NZers Becoming Less Religious
According to a recent survey of 1000 New Zealanders by researchers from the Department of Communication, Journalism and Marketing at Massey University 40% of respondents claim no religious affiliation. 17 years ago this number was just 29%.
53% claim belief in God but half of this number express doubts.
60% would like children to have religious education with most of them preferring the teaching of all faiths. As an atheist myself, I’m strongly in favour of teaching religion in schools; particularly if it is taught in an even-handed and factual manner. (In the words of cultural anthropologist Dr. David Eller, “Nothing is more destructive to religion than other religions; it is like meeting one’s own anti-matter twin.”)
Tags: new zealand, Religion, survey
i heart (not) the word ‘religion’…
Hehe, if I had a dime for the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “Me? I’m not religious, I’m a Christian!”…
((Dale must finish assignment – Dale must finish assignment))
it’s just that the notion of a group of people ‘becoming less religious’ probably is based on an overly-specific understanding of ‘religious’. ‘shifting its religious affiliations’ would seem a better descriptor.
Personally, I think individuals and societies do become more or less religious. That is, they act to a larger or a lesser degree in accordance with the demands of their religion (as a result of their faith becoming strengthened or weakened for example).
I also think that individuals and societies can shift their religious affiliation – they can lean away from orthodox religions toward evangelical religions, or from Islam toward agnosticism for example.
The word “religion” has become stigmatized lately by extremists of various stripes. As a result, there seems to be a growing tendency to try to disassociate one’s own set of beliefs and associated institutions and practices (e.g., one’s own religion) from the word “religion”. This is quite a shift from the old days when Christians (at least in the U.S. South, not sure where else) would proudly sing “Give Me That Old-Time Religion.”
The New Zealand numbers are much better than ours here in the U.S. Here, those who claim no religious affiliation are a meager 14% of the population as of 2008 – which is up from only 8% in 1990. I wonder how much the shift is due to the ready availability of information and conversation about religion on the web, and how much is due to the increased in anti-religious books that have gained in popularity? Or maybe both the web conversations and anti-religious publications are a reflection of some broader change that is taking place in society – like some kind of stratification of religious fanatics on the one hand and recalcitrant infidels on the other.
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Which begs the question: if there are 3 pillars, and there is an infidel behind 2 of the pillars, and a fanatic behind the third pillar – then when you choose a pillar, and God sends one of the infidels to hell, are you better off staying with the pillar you initially picked or should you switch?
I’m not sure what questions were asked in the survey but given they are also quoting a number of people who claim belief God I think it likely that they’re using the word ‘religion‘ in its proper context:
religion [faith, religious belief] a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny.
religion [faith, organized religion] an institution to express belief in a divine power.
Sure, ‘religion’ can be defined specifically to denote ‘supernatural’ or ‘organised’ belief systems/groups, but it also has valid, common and wider uses (like that used by NZ atheist/rationalist/humanist Bill Cooke, when he emphasises that there is more than one way to ‘be a religious person’).
My main point is that the headline that people are ‘becoming less religious’ gives a simplistic accounting of what is actually happening – which A3′s comment begins to explore.
Has anyone seen a link to the actual report? I always think it’s best to see the details, the questions asked and the actual response data.
So often journalists get this sort of thing wrong.
This looks to be where the data will be located when it is eventually published there and there appears to be a PDF of the survey they might have used.
The source of the news release was Professor Phil Gendall of Massey who I heard interviewed about it on Radio NZ yesterday afternoon.
Just having a quick squiz at the survey that you linked to. It looks like the right survey.
I’ll note that many options I would struggle to find an answer that I could fully commit to; but rather than criticise the survey or Phil Gendall, I’ll just say it’s reminded me just how hard crafting good questions for a survey would be.
For example, that survey would be relatively easy to fill out – not requiring much thought. But one that would actually begin to get down to the nitty gritty of things would be quite hard to fill out for many/most? – not only finding out how people respond to such and such question (phrased in such and such way), but rather finding out how people come to those conclusions. That would be more like a short course in comparative religion (or something) than like a survey… But those completing that ‘short course’ would have far more interesting results IMHO.
Had a brief look at the questionnaire – makes me more interested to see the actual results. Thanks for the links – I’ll keep an eye out.