On 3 October 2024, StatsNZ released the results from Question 18 of the Personal form for Census 2023 – Religious Affiliation. The media widely reported that, for the first time, the majority of New Zealanders reported that they had no religion. In this article I will be discussing this result, but also looking at some other interesting findings from the census question.

What did the Census ask?

Whenever you analyse any data, it is a good idea to understand what data was collected, and how it was collected. First off, the data I am looking at was collected in Census 2023 (and Census 2018, as I will be using that as a comparison). Because this is a Census, essentially all people in New Zealand on March 7 2023 filled in the census questionnaire. As such, we don’t need to worry about statistical representativeness, like we would for a survey. The Census isn’t perfect, but we can be highly confident the results are representative of how New Zealanders responded when asked about this topic.

But, what specifically were they asked? The paper form contains the following components:

• A set of tick boxes: No Religion, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and “I Object to Answering”.
• A second set of tick boxes, which you are prompted to complete if you tick Christian to the first one: Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, Rātana, Ringatū, Other.
• A free text field, in which you are prompted to provide more information. This data is then coded by Stats NZ, looking for common patterns to create a finer set of sub-denominations for reporting. I can’t find the structure of the online form, but from memory it was essentially the same, except that the free text field had an auto-complete that would suggest options as you typed.

Also, astute readers may notice that all the numbers (but not percentages) I cite in this article are divisible by 3. This is due to the Base 3 Random Rounding, used by StatsNZ to prevent the data being used to extract personal information. You can find more information online, but just know the real number may be as much as 2 points higher or lower than the reported number.

So, with that context in mind, let’s discuss what the findings were.

The growth of refusals

Between 2018 and 2023, the percentage of people reporting that they objected to answering the question increased by 9.6%, to 342,705.

This is more than the growth in total Census responses over the period (6.3%), indicating a growing resistance to responding to this question. This is consistent with a general drop in response rates to surveys across the board, so it may not reflect anything in particular about people’s view of religion. Still, the objectors need to be considered when analysing the rest of the data.

Christianity declined, other groups expanded

The big story in the media was that for the first time, the majority of people indicated they had No Religion. This is true if you include objectors, but if you exclude them, then we actually hit this threshold back in 2018.

2.6 million people reported having no religion in 2023, an increase of 13.8% on the 2018 result. Every top-level religious group, except for Christianity, increased to some degree or other since the last census:

• Christianity declined 6.8%, to 1.6 million.
• Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism & Islam collectively increased 16.3% to 283,588, with Hinduism and Islam representing the bulk of those numbers, and the majority of the growth.
• Māori Religions, Beliefs and Philosophies (this is principally Rātana, Ringatū and Paimarire) grew 5.5%, to 66,051. This is lower than population growth, so this group fell as a share of the population.
• Spiritualism and New Age Religions (this is mostly pagans and wiccans, but also Satanists and Scientologists) grew by 9.4% to 21,540.
• Finally, Other Religions, Beliefs and Philosophies (I’ll explore this category in more depth later) grew by 9.6%, to 101,205.

One question that initially occurred to me is whether the rise in objectors might be responsible for the fall in Christians; are Christians becoming especially unwilling to report their religion? However, we can see that this can’t be a major factor in Christianity’s decrease. The total number of Christians fell by 118,083, but the total number of objectors only increased by 29,910, so it is clear that the vast majority of the drop is an actual reduction in the number of Christians.

The genericisation of Christianity

As noted above, Christianity was the only top-level religious group that shrank since 2018, but that shrinking isn’t uniform.

Every major Christian denomination, except one, fell:

• Anglicans fell by 22%, to 245,301.
• The other major Protestant denominations (mostly Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and Evangelicals) collectively fell by 15%, to 443,748.
• Catholics fell by 4.6%, to 449,484.
• Orthodox Christians fell 0.6%, to 13,785.
• Other Christians rose 12%, to 487,227.

So who are these “Other Christians”? There are a lot of small, independent and hard-to-classify denominations in this category, but essentially each of these named denominations fell. The growth in this category is coming from something StatsNZ calls “Christian (not further defined)”. This represents someone who ticked the Christian box, but didn’t tick any of the denomination boxes or give any details in the free text field. This group increased by 56,718 (18%), a huge increase considering what happened to the other Christian categories.

So, what’s going on here? Unfortunately we don’t have any data on the specific beliefs of the over 360,000 people who fall into this category, but here are some hypotheses I consider plausible:

1. If we assume people who attend a particular denomination’s church would report that denomination in the Census, then this increase in the Other group could reflect a rise in the number of people who have essentially no connection to any Christian churches, but still think of themselves as generically “Christian”. If so, this reflects New Zealand’s overall drop in religiosity, and amounts to an intermediate step between being a practicing Christian and having No Religion.
    
2. Alternatively, this may reflect a greater degree of internal solidarity within Christianity – with more Christians thinking of themselves first-and-foremost as Christians, rather than as a particular denomination. This can be observed in the far right of Christianity in the United States, where a lot of American conservative churches describe themselves as simply “Christian”, without specifying a denomination. Similarly, we are starting to see the Christian far right in the US accept far right Catholics (often referred to as “Trad Caths”) and other non-Protestants in a way that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. This would make the growth of generic Christians a reaction to New Zealand’s secularisation, rather than a progression of it.

What is a religion anyway?

Finally, although it is a small category, I thought it might be interesting to dig into the small but eclectic category called “Other Religions, Beliefs and Philosophies”. This group can be thought of as two separate things:

• Small religions not elsewhere classified (e.g. Confucianism, Baha’i, Jainism).
• Things that are not really religions at all.

There is a persistent myth that if enough people put down something (most often Jedi) on the Census, it becomes an “official religion”. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how government works. Governments are not a monolith, but rather a network of specialised organs. StatsNZ is not in the policy-making business, and it’s definitely not in the theology business. StatsNZ’s job is to measure things, and if there even is such a thing as an “official religion” in New Zealand, deciding what is and isn’t one wouldn’t be StatsNZ’s job. So, if people put something down in the Census that doesn’t fit any of the major denominations that they track, they will dutifully report it in this final category, and not concern themselves with whether it’s really a religion or not.

I however am not StatsNZ, and I can make up my own mind as to whether something is a religion.

I have been reasonably expansive here in classifying things as religions. The vast majority of the “other religions” group is Sikhism, and at 53,406 people it represents 81% of the “other religions” bar on the above graph (up from 78% in 2018), with the other major contributors being:

• Baha’i (3,072, up 5.0%)
• Theism (3,066, up 18%)
• Taoism (1,263, up 15%)
• Zoroastrianism (1,020, down 4.5%)

The only things I have classified as non-religions are things that are, in my opinion: 

• Non-religious philosophies that would normally only be called religions pejoratively (e.g. Marxism, Libertarianism and Socialism, all of which can be found in the data in small numbers).
• Pseudo-religious movements that are (in my opinion) only advocated for ironically.

To give an example, the largest group I consider a non-religion is Jedi (17,682, down 13%). It alone makes up 50% of the non-religions group in my graph, and 17% of the entire “Other Religions, Beliefs and Philosophies” group. The other major entries include:

• Agnosticism (7,434, up 14%)
• Atheism (6,549, down 7.3%)
• Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (3,297, down 22%)
• Humanism (609, down 8.1%)

So, as you can see, you can literally write “Atheist” into the Census form and instead of classifying you as having no religion, StatsNZ will note you down as having a religion called Atheism. This is because their job is to report, not to judge.

This is why, if you want to let New Zealand know you are one of the people whose choices and ethics are not guided by any faith, you should follow the recommendations of the Association of Rationalists and Humanists and tick “No Religion” in 2028, when the next Census is undertaken.