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[edit] Adherence Figures
Among religions in Austria, Roman Catholic Christianity is the predominant one. According to the 2001 census, 73.6% of the country's population adhered to this denomination.[1] The number of Sunday churchgoers was around 11.5% (as percentage of thetotal Austrian population, that is 914,348 churchgoers out of a total population of 8,043,000). Since 2001, the number of Roman Catholics and number of churchgoers have reduced. The latest figures (as per the end of 2005) available from the Austrian Roman Catholic church itself, list 5,663,000 members or 68.5% of the total Austrian population and a weekly Roman Catholic church attendance of 753,701 or 9% of the total Austrian population.[2] The number of Lutherans declined from 5.7% in 1971 to 4.7 in 2006. Most Lutherans reside in the province of Carinthia, in the South of Austria. Meanwhile, the number of Muslims is on the increase, with 4.2%. There are also minor communities of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews in Austria.[3][4]
| Austrian Roman Catholic church Figures (2005) |
| Catholic |
Protestant |
Muslim |
Other |
Unspecified |
None |
| 68.5% |
4.7% |
4.2% |
3.5% |
2.0% |
17.1% |
[edit] Poll results
According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2005,[5] based on a limited sample of people asked:
- 54% of Austrian citizens responded that "they believe there is a God".
- 34% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force".
- 8% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".
[edit] History
Austria was greatly affected by the Protestant reformation, to the point where a majority of the population was eventually Protestant. Due to the prominent position of the Habsburgs in the Counter-Reformation, however, Protestantism was all but wiped out and Catholicism once more restored as the dominant religion. The significant Jewish population (around 200,000 in 1938) in the country, mainly residing in Vienna, was reduced to a mere couple of thousand by the mass emigration in 1938 (more than 2/3 of the Jewish population emigrated from 1938 until 1941) and the following Holocaust during the Nazi regime in Austria. Immigration in more recent years, primarily from Turkey and the former Yugoslavia, has led to an increase in the number of Muslims and Serbian Orthodox Christians.[6]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
