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Census data shows troubling signs for Christianity

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Wed, 25 Sep 2019, 1:56PM
Photo / File

Census data shows troubling signs for Christianity

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Wed, 25 Sep 2019, 1:56PM

New Zealand's largest religious belief group is no religion at all.

Figures from the 2018 Census show 48 per cent of the population identify as non-religious.

Christianity has dropped from 47.65 percent in the 2013 Census to 37.31 percent in the latest one.

Out of the different Christian churches, Anglicans topped the list at 314,913, while  295,734 people identified as Roman Catholic, 221,199 as Presbyterian and 52,743 as Methodist.

The numbers continue a trend line which has been observed over several recent Census counts.

Chris Clarke, former chief executive of World Vision NZ and now adviser to the Wilberforce Foundation, joined Kate Hawkesby to explain why the data confirmed what many church leaders already knew.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW ABOVE

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