According to 1900 government statistics, Christian groups form about 96% of the Kiribati population by census counts. The Christian population is divided among general population by census counts as the Roman Catholic Church, 55 percent; Kiribati Protestant Church, 36 percent; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), 2 percent; and the Seventh-day Adventists, 2 percent.[1] Several of the smaller Christian churches claim to have higher numbers of adherents, but there is no independent confirmation.[1] Persons with no religious affiliation account for less than one percent of the population.[1] Members of the Catholic Church are concentrated in the northern islands, while Protestants are the majority in the southern islands.[1]
Missionaries introduced Christianity into the area in the mid-19th century.[1] They are currently present and operate freely.[1] The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the Government generally respects this right in practice.[1] Societal abuses or discrimination based on religious belief or practice occur, but are relatively infrequent.[1]
The only substantial non-Christian population is of the Bahá'í Faith. The Bahá'í Faith in Kiribati begins after 1916 with a mention by `Abdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, that Bahá'ís should take the religion to the Gilbert Islands which form part of modern Kiribati.[2] The first Bahá'ís pioneered to the island of Abaiang(aka Charlotte Island, of the Gilbert Islands), on March 4, 1954.[3] They encountered serious opposition from some Catholics on the islands and were eventually deported and the first convert banished to his home island.[4] However in one year there was a community of more than 200 Bahá'ís[5] and a Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly.[6] Three years later the island where the first convert was sent to was found to now have 10 Bahá'ís. By 1963 there were 14 assemblies.[7]
As the Ellice Islands gained independence as Tuvalu and the Gilbert Islands and others formed Kiribati, the communities of Bahá'ís also reformed into separate institutions of National Spiritual Assemblies in 1981.[8] The Bahá'ís had established a number schools by 1963[7] and there are still such today - indeed the Ootan Marawa Bahá'í Vocational Institute being the only teacher training institution for pre-school teachers in Kiribati.[3] The census figures are consistently between 2 and 3% for the Bahá'ís while the Bahá'ís claim numbers above 17%.[4] All together the Bahá'ís now claim more than 10,000 local people have joined the religion over the last 50 years and there are 38 local spiritual assemblies.[3]
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