A statistical study suggests the religion in New Zealand is heading for extinction. 2006 census figures show that the number and proportion of people indicating they had no religion continued to increase, with 1,297,104 people (34.7 per cent) stating that they had no religion, compared with 1,028,052 people (29.6 per cent) in the 2001 census.
Just over two million people in the 2006 census – 55.6 per cent of those answering the religious affiliation question – said they were part of a Christian religion, compared with 60.6 per cent in the 2001 census.
New Zealand was one of nine countries included in the study which took data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.
The researchers claim that the result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.
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