Census statistics, 1900–2020

Line chart of the trends, 1900–2020

Census/structural survey's statistics 1900–2020:^[3]

Religion by cantons

Religions in Switzerland by geographic areas in the early 20th century. Page from a school atlas in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Switzerland.

Religions in Switzerland by municipality in 2016.

Religion in Switzerland by canton, 2018 (absolute majority in coloured background)^{[lower-alpha 2][12][13]}

Arms	Canton	Total population	Catholic population	Protestant population	Catholic %	Protestant %	Protestant + Catholic %	Unaffiliated + other* %
	Zürich	1,520,968	387,325	425,145	25.5	28.0	53.4	46.6
	Bern	1,034,977	164,866	541,148	15.9	52.3	68.2	31.8
	Vaud	799,145	250,543	205,775	31.4	25.7	57.1	42.9
	Aargau	678,207	215,984	161,317	31.8	23.8	55.6	44.4
	St. Gallen	507,697	226,264	104,851	44.6	20.7	65.2	34.8
	Geneva	499,480	219,477	62,769	43.9	12.6	56.5	43.5
	Luzern	409,557	245,397	41,673	59.9	10.2	70.1	29.9
	Ticino	353,343	235,570	5,356	66.7	1.5	68.2	31.8
	Valais	343,955	261,963	20,042	76.2	5.8	82.0	18.0
	Fribourg	318,714	197,559	41,534	62.0	13.0	75.0	25.0
	Basel-Landschaft	288,132	71,541	85,388	24.8	29.6	54.5	45.5
	Thurgau	276,472	85,104	93,628	30.8	33.9	64.6	35.4
	Solothurn	274,748	86,518	58,522	31.5	21.3	52.8	47.2
	Grisons	198,379	89,768	66,536	45.3	33.5	78.8	21.2
	Basel-Stadt	194,766	24,783	26,380	12.7	13.5	26.3	73.7
	Neuchâtel	176,850	64,258	51,378	36.3	29.1	65.4	34.6
	Schwyz	159,165	95,794	18,390	60.2	11.6	71.7	28.3
	Zug	126,837	61,999	17,070	48.9	13.5	62.3	37.7
	Schaffhausen	81,991	17,155	29,190	20.9	35.6	56.5	43.5
	Jura	73,419	55,000	7,023	74.9	9.6	84.5	15.5
	Appenzell Ausserrhoden/Innerrhoden[lower-alpha 3]	71,379	27,942	23,513	39.1	32.9	72.1	27.9
	Nidwalden	43,223	28,363	4,336	65.6	10.0	75.6	24.3
	Glarus	40,403	13,383	13,768	33.1	34.1	67.2	32.8
	Obwalden	37,841	26,944	2,937	71.2	7.8	79.0	21.0
	Uri	36,433	28,582	1,691	78.5	4.6	83.1	16.9
	Switzerland	8,546,081	3,182,082	2,109,360	37.2	24.7	61.9	38.1
*Includes other Christians, Muslims and other religions.

Religion by ethnic origin, sex, age, and education

According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, based on cumulative data collected between 2013 and 2017, there were significant differences in the religious affiliations of the five most common ethno-national groups in Switzerland: Swiss nationals were mostly Christians (73%), evenly divided between Catholics (37%), Swiss Protestants (31%) and other Christians (5%); the vast majority of Italian and Portuguese nationals living in Switzerland were Catholics (77% and 74%, respectively); half of German nationals in Switzerland were unaffiliated, while Christians were minority accounting for 47%; and Frenchmen in Switzerland were mostly unaffiliated (55%), while only 38% of them were Christians.^[14]

Christianity

According to the national structural survey of 2020, Christianity was the religion of 61.2% of the population, of whom 33.8% were Catholics, 21.8% were Swiss Protestants - almost all adherents of Calvinism -, and 5.6% were adherents of other Christian denominations - including Orthodox Christians, Lutherans, nondenominational Evangelicals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other Christian movements.^[3] Christianity has declined significantly since the 1970s, at first in the urban centres and later also in the rural countrysides.^[7]

• 
  Church of Our Lady of the Hermits of the Einsiedeln Abbey, a monastery of the Catholic Benedictines in Einsiedeln, canton of Schwyz.
• 
  Calvinist Church of Saint Paul, in Basel.
• 
  Russian Orthodox church in Geneva.
• 
  Armenian Apostolic Church of Saint Hagop in Geneva.
• 
  Bern Switzerland Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• 
  Seventh-day Adventist church in Schaffhausen.

Other religions

Islam is the second largest religion in Switzerland after Christianity,^[7] adhered to by 5.4% of the population in 2020.^[3] Swiss Muslims are mostly of foreign origin (mostly of Arab ancestry those in the Gallo-Romance regions, and mostly of Balkan, Turkish and Iranian ancestry those in the Germanic regions), although there is an increasing number of native Swiss converts.^[16] Religious Jews represented 0.2% of the Swiss population in 2020.^[3] Other religions present in the country include Hinduism and Buddhism, practised by both local Swiss who have nurtured interest in Eastern doctrines and by immigrants from Asia.^[16] There is a Taoist temple, Ming Shan (明山, "Mountain of Light"), located in Bullet, Vaud, and built according to the rules of feng shui; it is the headquarters of the Swiss Taoist Association and the main centre in Europe of the Taoist tradition of Wujimen (无极门, "Gate of Infinity"),^{[lower-alpha 4]} which originated on the Min Mountains of Sichuan, China.^[17] In the country there are also various new religious movements, among which one of the most influential has been the Theosophy-derived Anthroposophy; the Anthroposophical Society was established by the Austrian occultist Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s and 1930s in Dornach, Solothurn, and it is known for its promotion of the well-reputed Waldorf schools.^[18]

• 
  Mosque of Wil, canton of St. Gallen.
• 
  Statue of the goddess Durga at the Hindu temple of Trimbach, canton of Solothurn.
• 
  A Thai Theravada Buddhist temple in Gretzenbach, canton of Solothurn.
• 
  Jewish synagogue of La Chaux-de-Fonds, canton of Neuchâtel.
• 
  Masonic temple of Lindenhof hill, central Zürich.
• 
  The Goetheanum, the headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society.

4th–7th century: Gallo-Romans and Alemans, and their Christianisation

The Muri statuette group found in Muri bei Bern, representing a Gallo-Roman pantheon: Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Naria, Artio and a lar.

The ancestors of the modern Swiss were the Gaulish Helvetians and Gallicised Rhaetians, who between the 1st century BCE and the 4th century CE were Romanised and had become part of the Roman Empire, and the Germanic peoples who settled the area of modern Switzerland in the Migration Period, between the 6th and the 7th century, after the collapse of the Roman power; namely the Alemans who settled the eastern regions and maintained their Alemannic German language, and the Burgundians who settled the western fringes of modern Switzerland and Burgundy and were assimilated by the Gallo-Romans.^[19] Between the 8th and 9th century the linguistic boundary between the Gallo-Romance-speaking western regions and the central and western Alemannic-speaking regions had already formed clearly, and between the 13th and the 14th century the Swiss Plateau became completely Alemannic-speaking.^[19] Pockets of Rhaeto-Romance speakers persisted in isolated valleys of the south-eastern region of modern Switzerland.^[19]

A Roman inscription with the Chi Rho symbol in Sion, dated 377, is the earliest datable record of Christianity in the territory of modern Switzerland.^[20] The Gallo-Romans abandoned Gallo-Roman syncretism and adopted Christianity already between the 4th and the 5th century, while the Alemans, originally practitioners of Germanic paganism, became Christians between the 6th and the 7th century, when the area was under the Frankish Empire; the Christianisation of the Gauls was promoted at first by Roman officials and local landowners, while the later Christianisation of the Alemans was carried out mostly by convents.^[16] Theologically monotheistic, early Christianity integrated popular polytheism by turning it into the cult of Christian saints.^[16]

13th–17th century: Catholicism and the Calvinist Reformation in old Switzerland

The 12th-century fortified Catholic Valère Basilica in Sion.

Central group of the Reformation Wall in Geneva, commemorating the founding fathers of Calvinism: William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the Old Swiss Confederacy began to emerge within the Holy Roman Empire from a pact between the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden to resist the power of the House of Habsburg; the pact was soon joined by other territories and by the cities of Zürich, Bern and Basel, who wanted to remain independent from the Habsburgs and from the Dukes of Burgundy.^[21] During the following centuries, the confederacy expanded to the entire territory of modern Switzerland as a network of alliances and tributary relations.^[5] The Swiss confederacy remained entirely Catholic until the 16th century,^[22] although with tiny communities of Jews attested in Swiss cities since the 12th century.^[16]

In the 16th century, Switzerland was swept by the ideas of the Protestant Reformation, and it became the world centre of the Protestant movement of Calvinism, to which a majority of the Swiss converted.^[5] Anabaptism and the Radical Reformation, and in the following century Pietism, also made inroads in Switzerland.^[16] The development of Protestantism was strictly linked to the growth in power of the cities and their guilds of artisans and merchants; elements of Christianity linked to agrarian life, the cult of saints and images, and monasticism, were abolished, and religious life became centred no longer on ritual but on moral teaching drawn from the interpretation of the Bible.^[16] The Alemannic cantons of Zürich, Bern, Basel and Schaffhausen were the first to officially adopt the new religion under the influence of Huldrych Zwingli, while Geneva became the centre of the movement under the sway of John Calvin, whom was French in origin.^[21] Geneva came to be known as the "Calvinist Rome" or the "Protestant Rome".^[16] Other areas of Switzerland remained Catholic.^[22] During the Counter-Reformation enacted by the Catholic Church in the Council of Trent (1545–1563) to thwart the spread of Protestant movements, Geneva and other Protestant cantons became havens of refuge for Calvinists from elsewhere, and in the 17th century Switzerland welcomed French Huguenots who fled France after the Edict of Nantes (1598), through which Henry IV had granted them freedom in France, was revoked by Louis XIV with the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685).^[21]

Conflicts, and even civil wars, between Protestant and Catholic cantons and cantons' districts arose.^[5] To avoid the laceration of the system of alliances between territories, the confederacy adopted the principle of territorial exclusivity of religion (cuius regio, eius religio), thereby recognising the plurality of Christian denominations on a constitutional level, although in areas of mixed religious affiliation, including Aargau, Thurgau, the surroundings of St. Gallen, the Grisons and Geneva, armed conflicts between Catholics and Protestants continued.^[5] The complete constitutional parity of the two denominations was reached through four Landfriede (land peaces), the first in 1529 and the fourth one in 1712.^[22] Meanwhile, the Swiss confederacy was recognised as fully independent from the Holy Roman Empire as part of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.^[21] It was within Protestantism that embryonal ideas of separation of spiritual life from secular life were first developed; in Switzerland, Protestant cantons became the drivers of the economic, political and social innovation of the country, while Catholic cantons would have remained agrarian and backward until the 19th century.^[16]

18th–19th century: the Helvetic Republic, the Sonderbund War, and the 1848 Constitution

The principle of exclusivity of religion in autonomous regions remained in force until 1798; whoever did not want to be part of a territory's official religion could emigrate, but had to leave all his possessions, although a few Protestant cantons granted a merciful ius emigrandi (right of emigration).^[23] The short-lived Helvetic Republic, established as a sister republic of France between 1798 and 1803, was as a secular state according to the principles of the French Revolution.^[24] After the end of the Helvetic Republic and the restoration of Switzerland as a confederation of states, conflicts between Catholics and Protestants arose again, although popular uprisings after 1830 led many cantons to adopt liberal constitutions which granted religious freedom.^[24] In 1845, two Catholic cantons of central Switzerland, namely Fribourg and Valais, formed a separate league, the Sonderbund, which opposed Protestants and liberals.^[24] As more cantons joined the Protestant and liberal faction than the Sonderbund, the general diet of the cantons asked the dissolution of the latter.^[24] A civil war, the Sonderbund War, ensued in 1847, and it resulted in the defeat of the Catholic forces and in the establishment of Switzerland as a federal republic in 1848, under the Swiss Federal Constitution.^[25]

The constitution of 1848 declared Switzerland a multilingual and multireligious country; freedom of conscience was recognised as a fundamental right, though only for Christians.^[26] However, the cantons continued to have responsibility over the detailed regulation of the relations between church and state, and this led to differing systems, ranging from total separation to official churches (Landeskirchen) with a subordinated official recognition of other churches.^{[27][lower-alpha 5]} Legal discrimination against non-Christians, Jews, continued, as they had neither freedom of establishment nor freedom of worship, they could live only in the two "Jewish villages" of Endingen and Lengnau, and they could bury their dead only on a designated island in the Rhine; the bans on Jewish establishment and worship were abolished with revisions of the constitution respectively in 1866 and 1874.^[7]

20th–21st century: abrogation of remaining restrictions and religious diversification

The revision of the constitution in 1874 had introduced some restrictions against Catholic institutions: the prohibition of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the prohibition of convents, and the prohibition of electing clerks in the highest federal authorities; these norms were abolished respectively in 1979, 1999 and 2001.^[28] The ban on Jesuits was abrogated from the constitution by popular vote, from which resulted that 54.9% of the Swiss were in favour of lifting the ban.^[29][30] At the same time, the 1874 revision of the constitution finally secured some fundamental secular principles: the separation of civil marriage from religious marriage and the separation of the teaching of religion from the rest of education.^[27] Over the following decades, freedom of worship and secular principles, combined with free movement of the population, gradually loosened the system of territorial exclusivity of religions which was characteristic of old Switzerland.^[27] However, in 1980, a popular vote to gauge the complete separation of church and state resulted in opposition to such change, with only 21.1% voting in support, so that the system of the Landeskirchen was retained.^[31]

In the early 20th century, Switzerland had an absolute majority of Protestants, about 60%, and a large population of Catholics, about 40%.^[32] After the World War II, the religious composition of the country began to change significantly; the immigration of workers from Italy and Spain sustained a growth of the Catholic population until 1970.^[7] Geneva, once the "Protestant Rome", in 1948 became the centre of world Christian ecumenism, hosting the World Council of Churches.^[16] Interest among locals brought to Switzerland Eastern religions, mostly Hinduism and Buddhism, first as intellectual systems, later established as practised religions by waves of immigration towards the end of the century.^[16] The same strain of comparative synthesis of world religions which in the 19th century had given rise to Theosophy and even earlier to Freemasonry (present among the elites in Switzerland since the 18th century), in the early 20th century led to the establishment of Anthroposophy in Switzerland by the Austrian occultist Rudolf Steiner.^[16] Since the mid-1970s, new migration waves brought to Switzerland Orthodox Christian and Islamic populations from the Balkans, which increased in the 1990s with the welcoming of refugees fleeing the Yugoslav Wars.^[7] As a consequence, Islam grew to become today the second largest religion in the country after Christianity.^[7] At the same time, identification with, practice of Christianity, and membership in the traditional Christian churches, began to decline, first in the urban centres of Zürich, Basel and Geneva, and then also in the rural countrysides.^[7] Since then, Protestantism has declined to about two tenths of the population, and Catholicism to about three tenths of the population, while the proportion of Swiss people not believing in any religion has grown about thirty times.^[3]

Citations

Sources

• Pahud de Mortanges, René (2015). "Religion and the Secular State in Switzerland" (PDF). In Martínez-Torrón, Javier; Durham, W. Cole (eds.). Religion and the Secular State. Complutense University of Madrid. pp. 687–699. ISBN 9788484811626. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2022.
• Stolz, Jörg (2006). "Switzerland and new religious movements". Observatory of Religions in Switzerland, University of Lausanne. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Haug, W.; Wanner, P. (27 October 1999). "The demographic characteristics of linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland". The demographic characteristics of national minorities in certain European States. CM Documents. 99 (138, Addendum 5). Council of Europe. Archived from the original on 19 November 2020. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HDS):
  • Bischof, Franz Xaver: Jesuits in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 13 January 2011.
  • Frey, Jakob: Church tax in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 13 August 2007.
  • Nerlich, Daniel: Pontius Asclepiodotus in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 19 October 2001.
  • Uehlinger, Christoph: Religion in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 23 December 2011.