A Matter Of Faith

For many people around the world, religion plays a prominent role in their everyday lives, while others embrace secular ideas. 

As Katharina Buchholz reports, according to a Statista Consumer Insights survey, carried out between April 2022 and March 2023, many of the most religious countries in the world can be found in Africa and the Middle East. Yet, for the countries included in the survey, Asian nations Pakistan and Indonesia together with Egypt scored highest with 99 percent of all adults in the surveyed age group professing to a religion.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The most secular country in the survey was China, with only 22 percent of the adult population saying that they followed a religion.

The number is not surprising given the fact that religious faith was marginalized under Communism in the country. Other relatively secular places in Asia included Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

In Europe, the Czech Republic (27 percent follow a religion) is the country with the fewest people who declare themselves believers – a fact that is in part also tied to the country’s communist past. Further East in Europe, religion has not been stifled as much despite a socialist past – for example in Romania, Serbia or Lithuania and also in Russia.

Poland, the home of famous pope John Paul II, also showed more religious tendencies than many of its Western European neighbors.

In the West of the continent, Ireland was the most religious, while in Southern Europe, religion was most widespread in Greece, Italy and Portugal.

Peru was the only country surveyed on the American continent with more than 80 percent saying they followed a religion.

Most other countries here – with the exception of Canada – did nevertheless score consistently high on religious faith with little difference between North and South.