Gallup International recently released another one of its international surveys, identifying 60 percent of the world’s population to be religious. Additionally, the poll revealed that Great Britain has the lowest number of people who believe in organized religion.
The survey, conducted around Easter, included approximately 64,000 people from across 65 countries around the world. The Middle East as well as Africa were left out from the survey, with the presumption that most people in these regions are religious, a fact that could potentially affect the results of the poll.
The results of the survey showed that only one-third of Great Britain’s population considers itself religious, irrespective of whether they visit any particular house of worship. An unbelievable 53 percent of Britons said that they do not believe in religion while a comparatively small figure, 13 percent, confirmed that they are convinced atheists. The rest did not have an opinion regarding the matter.
Only three other countries in Europe, including Sweden, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, showed the lowest number of self-declared religious people in comparison to Great Britain. Other than these countries, Japan, China and Hong Kong had fewer religious people than the United Kingdom. According to the survey, Thailand emerged as the world’s most religious country, with 94 percent of its people saying they are religious. Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia and Morocco ranked at second, third, fourth and fifth positions after Thailand.
According to the poll, youngsters emerged more religious than adults as well. While religion is still dominant on every continent, education and wealth were found to be the factors that influence people negatively, at least as far as religion is concerned. In other words, the more educated and wealthy people were seen as being less religious.
“Religion continues to dominate our everyday lives and we see that the total number of people who consider themselves to be religious is actually relatively high. Furthermore, with the trend of an increasingly religious youth globally, we can assume that the number of people who consider themselves religious will only continue to increase,” said Jean-Marc Leger of Gallup International.
Photo Credits: D L Hancock Limited
