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La démographie religieuse en Bulgarie

The first census in Bulgaria took place in 1887. Until 1946, the religious affiliation of Bulgarian citizens was registered on the basis of their birth or marriage certificates. During the communist regime, the questions about religious affiliation were dropped from the census questionaries. They appeared again in the censuses of 1992 and 2001. In this regard, the National Statistical Institute issued special instructions. They defined the religious affiliation of Bulgarian citizens as “a historically determined belonging of the individual or of his parents and grandparents to a community sharing specific religious views”. The answers to this question were mandatory and the option “irreligious” was not possible in the questionary.

In 2011, the rules were changed. People were free to answer or not to the questionary sections about their religious affiliation, ethnicity and mother tongue. As a result, 21.8 per cent of the Bulgarian citizens did not fill up the section of their religious affiliation. Therefore, the last column in the table below reveals significant deviations in the size of religious communities when compared with the data from previous censuses. The proportion of each religious community is estimated as a relation between the total number of the population (7,364,570) and the number of people who have declared themselves adherents of a particular religious tradition. These percentages are marked with *.

Religious demography of Bulgaria (1887-2011)

In percentages :

Years	1887	1900	1920	1946	1992	2001	2011*
Population Religion	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00
Eastern Orthodoxy	76.9	80.7	83.8	84.9	85.7	82.6	59.4*
Islam	21.4	17.2	14.3	13.3	13.1	12.2	7,0*
Catholicism	0.6	0.8	0.7	-	0.6	0.6	0,7*
Protestantism	0.04	0.1	0.1	-	0.3	0.5	0.9*
Judaism	0.8	0.9	0.9	0.6
Armenian	0.2	0.4	0.2	-	0.1	0.1
Other				1.1	0.2	0.1
Non-religious*							5.7*
Skipped section on religion*							21.8*

In absolute figures :

Years	1887	1900	1920	1946	1992	2001	2011*
Population Religion	3,154,375	3,744,283	4,846,971	7,029,349	8,487,317	7,928,901	7,364,570
Eastern Orthodoxy	2,424,371	3,019,999	4,062,097	5,967,992	7,274,592	6,552,751	4,374,135*
Islam	676,215	643,300	690,734	938,418	1,110,295	966,978	577,139*
Catholicism	18,505	28,569	34,072	-	53,074	43,811	48,945*
Protestantism	1,358	4,524	5,617	-	21,878	42,308	64,476*
Judaism	24,352	33,663	43,232	43,335	2,580	653	706
Armenian	5,839	13,809	10,848	-	9,672	6,500	1,715
Other	1,461	326	371	79,604	15,226	7,784	9,023
Non-religious*							272,264*
Skipped section on religion*							1,606,435*

The 2011 Census also introduced an innovation in the counting of the Muslim community. While in the 2001 census, all Muslims in Bulgaria were represented as one community, the one of 2011 presented the adherents of Islam in three separate categories : “Sunni Muslims”, “Shia Muslims” and “Other Muslims”. In 2001, only part of the Muslims mentioned whether they were Sunni or Shii. In the table below these numbers are marked with **. It is noteworthy that this approach was not applied to the Christian denominations, i.e. they were not defined as “Eastern Orthodox Christians”, “Catholic Christians” and “Protestant Christians.”

Ethnic communities in Bulgaria (2011)

Ethnic group	Total number	Mother Tongue
Ethnic group	Total number	Bulgarian	Turkish	Romani
Total*	6,611,513	5,631,759	604,246	280,979
Bulgarian	5,604,300	5,571,045	15,955	7,528
Turkish	585,024	18,975	564,858	549
Roma	320,761	24,033	21,440	272,710
Armenian	6,360	1,047
Jewish	1,130	897
Walachian	3,598	169
Karakachan	2,511	465
Russian	9,868	183	8
Greek	1,356	98
Macedonian	1,609	411
Romanian	866	37
Ukrainian	1,763	33
Other	19,260	7,390	383	19
No ethnic self-identification	53,107	6,976	1,592	166

** The number shows the number of people having fulfilled the section on ethnicity and mother tongue.

Sources :

Census data for 1887-2001 (in Bulgarian)
Census data for 2011 in Bulgarian and in English.

An analysis of religious belief and national belonging in Central and Eastern Europe (May 2017) is available on the Pew Research Center website (full report available as a pdf document).

D 7 janvier 2014 ADaniela Kalkandjieva