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Religious landscape in Switzerland - 2015 Census

According to the results of the federal population census carried out from 2013 to 2015, 68.5% of people permanently living in Switzerland aged 15 years at least said they belonged to a Christian community, against 79.3% in 2000, distributed as follows:

 37.7% Roman Catholic Church,
 25.5% Reformed Evangelical Church,
 2.7% Free Evangelical Churches and other Protestant communities,
 2.3% Christian Orthodox Church,
 0.9% other Christian Churches.

The nation’s two major Churches – Roman Catholic and Reformed – are therefore still the majority even though they are experiencing a drop in their number of followers (Roman Catholic Church : - 4.7% since 2000 / Reformed Church : - 9.1% since 2000). This fall can be explained by the fact that more and more people leave their original church because they no longer feel as though they belong. Indeed, during this very same census, 23,1% of the population living in Switzerland claimed it had “no religious affiliation”, against 11.1% in 2000 and 7.4% in 1990 and 1.1% in 1970. It should be noted in passing that the number of disaffiliations is much higher among Reformists than among Catholics. Only 1.3% of people did not reply to the question of religious belonging.

For the other religious traditions in Switzerland, the census depicts the following distribution:

 0.2% Jewish communities,
 5.1% Islamic communities,
 0.5% Buddhist communities,
 0.5% Hindu communities,
 0.3% other religious movements.

These figures indicate a stable percentage for the Jewish communities, which was also 0.2% in 2000. A slightly higher percentage of Buddhist and Hindu communities, which were 0.3% and 0.4% respectively. As for Islam, an increase of 0.8% was recorded between 2000 and 2015. Finally, the number of people claiming other religious communities has increased 0.2% since 2000.

Sources of Data: Censuses of the Federal Statistics Office, Religious belonging, 2013-2015.
Further information:
 Pratiques et croyances religieuses et spirituelles en Suisse, 1ers résultats de l’Enquête sur la langue, la religion et la culture 2014, 2016.
 Jean-François Mayer, Recherches : ce que croient les Suisses aujourd’hui, Religioscope, 28 May 2016

updated by Anaïd Lindemann

D 20 June 2017    AJoëlle Sanchez AJörg Stolz

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