Survey: more Swiss reject organised religion

Fewer people in Switzerland are attending religious events. Keystone-SDA

Fewer people in Switzerland have a religious affiliation and the proportion who practice religion regularly is steadily declining, a survey finds. But religion or spirituality continues to play an important role during difficult times.

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Attendance at religious events and services is much lower than it was ten years ago, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) reported on Monday. Fewer people in Switzerland attend religious services, follow religious or spiritual events on the radio, television or Internet, or take the time to pray.

Whereas in 2014 almost a third of the population had not attended a religious event or service in the twelve months preceding the annual FSO survey, this was the case for almost half the population in 2024.

At the same time, books, magazines or articles on the Internet dealing with spirituality have become more popular overall over the last ten years (13 to 20% say they read such material).

The number of people who believe in God continues to fall. In 2014, 46% of people surveyed believed in a single god, compared with 38% in 2024. The decline is particularly noticeable among people aged 65 or over (-14 percentage points), while the proportion of believers has hardly changed among the under-25s.

Atheists on the rise

At the same time, the proportion of people who believe in neither one god nor several gods, or who doubt the existence of one or several gods, has increased, including among Roman Catholics and Evangelical Reformed Christians (rising from 20% to 26%, and from 23% to 32%, respectively).

Among the reasons for leaving religion last year, over 28% said they had never been believers or had lost their faith; over 26% said they disagreed with the positions taken by their religious community.

But religion or spirituality continues to play a fairly important or even very important role in difficult times and in the event of illness for the majority of the population (56% and 52%, respectively).

For almost half of those questioned (55% of those aged 65 or over), religion plays an important role in the way they perceive their environment, and for 45% of parents in the education of their children.

More than a fifth of those questioned believe that religion or spirituality has a fairly important or even very important influence on their eating habits. In all these contexts, religion or spirituality generally plays a more important role for women than for men.

The FSO survey covers the 2014-2024 period. It are based on two sample surveys (language and religion, and culture and leisure), each involving 10,000 people (plus additional cantonal surveys). Individuals were selected at random from the FSO’s sampling register.

Translated from German with DeepL/sb

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