Religion in Europe - Irreligion

Irreligion

Further information: Secularism, Irreligion, and Postchristianity

The trend towards secularism during the 20th century has a number of reasons, depending on the individual country:

• France has been traditionally laicist since the French Revolution. However, since the French state does not collect any statistics on religiosity, there are no official figures on the recent development of religious demographics.
• Much of Eastern Europe was secularized as a matter of state doctrine under Communist rule. Albania was an officially (and constitutionally binding) atheist state from 1967 to 1991. The countries where the fewest people reported a religious belief were the Czech Republic (19%, traditionally Catholic) and Estonia (16%, traditionally Lutheran). Other post-communist countries, however, have seen the opposite effect, with religion being very important in countries such as Romania and Poland.
• The traditionally Protestant countries have seen a general decrease in church attendance since the 1970s. This concerns Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

The trend towards secularism has been less pronounced in traditionally Catholic countries. Greece as the only traditionally Eastern Orthodox country in Europe which has not been part of the communist Eastern Bloc also retains a very high religiosity, with in excess of 95% of Greeks adhering to the Greek Orthodox Church. The trend is also visible in the decrease of the importance of marriage: in 2011, 39.5% of births in the European Union were outside of marriage. Several countries in Europe recorded a majority of births outside of marriage in 2011 - these include Iceland (65.0%), Estonia (59.7%), Slovenia (56.8%), Bulgaria (56.1%), France (55.8%), Norway (55.0%), Sweden (54.3%). These countries tend to be less religious ones (less than half of the population believing in God) whereas half of the European population believes in God.

According to Pew Research Center survey in 2012 religiously unaffiliated (include agnostic and atheist) make up about 18.2% of Europeans population. according to the same survey religiously unaffiliated make up a majority of the population only in two European countries: Czech Republic (75%) and Estonia (60%).