Fiddling with census figures for religion in New Zealand

Despite the bad publicity dogging the Catholic church internationally,  Karl du Fresne reports that many NZ Catholics have a positive picture of their church in New Zealand (see Catholicism: Holy smoke, NZ Listener). His subtitle conveys the message – despite all the scandals and controversies, Catholicism is emerging as the country’s most popular denomination.

Du Fresne wrote:

“Statistics suggest their optimism may be justified. Although the number of New Zealanders declaring no religious belief is steadily increasing, making this one of the most secular countries in the world, the 2006 census showed the Catholic population had risen by 4.7% over the previous five years. In the same period, the number of Anglicans and Presbyterians sharply declined. If the trends have continued, the just-taken census should show Catholicism overtaking the Church of England as the denomination with the greatest number of followers in New Zealand.”

A friend queried the claim of 4.7% increase in the Catholic population. After all, weren’t recent census results showing a decline in numbers of religious people?

So – I had a look at the data for the 1996, 2001 and 2006 Censuses (No data available for the 2013 Census yet). Du Fresne’s figure of 4.7% increase in the Catholic population between 2001 and 2006 is correct – but easily misinterpreted.  He is referring to absolute numbers, not the proportion or percentage of the total population, which also increased in that time – an important difference.  Here are some figures and graphics to clarify the census results.

	1996	2001	2006
Total People	3,618,303	3,737,277	4,027,947
No Religion	867,264	1,028,049	1,297,104
Anglican	631,764	584,793	554,925
Catholic	473,112	485,637	508,437
Presbyterian	470,442	431,139	400,839
Methodist	121,650	120,546	121,806
Pentecostal	69,333	67,182	79,155
Hindu	25,551	39,798	64,392
Baptist	53,613	51,423	56,913
Buddhist	28,131	41,634	52,362
Ratana	36,450	48,975	50,565
Latter-day Saints	41,166	39,915	43,539
Islam/Muslim	13,545	23,631	36,072
Evangelical, Born Again and Fundamentalist	1,584	11,016	13,836
Orthodox	6,933	9,576	13,194
Salvation Army	14,625	12,618	11,493
Sikh	2,817	5,199	9,507
Judaism/Jewish	4,809	6,636	6,858
Baha’i	3,111	2,988	2,772

Clearly, as du Fresne said, Catholics have slightly increased in numbers  while other major religions have declined. Possibly Catholics may overtake Anglicans in the 2013 census. But the 4.7% increase in absolute numbers can be misleading because the total population increased by 7.8% in that time.

Maybe, from the perspective of the specific religion, the increase or decline in absolute numbers is important. However, the “no religion” and smaller religions have performed better on this criteria than Catholics. In the table below I have ranked some of the religions in order for that criteria – the increase from 2001 – 2006 expressed as a percentage of the 2001 figure.

	numbers 2006	%age increase 2001-2006
Sikh	9507	82.9
Hindu	64392	61.8
New Age	669	59.3
Islam/Muslim	36072	52.6
Orthodox	13194	37.8
Spiritualist	7743	32.2
Satanism	1167	30.5
No Religion	1297104	26.2
Buddhist	52362	25.8
Evangelical, Born Again and Fundamentalist	13836	25.6
Pentecostal	79155	17.8
Baptist	56913	10.7
Catholic	508437	4.7
Methodist	121806	1.0
Jehovah’s Witness	17910	0.5
Anglican	554925	-5.1
Presbyterian, Congregational and Reformed	400839	-7.0
Baha’i	2772	-7.2

Finally, many people would interpret (incorrectly) du Fresne’s 4.7% as the increase in percentage of Catholics as a proportion of the total population. The table below shows the data for that calculation – in this case the proportion of Catholics changed from 13.0% in 2001 to 12.6% in 2006 – a decline of 0.4%.

	% in 2006	Change from 2001
Sikh	0.2	0.1
Hindu	1.6	0.5
New Age	0.0	0.0
Islam/Muslim	0.9	0.3
Orthodox	0.3	0.1
Spiritualist	0.2	0.0
Satanism	0.0	0.0
No Religion	32.2	4.7
Buddhist	1.3	0.2
Evangelical, Born Again and Fundamentalist	0.3	0.0
Pentecostal	2.0	0.2
Baptist	1.4	0.0
Catholic	12.6	-0.4
Methodist	3.0	-0.2
Jehovah’s Witness	0.4	0.0
Anglican	13.8	-1.9
Presbyterian	10.0	-1.6
Baha’i	0.1	0.0

Du Fresne speculated on the figures for Catholics in NZ:

“That increase is thought to be partly related to the increasing number of Asian Catholic immigrants, which in turn reflects the growth of Catholicism in the Third World. Four out of every 10 New Zealand Catholics under 25 are Asian, Maori or Pasifika. That gives hope to Catholics who are otherwise dismayed at the secularisation of society and the decline in attendance at mass. Most of the older Catholics contacted by the Listener said their children and other family members had drifted away from the Church.”

Conclusions

• Yes, Catholics in New Zealand increased in absolute numbers between 2001 and 2006 (by 4.7% from 485637 in 2001 to 508437 in 2006) but slower than the rate of growth of the total population. Consequently their proportion in the total population declined by 0.4% (from  13.0% in 2001 to 12.6% in 2006).
• Yes, their relatively slow decline (0.4%) contrasts with the much more rapid decline of the other major Christian denominations (1.9% for Anglicans and 1.6% for Presbyterians).
• Some smaller Christian denominations and other religions like Hindu, Buddhist and Islam increase dramatically in numbers, but because of their small size did not really figure as changes in the proportion of the total population.
• The stand out group is the “no religion” one which increased as proportion of the total population by 4.7% (from 27.5% in 2001 to 32.2% in 2006) [Or by 26.2% (from 1,028,049 in 2001 to 1,297,104 in 2006) in terms of absolute numbers].

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Pope Benny’s speech – graphically

Came across this simple reaction to the recent speech where Pope Bennie attributing all the ills of the world, and specifically Nazism, to atheism and secularism.

Stef Lewandowski gets his argument across with a Venn diagram.

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Thanks to Stef Lewandowski in The Pope’s speech, Venn style

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Putting the Pope in his place

I watched the twitter messages coming through this morning from participants in the London Protest the Pope Rally. Seems to have been a lot bigger than expected. Original projections were for 2000 but during the rally the police reported 15,000 and organisers were claiming “almost 20,000.”

Many of the messages indicated that participants were actually feeling proud to be British, for a change. And that the rally was a welcome breath of rationality in a sea of sycophantic media reporting during the pope’s visit.

Just picked this video up from Jerry Coyne‘s blog Why Evolution is True (see Dawkins vs. Ratzi). It’s Richard Dawkins‘ speech to the Rally at Downing Street.

This man is amazing. Not only is he a terrific writer and his academic talks spellbinding. He also turns out to be an excellent rally speaker. Brief, too the point and humorous.

He really put’s the Pope’s diversionary and hypocritical tactics into context.

Well worth watching.

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Popes cunning straw mannery?

Thanks to DavidD's Blog

One would have thought Pope Bennie would be on his best behaviour during his visit to the UK. After all, it’s not exactly as if the people are keen on squandering such money on an unnecessary “state” visit. Nor is his standing very high at the moment with the role he played in covering up child abuse in his church.

But he is hardly off the plane than he makes extraordinary remarks suggesting that atheism was the key factor in Nazism. Well we all know how that tactic is used in internet discussion, don’t we. Godwin’s Law states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.” Mike Godwin formulated this in his sarcastic observation that, given enough time, all discussions—regardless of topic or scope—inevitably wind up being about Hitler and the Nazis.

But Bennie must be so desperate he actually started by invoking Goodwin’s law!

Of course he is well known for attempting to get a campaign going against the “evil secularism” he sees in Europe. He was helped in this by the Islamic leader King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (see Interfaith dialogue to fight against human rights).

However, perhaps Paul Kirby has a point when she suggests this silly statement is an attempt at a tactical diversion (see Calling all Pope Protestors). After all, Bennie is no fool and he has presumable worked hard, together with the UK government, to limit the embarrassment this visit will cause. Paula says:

“My conclusion is that the Nazi remarks were a deliberate attempt to deflect the anticipated protests about the scandal of the child sex abuse cover-ups in the RCC.

We know from comments made before the visit that both the Vatican and the UK govt were deeply concerned that the visit might be overshadowed by the sex abuse issue; so what could be more natural than that they would have put their heads together to try to find a way to prevent that happening? And what better method could they possibly find than to launch an attack on the likely protestors – an attack of such grotesque obscenity that we would be immediately deflected into protesting about that rather than the real issue?

It is inconceivable to me that the UK government didn’t know exactly what was going to be in the pope’s speech at Holyroodhouse this morning. Not only that, but had that Nazi comparison been made about ANY other group in British society, government officials would have been falling over one another in their rush to distance themselves from it. The fact this hasn’t happened suggests very strongly to me that this was a put-up job, an indicator of their determination to prevent the visit turning into an embarrassment to the pope (and therefore the government), as well as of the depth of their fear that it might.”

Paula is appealing to demonstrators not to be distracted. She warns “If the protests during the rest of his tour focus on his comments about Nazis and valueless secularists, rather than the issue he fears most, then he will be chortling all the way back to the Vatican on Sunday.”

And that issue is child abuse.

Image credit Pope Godwin

Remove support for child abuse

This doesn’t affect me directly, being a horrible heathen, but some readers might be interested. Some might even want to take action.

The article  Absolve This: Put The Catholic Church Out Of Its Misery appeared recently. It’s written by a “lapsed” Catholic disgusted by recent revelations of child abuse by the church in Ireland. It makes the point that one still gets counted by the church as a member – thus inflating the statistics. That to actually stop this it’s no good just being “lapsed” – one has to make it official. One has to actually defect.

The writer is encouraging this course for other Catholics who are “lapsed” or otherwise disgusted with the church. Here’s his advice:

“The genius’s at Count Me Out have compiled all the information you’ll need to complete this easy process on one website. Not Irish but still want to defect? No problem, the form is universal, so just fill this out and send it to the parochial house or bishop’s office of the diocese in which you were baptised. If you haven’t defected yet, then the church is using your membership to show that they have support. . .

Any other organisation would have been torn down after the first evidence of child abuse came to light. How many more horror stories do we need before the Church is put out of its evil misery?”

So – for all you “lapsed” Catholics out there. Here’s a practical step you can take to end this abuse.

Moral leadership on stem cells?

Pope Benny’s recent comments on Aids in Africa reminded me of an experience I had as a child in the early 1950s. I used to help my Father (he was a milk delivery man) in the early mornings. One morning we found a wallet dropped outside the local Catholic Church before the early morning mass.  I remember my Mother’s moral indignation when they discovered a condom, alongside a rosary, in the wallet. “Hypocritical Catholics” was her comment.

8 cells

But I think it’s wrong to accuse members of a religion of hypocrisy because they refuse to go along with the “moral” demands of the Church dogma. With the “moral” exhortations of the Church leadership.

We know that many Catholics condemned the Pope for his comment on condoms and Aids, and most Catholics also ignore the Church’s ban on the use of contraceptives. People have all sorts of emotional, family and historical reasons for their membership of a religion. The moral exhortations of the Church leadership may well be irrelevant to most members.

Out of touch with reality

Have a look at this Herald Cartoon: Out of touch with reality.

“He might be in touch with God but he’s definitely not in touch with reality.”

Mind you – I think that it’s safe to assume that anyone who claims they are in touch with God, is out of touch with reality.

And what’s this about the Pope condemning “sorcery and withccraft?” Isn’t this a case of pots and kettles?

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