothesis) in the foreseeable future.[8][70]: 2 In 2007, sociologist Phil Zuckerman's global studies on atheism have indicated that global atheism may be in decline due to irreligious countries having the lowest birth rates in the world and religious countries having higher birth rates in general.[71] A Pew 2015 global projection study for religion and nonreligion, projected that between 2010 and 2050, there will be some initial increases of the unaffiliated followed by a decline by 2050.[72] Some theorists think religion will fade away but Pew reveals a more complicated picture.[10] Pew predicts the unaffiliated share of the world population will decrease, at least for a while, from 16.4% to 13.2% by 2050.[73][10] Pew states that religious areas are experiencing the fastest growth because of higher fertility and younger populations.[10][74] By 2060, Pew says the number of unaffiliated will increase by over 35 million, but the overall population-percentage will decrease to 13% because the total population will grow faster.[75][76] This would be mostly because of relatively old age and low fertility rates in less religious societies such as East Asia, particularly China and Japan, but also Western Europe.[73][1] By 2019, 43 out of 49 countries studied continued to become less religious.[5]: 110 [6]

Relatively few unbelievers select ‘Atheist’ or ‘Agnostic’ as their preferred (non)religious or secular identity.[77]: 3 Being nonreligious is not necessarily equivalent to being an atheist or agnostic. Many of the nonreligious have some religious beliefs.[18][25]: 24 Also, some of the unaffiliated engage in certain kinds of religious practices.[18][25]: 24 For example, "belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30% of French unaffiliated adults and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults.[18][25]: 24 Being unaffiliated with a religion on polls does not automatically mean objectively nonreligious since there are, for example, unaffiliated people who fall under religious measures, just as some unbelievers may still attend a church or other place of worship.[15][pages needed] Out of the global nonreligious population, 76.2% reside in Asia-Pacific, while the remainder reside in Europe (12%), North America (5.2%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4%), sub-Saharan Africa (2.4%) and the Middle East and North Africa (0.2%).[18][25]: 24

### By population

[edit]

The Pew Research Center in the table below reflects "religiously unaffiliated" in 2010 which "include atheists, agnostics, and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys".

The Zuckerman data on the table below only reflect the number of people who have an absence of belief in a deity only (atheists, agnostics). These do not include the broader number of people who do not identify with a particular religion, such as deists, pantheists, and spiritual but not religious people.

Country  | Pew (2012)[18] | Zuckerman (2004)[78][79]

|
|

Mainland China | 700,680,000  | 103,907,840 – 181,838,720
India |  | 102,870,000
Japan | 72,120,000  | 81,493,120 – 82,766,450
Vietnam | 26,040,000  | 66,978,900
Russia | 23,180,000  | 34,507,680 – 69,015,360
Germany | 20,350,000  | 33,794,250 – 40,388,250
France | 17,580,000  | 25,982,320 – 32,628,960
United Kingdom |  | 18,684,010 – 26,519,240
South Korea | 22,350,000  | 14,579,400 – 25,270,960
Ukraine |  | 9,546,400
United States | 50,980,000  | 8,790,840 – 26,822,520
Netherlands |  | 6,364,020 – 7,179,920
Canada |  | 6,176,520 – 9,752,400
Spain |  | 6,042,150 – 9,667,440
Taiwan |  | 5,460,000
Hong Kong |  | 5,240,000
Czech Republic |  | 5,328,940 – 6,250,121
Australia |  | 4,779,120 – 4,978,250
Belgium |  | 4,346,160 – 4,449,640
Sweden |  | 4,133,560 – 7,638,100
Italy |  | 3,483,420 – 8,708,550
North Korea | 17,350,000  | 3,404,700
Hungary |  | 3,210,240 – 4,614,720
Bulgaria |  | 2,556,120 – 3,007,200
Denmark |  | 2,327,590 – 4,330,400
Turkey |  | 1,956,990 - 6,320,550
Belarus |  | 1,752,870
Greece |  | 1,703,680
Kazakhstan |  | 1,665,840 – 1,817,280
Argentina |  | 1,565,800 – 3,131,600
Austria |  | 1,471,500 – 2,125,500
Finland |  | 1,460,200 – 3,129,000
Norway |  | 1,418,250 – 3,294,000
Switzerland |  | 1,266,670 – 2,011,770
Israel |  | 929,850 – 2,293,630
New Zealand |  | 798,800 – 878,680
Cuba |  | 791,630
Slovenia |  | 703,850 – 764,180
Estonia |  | 657,580
Dominican Republic |  | 618,380
Singapore |  | 566,020
Slovakia |  | 542,400 – 1,518,720
Lithuania |  | 469,040
Latvia |  | 461,200 – 668,740
Portugal |  | 420,960 – 947,160
Armenia |  | 118,740
Uruguay |  | 407,880
Kyrgyzstan |  | 355,670
Croatia |  | 314,790
Albania |  | 283,600
Mongolia |  | 247,590
Iceland |  | 47,040 – 67,620
Brazil | 15,410,000  |

## Historical trends

[edit]

An abandoned church in Australia

Since 2007, there has been a sharp trend away from religion.[6][5] From about 2007 to 2019, 43 out of 49 countries studied became less religious.[6] Past influential thinkers from Karl Marx to Max Weber to Émile Durkheim thought that the spread of scientific knowledge would dispel religion throughout the world.[5]: 112 Industrialization also didn't cause religion to disappear.[5]: 110 Political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris argue faith is "more emotional than cognitive", and both advance an alternative thesis termed "existential security." They postulate that rather than knowledge or ignorance of scientific learning, it is the weakness or vulnerability of a society that determines religiosity. They claim that increased poverty and chaos make religious values more important to a society, while wealth and security diminish its role. As need for religious support diminishes, there is less willingness to "accept its constraints, including keeping women in the kitchen and gay people in the closet".[80]

### Prior to the 1980s

[edit]

Rates of people identifying as non-religious began rising in most societies at least as early as the turn of the 20th century.[81] In 1968, sociologist Glenn M. Vernon wrote that US census respondents who identified as "no religion" were insufficiently defined because they were defined in terms of a negative. He contrasted the label with the term "independent" for political affiliation, which still includes people who participate in civic activities. He suggested this difficulty in definition was partially due to the dilemma of defining religious activity beyond membership, attendance, or other identification with a formal religious group.[81] During the 1970s, social scientists still tended to describe irreligion from a perspective that considered religion as normative for humans. Irreligion was described in terms of hostility, reactivity, or indifference toward religion or as developing from radical theologies.[82]

### 1981–2019

[edit]

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|

In a study of religious trends in 49 countries (they contained 60 percent of the world’s population) from 1981 to 2007, Inglehart and Norris found an overall, but not universal, increase in religiosity.[5]: 110 Respondents in 33 of 49 countries rated themselves higher on a scale from one to ten when asked how important God was in their lives. This increase occurred in most former communist and developing countries. Most high-income countries became less religious.[5]: 112 A sharp reversal of the global trend occurred from 2007 to 2019, when 43 out of 49 countries studied became less religious. This reversal appeared across most of the world.[5] The decline in belief was not confined to high-income countries and appeared across most of the world.[6] In virtually every high-income country, religion has continued to decline.[5]: 112 At the same time, many poor countries, together with most of the former communist states, have also become less religious.[5]: 112 From 2007 to 2019, only five countries became more religious, whereas the vast majority of the countries studied moved in the opposite direction.[5]: 112 India is the most important exception to the general pattern of declining religiosity.[5]: 112 The United States was a dramatic example of declining religiosity - with the mean rating of importance of religion dropping from 8.2 to 4.6 - while India was a major exception. Research in 1989 recorded disparities in religious adherence for different faith groups, with people from Christian and tribal traditions leaving religion at a greater rate than those from Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist faiths.[83]

Inglehart and Norris speculate that the decline in religiosity comes from a decline in the social need for traditional gender and sexual norms, ("virtually all world religions instilled" pro-fertility norms such as "producing as many children as possible and discouraged divorce, abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and any sexual behavior not linked to reproduction" in their adherents for centuries) as life expectancy rose and infant mortality dropped. They also argue that the idea that religion was necessary to prevent a collapse of social cohesion and public morality was belied by lower levels of corruption and murder in less religious countries. They argue that both of these trends are based on the theory that as societies develop, survival becomes more secure: starvation, once pervasive, becomes uncommon; life expectancy increases; murder and other forms of violence diminish. As this level of security rises, there is less social/economic need for the high birthrates that religion encourages and less emotional need for the comfort of religious belief.[5] Change in acceptance of "divorce, abortion, and homosexuality" has been measured by the World Values Survey and shown to have grown throughout the world outside of Muslim-majority countries.[5] Several very comprehensive surveys in the Middle East and Iran have come to similar conclusions: there is an increase in secularization and growing calls for reforms in religious political institutions.[84]

## See also

[edit]

* Apostasy
* Faith deconstruction
* Growth of religion
* Importance of religion by country
* Infidel
* Laїcité
* Pantheism
* Secular religion
* Atheism

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ Depending on whether or not the special administrative regions of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are included in the population statistics of China. The table in the transcluded source excludes all three, referring to the population of Mainland China only.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Eldridge, Stephen. "irreligion". In Duignan, Brian (ed.). Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Archived from the original on 1 September 2024. Retrieved 1 December 2024.
2. ^ "Resources Overview". Explaining Atheism. Queen's University Belfast. 15 January 2025. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
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4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Zuckerman, Phil; Galen, Luke W.; Pasquale, Frank L. (24 March 2016). The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Societies. Oxford University Press. p. 226\. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199924950.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-992495-0. Retrieved 14 December 2024.
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7. ^ a b "Conclusion". Oxford Academic. Oxford University Press. 2016. pp. 223–226\. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199924950.003.0012. ISBN 978-0-19-992495-0. Retrieved 14 December 2024.
8. ^ a b c Ellis, Lee; Hoskin, Anthony W.; Dutton, Edward; Nyborg, Helmuth (8 March 2017). "The Future of Secularism: a Biologically Informed Theory Supplemented with Cross-Cultural Evidence". Evolutionary Psychological Science. 3 (3): 224–242\. doi:10.1007/s40806-017-0090-z. Retrieved 22 December 2024.
9. ^ Inglehart, Ronald (10 December 2020). "Religion's Sudden Decline: Why It's Happening and What Comes Next". Center for Political Studies (CPS). University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Retrieved 14 December 2024.
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11. ^ a b Hackett, Conrad (13 June 2018). "The Age Gap in Religion Around the World" (PDF). Pew Research Center. Retrieved 7 December 2024.
12. ^ Eller, Jack (2010). "What is Atheism?". In Zuckerman, Phil (ed.). Atheism and Secularity. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger. pp. 12–13\. ISBN 9780313351839.
13. ^ a b c d Chaves, Mark (March 2010). "Rain Dances in the Dry Season: Overcoming the Religious Congruence Fallacy". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 49 (1): 1–14\. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01489.x.
14. ^ a b Bullivant, Stephen (2021). "59 - Atheism Throughout the World". The Cambridge History of Atheism. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1095–1112\. doi:10.1017/9781108562324.060. ISBN 978-1-108-56232-4.
15. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Johnson, Todd; Zurlo, Gina (2016). "Unaffiliated, Yet Religious: A Methodological and Demographic Analysis". In Cipriani, Roberto; Garelli, Franco (eds.). Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion: Volume 7: Sociology of Atheism. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 50–74\. ISBN 9789004317536. Retrieved 30 November 2024.
16. ^ a b c Cohen, Signe (1 April 2019). "Atheism has been part of many Asian traditions for millennia". The Conversation. The Conversation Media Group Ltd. Retrieved 22 December 2024. This article incorporates text by Signe Cohen available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
17. ^ a b "4. Religiously Unaffiliated Population Change". Pew Research Center. 9 June 2025. "What do the religiously unaffiliated believe? The religiously unaffiliated aren't necessarily devoid of religious beliefs and practices. Research shows that many people who don't belong to a religious group may still hold religious or spiritual beliefs and participate in religious or spiritual activities."
18. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Religiously Unaffiliated". The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010. Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. 18 December 2012. Archived from the original on 9 July 2024. Retrieved 30 November 2024.
19. ^ a b c Lesage, Jonathan Evans, Alan Cooperman, Kelsey Jo Starr, Manolo Corichi, William Miner and Kirsten (17 June 2024). "Religion and Spirituality in East Asian Societies". Pew Research Center. "A survey in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and neighboring Vietnam finds many people don't identify with a religion but say they believe in unseen beings, venerate ancestors' spirits and engage in ritual practices."`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
20. ^ a b Evans, Jonathan (17 June 2024). "6 facts about Religion and Spirituality in East Asian societies". Pew Research Center. "Table - Few East Asians consider religion very important in their lives but many believe in god or unseen things"
21. ^ a b Zuckerman, Phil; Galen, Luke W.; Pasquale, Frank L. (March 2016). "Secularity around the World". Oxford Academic. Oxford University Press. pp. 30–52\. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199924950.003.0003. ISBN 978-0-19-992495-0. Retrieved 1 December 2024.
22. ^ a b c "More Prone to Believe in God than Identify as Religious. More Likely to Believe in Heaven than in Hell". Gallup International Association. 4 December 2023. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
23. ^ a b "Religion prevails in the world" (PDF). WIN/Gallup International. p. 9\. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 November 2017. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
24. ^ a b "The Global Religious Landscape". The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010. Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. 18 December 2012. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 4 November 2024.
25. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Hackett, Conrad; Grim, Brian J. (December 2012). "Religiously Unaffiliated" (PDF). The Global Religious Landscape:A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010. Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. p. 82. Retrieved 30 November 2024.
26. ^ a b Zuckerman, Phil; Shook, John R., eds. (2017). "15 Sacred, Secular, and Neosacred Governments in China and Taiwan". Oxford Academic. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199988457.013.16. ISBN 978-0-19-998845-7. Retrieved 22 December 2024.
27. ^ a b c Kuo, Cheng-tian (2017). "15. Sacred, Secular, and Neo-sacred Governments in China and Taiwan". In Zuckerman, Phil; Shook, John (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Secularism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199988457. Retrieved 22 December 2024.
28. ^ a b "Least Religious Countries 2024". World Population Review. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
29. ^ a b c "irreligion". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
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32. ^ Campbell, Colin. "Irreligion". In Swatos, William H. Jr. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Hartford Institute for Religion Research: AltaMira Press. Retrieved 1 December 2024.
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35. ^ Newport, Frank (24 December 2015). "Percentage of Christians in U.S. Drifting Down, but Still High". Gallup. Archived from the original on 6 January 2024. Retrieved 14 December 2024.
36. ^ Jacques Berlinerblau, How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom (2012, Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt). p. 53.
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45. ^ Bullard, Gabe (22 April 2016). "The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion". National Geographic. National Geographic Society. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
46. ^ Eller, David (2017). "Varieties of Secular Experience". The Oxford Handbook of Secularism. Oxford University Press: 500–501, 512. "It is commonplace today to note that the term "secular" is of Western origin—and not originally antagonistic to religion ("secular priests" were hardly averse to religion). Frankly, "secular" is not inherently related to religion at all: denoting "of the current age" or "of the present generation," it could apply to any subject...Some societies, as anthropology has discovered, do not even have a term or concept for "religion" and therefore obviously do not have a concept akin to our "secular." For the purposes of the present chapter, they do not have "secular experience" at all, since "the secular"—like religion—is nowhere and everywhere...What investigators can and should do is discover how particular groups, institutions, and societies talk about and practice secularism—if in fact they do at all—rather than to impose a speciously unified concept, derived from one society's experience, on all places and times."
47. ^ Fahmy, Conrad Hackett, Marcin Stonawski, Yunping Tong, Stephanie Kramer, Anne Shi and Dalia (9 June 2025). "Religiously Unaffiliated Population Change". Pew Research Center.`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
48. ^ "World Religion". Association of Religion Data Archives. Retrieved 30 November 2024.
49. ^ a b c Hackett, Conrad (30 August 2023). "Is China a religious country or not? It's a tricky question to answer". Pew Research Center. The Pew Charitable Trusts. Retrieved 7 December 2024. "Yet religion still permeates the everyday lives of many Chinese people who do not claim a religion. Among the total population, minority shares say they believe in religious figures and supernatural forces. But most Chinese people engage in practices premised on belief in unseen forces and spirits. Chinese people, in other words, are more religious in their practices than in their identities or beliefs...Based on common survey measures of formal religion (zongjiao), China is not a very religious country. In fact, based on the ideology of the ruling Chinese Community Party, China is an atheist nation. And yet, based on common behaviors, China is a country in which religion, broadly understood, continues to play a significant role in the lives of a large share of the population."
50. ^ a b Fahmy, Conrad Hackett, Marcin Stonawski, Yunping Tong, Stephanie Kramer, Anne Shi and Dalia (9 June 2025). "Religiously Unaffiliated Population Change". Pew Research Center. "As of 2020, the majority of people with no religious affiliation live in the Asia-Pacific region, mostly in China. (The Chinese government promotes atheism.. About 78% of all religiously unaffiliated people worldwide reside in the Asia-Pacific region, down from 83% in 2010...China is home to 67% of the world's religiously unaffiliated people"`{{cite web}}`: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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52. ^ Zuckerman, Phil, ed. (2010). "Ch. 9 Atheism And Secularity: The Scandinavian Paradox". Atheism and Secularity Vol.2. Praeger. p. 191\. ISBN 978-0313351815.
53. ^ Zuckerman, Galen et al., "Secularity Around the World". pp. 30–32, 37–40, 44, 50–51.
54. ^ "Are all religiously unaffiliated adults in the US nonbelievers?". Pew Research Center. 24 January 2024. Archived from the original on 28 January 2024. "Not all 'nones' are nonbelievers. Far from it. While the "nones" include many nonbelievers, 70% of "nones" say they believe in God or another higher power, and 63% say they believe in spiritual forces beyond the natural world...Roughly two-thirds of "nones" say they think humans have souls or spirits in addition to their physical bodies. This includes 60% of agnostics and 78% of U.S. adults whose religion is "nothing in particular." By comparison, 31% of atheists believe a person has a soul or spirit in addition to a body."
55. ^ Lipka, Michael; Tevington, Patricia; Starr, Kelsey (7 February 2024). "8 facts about Atheists". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on 10 May 2024. "About three-quarters of U.S. atheists (77%) do not believe in God or a higher power or in a spiritual force of any kind, according to our summer 2023 survey. At the same time, 23% say they do believe in a higher power of some kind, though fewer than 1% of U.S. atheists say they believe in "God as described in the Bible." This shows that not all self-described atheists fit the literal definition of "atheist," which is "a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods," according to Merriam-Webster."
56. ^ Nadeem, Reem (30 August 2023). "Non-religion in China". Pew Research Center. "Nearly 4 in 10 Chinese believe in one or more deities..In China, many adults without zongjiao [religious] affiliation engage in traditional religious beliefs and practicies."
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58. ^ Fuller, Robert C. (2017). "Secular Spirituality". The Oxford Handbook of Secularism. Oxford University Press: 571–586.
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61. ^ Wheeler, Brian (4 February 2013). "What happens at an atheist church?". BBC News.
62. ^ Winter, Caroline (9 November 2013). "Church for atheists comes to Australia". ABC News.
63. ^ Frost, Jacqui (2021). "Religion for Atheists? Transhumanism, Mindfulness, and Atheist Churches". The Cambridge History of Atheism. Cambridge University Press: 1080–1094.
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69. ^ Keysar, Ariela; Navarro-Rivera, Juhem (1 October 2013). "36. A World of Atheism: Global Demographics". In Bullivant, Stephen; Ruse, Michael (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Oxford University Press. pp. 553–586\. ISBN 978-0199644650. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
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## Bibliography

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* Coleman, Thomas J.; Hood, Ralph W.; Streib, Heinz (2018). "An introduction to atheism, agnosticism, and nonreligious worldviews". Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. 10 (3): 203–206\. doi:10.1037/rel0000213. S2CID 149580199. Archived from the original on 19 June 2021. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
* Arie Johan Vanderjagt, Richard Henry Popkin, ed. (1993). Scepticism and irreligion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-09596-0.
* Eric Wright (2010). Irreligion: Thought, Rationale, History. BiblioBazaar. ISBN 978-1-171-06863-1.
* Dillon, Michele (2015). "Christian Affiliation and Disaffiliation in the United States: Generational and Cultural Change". In Hunt, Stephen J. (ed.). Handbook of Global Contemporary Christianity: Themes and Developments in Culture, Politics, and Society. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Vol. 10\. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 346–365\. doi:10.1163/9789004291027_019. ISBN 978-90-04-26538-7. ISSN 1874-6691.
* Eller, Jack David (2010). "What Is Atheism?". In Zuckerman, Phil (ed.). Atheism and Secularity. Volume 1: Issues, Concepts, Definitions. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger. pp. 1–18\. ISBN 978-0-313-35183-9.
* ——— (2017). "Varieties of Secular Experience". In Zuckerman, Phil; Shook, John R. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Secularism. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 499ff. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199988457.013.31. ISBN 978-0-19-998845-7.
* Glasner, Peter E. (1977). The Sociology of Secularisation: A Critique of a Concept. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 978-0-7100-8455-2.
* Iversen, Hans Raun (2013). "Secularization, Secularity, Secularism". In Runehov, Anne L. C.; Oviedo, Lluis (eds.). Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. pp. 2116–2121\. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_1024. ISBN 978-1-4020-8265-8.
* Josephson, Jason Ānanda (2012). The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226412337.
* Lois Lee, Secular or nonreligious? Investigating and interpreting generic 'not religious' categories and populations Archived 28 April 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Religion, Vol. 44, no. 3. October 2013.
* Mullins, Mark R. (2011). "Religion in Contemporary Japanese Lives". In Lyon Bestor, Victoria; Bestor, Theodore C.; Yamagata, Akiko (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society. Abingdon, England: Routledge. pp. 63–74. ISBN 978-0-415-43649-6.
* Schaffner, Caleb; Cragun, Ryan T. (2020). "Chapter 20: Non-Religion and Atheism". In Enstedt, Daniel; Larsson, Göran; Mantsinen, Teemu T. (eds.). Handbook of Leaving Religion. Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion. Vol. 18\. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 242–252\. doi:10.1163/9789004331471_021. ISBN 978-90-04-33092-4. ISSN 1874-6691. Archived from the original on 2 June 2021. Retrieved 29 May 2021.
* Smith, James K. A. (2014). How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Tayor. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-8028-6761-2.
* Taylor, Charles (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02676-6.
* ——— (2011). "Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism". In Mendieta, Eduardo; VanAntwerpen, Jonathan (eds.). The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 34–59. ISBN 978-0-231-52725-5. JSTOR 10.7312/butl15645.6.
* Warner, Michael; VanAntwerpen, Jonathan; Calhoun, Craig, eds. (2010). Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-04857-7.
* Zuckerman, Phil; Galen, Luke W.; Pasquale, Frank L. (2016). "Secularity Around the World". The Nonreligious: Understanding Secular People and Societies. New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199924950.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-992494-3.
* Zuckerman, Phil; Shook, John R. (2017). "Introduction: The Study of Secularism". In Zuckerman, Phil; Shook, John R. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Secularism. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 1–17\. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199988457.013.1. ISBN 978-0-19-998845-7.

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* Chinese folk religion
* Confucianism
* Luoism
* Nuo
* Salvationist
* Xiantiandao
* Yiguandao
* Falun Gong
* Taoism
* Folk Taoism
* Yao Taoism

|

Japonic|

* Shinto
* list
* Shugendō
* New religions
* Tenrikyo
* Ryukyuan

Korean|

* Korean shamanism
* Cheondoism
* Jeungsanism

Vietnamese|

* Vietnamese folk religion
* Đạo Mẫu
* Caodaism
* Hoahaoism
* Đạo Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương

Indian|

| Hinduism|

* Vaishnavism
* Krishnaism
* Sri Vaishnavism
* Brahma Sampradaya
* Nimbarka Sampradaya
* Pushtimarg
* Mahanubhava
* Ramanandi
* Warkari
* Swaminarayan
* Shaivism
* Shaiva Siddhanta
* Ganapatya
* Kashmiri
* Kapalika
* Kaumaram
* Lingayatism
* Nath
* Balinese
* Shaktism
* Smartism
* Śrauta
* Sant Mat
* Neo-Hinduism
* list

|

Buddhism|

* Theravada
* Mahayana
* Chan/Zen/Thiền
* Amidism
* Nichiren
* Vajrayana
* Tibetan
* Neo-Buddhism
* list

Other|

* Ayyavazhi
* Kalash
* Jainism
* Digambara
* Śvetāmbara
* Sarnaism
* Kirat Mundhum
* Vedda religions
* Ravidassia
* Sikhism
* Khalsa
* Sects

Ethnic|

| Altaic|

* Turko-Mongolic
* Burkhanism
* Tengrism
* Vattisen Yaly
* Tungusic
* Evenki
* Manchu

|

Austroasiatic|

* Sarnaism

Austronesian|

* Batak Parmalim
* Dayak
* Kaharingan
* Indonesian
* Aliran Kepercayaan
* Kejawèn
* Kapitayan
* Karo Pemena
* Malaysian
* Traditional Sabahan religions
* Philippine Dayawism
* Tagalog
* Polynesian
* Hawaiian
* Māori
* Sumbese Marapu
* Sundanese Wiwitan

Native
American|

* Abenaki
* Alaskan
* Anishinaabe
* Ojibwe
* Midewiwin
* Wabunowin
* Apache
* Blackfoot
* Californian
* Kuksu
* Miwok
* Ohlone
* Pomo
* Chilote
* Choctaw
* Crow
* Ghost Dance/Sun Dance
* Guarani
* Haida
* Ho-Chunk
* Iroquois
* Cherokee
* Four Mothers Society
* Keetoowah Society
* Longhouse
* Mohawk
* Muscogee Creek
* Seneca
* Wyandot
* Jivaroan
* Kwakwakaʼwakw
* Lenape
* Mapuche
* Mesoamerican
* Aztec
* Maya
* Purépecha
* Muisca
* Native American Church
* Navajo
* Nuu-chah-nulth
* Pawnee
* Pueblo
* Acoma Pueblo
* Hopi
* Zuni
* Sioux
* Lakota
* Wocekiye
* Tsimshian
* Ute
* Washat Dreamers
* Yaqui

Tai and Miao|

* Ahom
* Hmongism
* Mo
* Satsana Phi

Tibeto-Burmese|

* Bon
* Burmese
* Benzhuism
* Bimoism
* Bathouism
* Bongthingism
* Dongba
* Donyi-Polo
* Gurung
* Heraka
* Kiratism
* Qiang
* Sanamahism

Traditional
African|

| North African|

* Berber
* Guanche church

|

Sub-Saharan
African|

* Akamba
* Akan
* Baluba
* Bantu
* Kongo
* Zulu
* Bushongo
* Dinka
* Dogon
* Efik
* Fon and Ewe
* Ik
* Lotuko
* Lozi
* Lugbara
* Maasai
* Mbuti
* Odinala
* San
* Serer
* Tumbuka
* Urhobo
* Waaqeffanna
* Yoruba
* Ifá

* Diasporic:
* Candomblé
* Bantu
* Jejé
* Ketu
* Comfa
* Convince
* Espiritismo
* Kumina
* Obeah
* Palo
* Quimbanda
* Santería
* Tambor de Mina
* Trinidad Orisha
* Umbanda
* Vodou
* Voodoo
* Winti

Other ethnic|

* Aboriginal Australian
* Inuit
* Papuan
* Siberian

New
religious
movements|

| Syncretic|

* Blagovery
* Brahmoism
* Chinese
* Falun Gong
* Coconut Religion
* Japanese
* Meivazhi
* Modekngei
* New Acropolis
* New Age
* New Thought
* Rajneesh
* Rastafari
* Sant Mat
* Radha Soami
* Spiritualism
* Subud
* Tensegrity
* Thelema
* Theosophy
* Neo-Theosophy
* Agni Yoga and Roerichism
* Transcendental Meditation
* Unitarian Universalism
* White Brotherhood

|

Modern
paganism|

* African
* Godianism
* Armenian
* Baltic
* Dievturība
* Romuva
* Caucasian
* Abkhaz
* Circassian
* Celtic
* Druidry
* Germanic
* Hellenism (modern religion)
* Neoshamanism
* Ossetian
* Polytheistic reconstructionism
* Italo-Roman
* Kemetism
* Romanian
* Slavic
* Authentism
* Uralic
* Estonian
* Finnish
* Hungarian
* Mari
* Erzya
* Sámi
* Udmurt
* Wicca
* Zalmoxianism
* list

De novo|

* Anthroposophy
* The Christian Community
* Discordianism
* Eckankar
* Fourth Way
* Goddess
* Jediism
* Satanism
* Scientology
* UFO religion
* Raëlism

Historical religions

* Prehistoric
* Paleolithic
* Ainu
* Armenian
* Baltic
* Latvian
* Lithuanian
* Old Prussian
* Basque
* Celtic
* Druidism
* Irish
* Cook Islands
* Dravidian
* Egyptian
* Atenism
* Etruscan
* Finnish
* Fuegian
* Selkʼnam
* Georgian
* Germanic
* Anglo-Saxon
* Continental
* Frankish
* Norse
* Greek
* Gnosticism
* Greco-Buddhism
* Hermeticism
* Mysteries
* Orphism
* Guanche
* Harappan
* Hittite
* Hungarian
* Hurrian
* Illinois
* Inca
* Jamaican Maroon
* Manichaeism
* Mazdakism
* Melanesian
* Mesopotamian
* Babylonian
* Sumerian
* Micronesian
* Nauruan indigenous religion
* Olmec
* Paleo-Balkan
* Albanian
* Dacian
* Illyrian
* Thracian
* Proto-Indo-Iranian
* Iranian
* Vedic
* Ancestral Pueblo
* Pueblo II
* Pueblo III
* Pueblo IV
* Rapa Nui
* Roman
* Cult of Magna Mater
* Gallo-Roman
* Imperial cult
* Mithraism
* Mysteries of Isis
* Natale di Roma
* Semitic
* Arabian
* Nabataean
* Babylonian
* Canaanite
* Punic
* Yahwism
* Scythian
* Slavic
* Somali
* Tongan
* Turkic
* Tengrism
* Urartu
* Vainakh
* Zapotec

Topics

| Aspects|

* Apostasy / Disaffiliation
* Behaviour
* Beliefs
* Call to prayer
* Laicism / Laity
* Covenant
* Conversion
* Deities
* Denomination
* Entheogens
* Faith
* God
* Goddess
* Meditation
* Monasticism
* Monk
* Novice
* Nun
* Mysticism
* Mythology
* Ordination
* Orthodoxy
* Orthopraxy
* Paganism
* Prayer
* Prophecy
* Religious experience
* Ritual
* Liturgy
* Purification
* Sacrifice
* Sacred space
* Bodies of water
* Groves
* Mountains
* Trees
* Soul
* Spirituality
* Supernatural
* Symbols
* Text
* Truth
* Water
* Worship
* Astral
* Fire
* Nature
* Place

|

Theism|

* Animism
* Deism
* Dualism
* Henotheism
* Monotheism
* Nontheism
* Pandeism
* Panentheism
* Pantheism
* Polytheism
* Transtheism

Religious
studies|

* Anthropology
* Cognitive science
* Comparative
* Demographics
* Ethnic
* Folk
* Indigenous
* Major
* World
* Evolutionary origin of religion
* Evolutionary psychology
* History
* Neurotheology
* Philosophy
* Psychology
* Sociology
* Soteriology
* Salvation
* Theology
* Theories about religion
* Women

Religion
and society

* Agriculture
* Business
* Clericalism / Clergy
* Monasticism
* Ordination
* Priest
* Conversion
* Assimilation
* Missionary
* Proselytism
* Disability
* Education
* Fanaticism
* Freedom
* Pluralism
* Syncretism
* Toleration
* Universalism
* Fundamentalism
* Growth
* Gender
* Happiness
* LGBTQ people
* Homosexuality
* Intersex people
* Transgender people
* Minorities
* National church
* National religiosity levels
* Politics
* Populations
* Religiocentrism
* Schism
* School
* Science
* Sexuality
* State
* Suicide
* Theocracy
* Vegetarianism
* Video games
* Violence
* Persecution
* Terrorism
* War
* Sectarian
* Wealth

Secularism
and irreligion

* Agnosticism
* Antireligion
* Atheism
* Criticism
* Deconstruction
* Objectivism
* Secular humanism
* Secular religion
* Secular theology
* Secularization
* Separation of church and state
* Unaffiliated

Overviews
and lists

* Abrahamic prophets
* Deification
* Deities
* Founders
* Index
* Mass gatherings
* Names of God
* New religious movements
* Organizations
* Outline
* Religions and spiritual traditions
* Scholars
* Timeline

Religion by country

| Africa|

* Algeria
* Angola
* Benin
* Botswana
* Burkina Faso
* Burundi
* Cameroon
* Cape Verde
* Central African Republic
* Chad
* Comoros
* Democratic Republic of the Congo
* Republic of the Congo
* Djibouti
* Egypt
* Equatorial Guinea
* Eritrea
* Eswatini
* Ethiopia
* Gabon
* Gambia
* Ghana
* Guinea
* Guinea-Bissau
* Ivory Coast
* Kenya
* Lesotho
* Liberia
* Libya
* Madagascar
* Malawi
* Mali
* Mauritania
* Mauritius
* Morocco
* Mozambique
* Namibia
* Niger
* Nigeria
* Rwanda
* São Tomé and Príncipe
* Senegal
* Seychelles
* Sierra Leone
* Somalia
* South Africa
* South Sudan
* Sudan
* Tanzania
* Togo
* Tunisia
* Uganda
* Zambia
* Zimbabwe

|

Asia|

* Afghanistan
* Armenia
* Azerbaijan
* Bahrain
* Bangladesh
* Bhutan
* Brunei
* Cambodia
* China
* Cyprus
* Georgia
* Hong Kong
* India
* Indonesia
* Iran
* Iraq
* Israel
* Japan
* Jordan
* Kazakhstan
* Korea
* North Korea
* South Korea
* Kuwait
* Kyrgyzstan
* Laos
* Lebanon
* Macau
* Malaysia
* Maldives
* Mongolia
* Myanmar
* Nepal
* Oman
* Pakistan
* Palestine
* Philippines
* Qatar
* Saudi Arabia
* Singapore
* Sri Lanka
* Syria
* Taiwan
* Tajikistan
* Thailand
* Timor-Leste
* Turkey
* Turkmenistan
* United Arab Emirates
* Uzbekistan
* Vietnam
* Yemen

Europe|

* Albania
* Andorra
* Austria
* Belarus
* Belgium
* Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Bulgaria
* Croatia
* Czechia
* Denmark
* Estonia
* Finland
* France
* Germany
* Greece
* Hungary
* Iceland
* Ireland
* Italy
* Kosovo
* Latvia
* Liechtenstein
* Lithuania
* Luxembourg
* Malta
* Moldova
* Monaco
* Montenegro
* Netherlands
* North Macedonia
* Norway
* Poland
* Portugal
* Romania
* Russia
* San Marino
* Serbia
* Slovakia
* Slovenia
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland
* Ukraine
* United Kingdom
* England
* Northern Ireland
* Scotland
* Wales

North America|

* Antigua and Barbuda
* Bahamas
* Barbados
* Belize
* Canada
* Costa Rica
* Cuba
* Dominica
* Dominican Republic
* El Salvador
* Grenada
* Guatemala
* Haiti
* Honduras
* Jamaica
* Mexico
* Nicaragua
* Panama
* Saint Kitts and Nevis
* Saint Lucia
* Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
* Trinidad and Tobago
* United States

Oceania|

* Australia
* Fiji
* Kiribati
* Marshall Islands
* Micronesia
* Nauru
* New Zealand
* Palau
* Papua New Guinea
* Samoa
* Solomon Islands
* Tonga
* Tuvalu
* Vanuatu

South America|

* Argentina
* Bolivia
* Brazil
* Chile
* Colombia
* Ecuador
* Guyana
* Paraguay
* Peru
* Suriname
* Uruguay
* Venezuela

* Category
* Portal

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