Peter Lineham: Massey University Emeritus Professor of Religion on Census data showing over half of Kiwis have no religion

More than half of Kiwis have no religion, new data shows.

Census figures released today shows the proportion of people without religion is now at 51.6 percent.

Massey University Emeritus Professor of Religion, Peter Lineham says Christianity has been declining since the 1960s.

"It speeded up a tremendous amount in the period from 2006 to 2018 - and it's still going on."

Lineham says the speed of people choosing no religion is reducing, suggesting other religions may be replacing Christianity.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right now, it's twenty four to six and stats en
Z has released a big chunk of census data today
and for the first time, more than half of the
population in New Zealand say they have no religion. The
number of people who identify as Christian has dropped from
thirty six point five percent of the population in twenty
eighteen to thirty two percent. The other largest religious groups
were Hindu at two point nine percent, Islam at one

(00:21):
point five. Professor Emeritus of Religion at Massi University, Peter
linums with the susceved.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
In Kilder Peter Jerda, How are you, Jack?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Very well? Thank you. Are you surprised at all by this?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
No, I'm not surprised, mind you. They haven't given us
much data. What you've told is about everything they've told
us so far, right, But what I can make out
is that, yeah, the decline in Christianity has been going
on since the nineteen sixties, and it's speeded up a
tremendous amount in the period from nineteen six through to

(00:55):
nineteen two thousand and six to twenty and eighteen. It's
all going on. But what's quite interesting is that the
proportion of people choosing no religion. The speed at which
that's increasing is going down a bit, and I think
that means that other religions are rising at the expense

(01:16):
of Christianity.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
That's interesting. Yeah, right, Well, do you know what other
religions those would be, or would that be you know,
Hindu and Islam.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
You know already Handu and Islam have increased, and that
reflects the immigration figures. But I think there may be
more to them that I'm waiting. I gether, I've got
to wait until early December for the detailed figures, so
I've found tenterhooks to then. But I suspect that there's
also been quite a growth of what you might call
new age trape religions, different religious forms. I think there's

(01:50):
a bit of evidence that people, especially molder people, are
exploring around for alternatives to traditional religion.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, or alternative forms of spirituality.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. So these are the figures.
These are only the figures phenomenal adherents. So it doesn't
measure spirituality unless people say they have a commitment to
that spirituality. An awful lot of the people who say
none are quite spiritual in their outlook.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, how many people do you think are distinguished between
being agnostic or or having no religion and actively believing
there is no god.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
So we got some rough figures on that from other surveys,
the Value Survey, and that would suggest to us that
roughly half of the people who say they have no religion,
so about a quarter of the population, so they don't believe.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
In gods essentially.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, that yeah, and and the other quarter will have
various outlooks where they're not They're not putting their money
on any line if you like.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it. I wonder if that is
likely to change it all as well? Have you have
you seen you know, have the numbers on that front
changed it all? As you've seen this big shift since
two thousand and six.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, there's a bit of evidence certainly that the kind
of hard eighteism option which was tremendously popular in two
thousand and six with the new atheism, has really faded
significantly and people are much more exploratory about really Remember,
we're talking about a new generation of young people who

(03:37):
are really interested in all sorts of aspects of lives
that their parents wouldn't have dreamt of talking about.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
And now of course, this is the first census in
which they asked about gender identity and sexual identity. So
forty seven thousand people identified as being homosexual, more than
seventy eight thousand identified as being bisexual. That's interesting. What
do you read into those figures better?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Oh, well, the homosexual figure, the existing surveys would have
led us to believe it was quite a bit lower
than that. But they've given us a breakdown of the ages.
And there's no question about it that young people now
are much more likely to identify as gender non conforming,

(04:22):
so they're either gay or they're exploring inndidoquous as the
transfigure as well. So there's a whole lot of new factors.
And you see it could be linked to the religious
as well, that this exploratory aspect of young people far
more willing to think of alternatives than their parents.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, I don't know. I just feel completely unqualified to
comment it all on the of this, which isn't the
first time in my life that I'm a little bit
surprised that almost double the number of people, certainly thirty
or forty percent more people have identified as being bisexual
than have identified as being homosexual. As gay or lisbian,
which I suppose speaks to the kind of you know,
maybe speaks to the changing social norms.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Well, it's generally thought in the gay world anyway, that
the first step to identifying as homosexual is to say
you're bisexual, in others to reflect that you're not quite
sure you're there. But since the age of those people,
it's very predominantly in the tend to ten to twenty

(05:25):
five age band. Yeah right, not all of those, and
think I would think, you know, a great majority of
those will end up has been heterosexual. Yeah, that's fascinating
that they're exploring.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah, well, thanks, Peter, I appreciate that. Don't now have
any doubt of you on how many people identified as Jedi.
I know that was always a bit of a laugh
and back in the day. For more from Hither Duplessy
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