Religion has played an extremely important role in the history of almost every country in the world. We can see this everywhere around us. From art to language, the impact of religion is everywhere. Although the historic importance of religion is indisputable, today the power of religion varies greatly across countries and socioeconomic groups. In some countries, people identify greatly with their religion, whereas in others people are largely ambivalent towards religion. However, not all of these people may actually consider themselves religious.
Likewise, countries that we don’t necessarily view as being particularly religious may have populations that consider religion or spirituality to be very important to them. While this is fascinating from an anthropological viewpoint, it does make it very difficult to classify how “religious” a country is. As a result, many of the studies that have been done on the prevalence of religion in a country vary wildly, especially in regard to the “least religious” countries in the world.
It is also important to note that as income and educational levels increase in countries around the world, it has a negative correlation with religion. This could explain why many of the world’s most developed countries are also the least religious. Regardless of whether people identify as Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, religion is obviously still very important around the world. However, there are distinct differences between many countries regarding how important people believe religion is and how religious they feel.
Here are the top 20 least religious countries in the world.
Rank | Country | Feel religious |
1. | China | 7% |
2. | Estonia | 16% |
3. | Sweden | 17% |
4. | Denmark | 19% |
5. | Norway | 21% |
6. | Czech Republic | 21% |
7. | Japan | 24% |
8. | Hong Kong | 24% |
9. | United Kingdom | 27% |
10. | Finland | 28% |
11. | Vietnam | 30% |
12. | France | 30% |
13. | Australia | 32% |
14. | Belgium | 33% |
15. | New Zealand | 33% |
16. | Netherlands | 33% |
17. | Russia | 34% |
18. | Cuba | 34% |
19. | Belarus | 34% |
20. | Bulgaria | 34% |