New Zealand – losing their religion?

The 2013 Census sheds some light on the topic of religion in New Zealand. Usually one of the more controversial Census topics, religion always generates some interest. For the first time, Christians are a minority, and there has been a large increase in those reporting “No Religion”. Read on to look at how Kiwi’s religions are changing.

Religion is an optional question on the Census form, due to sensitivities in people answering – many people consider this a private issue. Nevertheless, “Not elsewhere included”, which includes all those who didn’t answer the question, plus all the “unrecognised” responses, such as “Flying Spaghetti Monster” and “Jedi Knight” – in total amounts to 12.2% of the population. And this percentage declined from 2006  (13.2%) to 2013.

It’s also worth noting that Religion in New Zealand is a multi-response question. People can nominate more than one religion. Only about 2% of the population do so, however.

Among the valid responses, we’ve seen some big changes.

For the first time, Christian religions do not make up a majority of the population. Responses to the various Christian religions recorded dropped to 44.3% of population, down from 51.2% in 2006 and 55.3% in 2001.

The largest individual denomination is still Catholic (11.6%), closely followed by Anglican (10.8%) and Presbyterian (7.8%). However all these religions recorded falls, with 95,000 less Anglicans being the largest drop. The Presbyterians recorded a fall of over 70,000 as well, about 20% of their numbers.

The only Christian category to record a significant increase was “Christian nfd” or “Not further described”. This increase was also recorded in the Australian Census, where it was significantly larger. There were an extra 30,000 “Christian, nfd” people, or around a 15% increase. This indicates that perhaps more people are identifying broadly with the Christian faith but not a specific denomination.

Non-Christian religions are up, now comprising 7.2% of New Zealand’s population, with an increase of 36,600, up from 6.7% of population in 2006. This is due to the large influx of migrants, particularly from India and particularly into the Auckland area. Hindus grew by about 40% to just under 90,000 (2.1% of population), while Islam grew by 10,000 to 46,000 people, and Buddhism 58,400, up by 6,000.

However the most remarkable number is the very large proportion of people with No Religion. This category, which includes Atheists, Agnostics, and those who simply have no affiliation with an organised religious group, is now by far the largest single response, comprising 38.6% of population, up by 338,000 people, from 32.2% in 2006. So almost 2 in 5 people in New Zealand have no religion, and clearly most of the increase is coming from people in the Christian religions giving up their faith.

This is remarkably different from the Australian Census. Although Australia also recorded a big increase in No Religion, it only makes up 22.3% of the total population here. So are Kiwis significantly less religious than Aussies?

Perhaps they are, but it may also have something to do with the wording of the Census questions in the two countries. The Australian Census asks people to nominate their religious affiliation, with a list of tick boxes, followed by an “Other” response, and right down the bottom, a box for “No Religion”. So all the other options are given first. In New Zealand, “No religion” is actually the first option in the question. Could that account for such a large difference? Perhaps some of it, but I suspect it’s unlikely to be the whole difference. Kiwis are also probably less religious than Aussies.

See the differences below.

Of course there are some spatial differences between regions in New Zealand as well.

The most Christian communities are Ashburton, Gore and Timaru on the South Island, all with Christian percentages around 53-54%.

The least religious places (highest proportion of no religion) are Tasman District Council (48.2%), Queenstown Lakes District Council (47.6%) and Nelson City (47.5%).

For information about religious affiliation in your area, profile.id has a comprehensive list, including change over time by district back to 2001. If your council doesn’t subscribe to profile.id and you would like to learn more about it, visit our website or email us for more information.