The Role of Religion
About 73.6% of all Austrians are Roman Catholic. The church abstains from political activity; however, lay Catholic organizations are aligned with the conservative People's Party. The Social Democratic Party long ago shed its anticlerical stance. Small Lutheran minorities are located mainly in Vienna, Carinthia, and Burgenland. An estimated 15,000 Jews or adherents of Judaism live in Austria, primarily in Vienna – a remnant of the post-World War II community after the Nazi Holocaust. Immigration during the last decades has increased the percentage of Muslims to 4.2%.
- Roman Catholic 73.6%, Protestant 4.7%, Muslim 4.2%, other 3.5%, unspecified 2%, none 12% (2001 census)
- Roman Catholicism in Austria
- Buddhism in Austria
- Hinduism in Austria
- Islam in Austria
- History of the Jews in Austria
- Paganism in the Eastern Alps
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Austria
Famous quotes containing the words role and/or religion:
“A famous theatrical actress
Played best in the role of malefactress.
Yet her home-life was pure
Except, to be sure,
A scandal or two just for practice.”
—Anonymous.
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)