Talk:Religion in Sweden

Edit to Religion in Sweden today

In this edit, User:The monkeyhate added the following text to the Religion in Sweden today section: "Another report states that the number of atheists, agnostics and non-believers in Sweden is 85%, the highest number on earth.", citing http://www.gadling.com/2007/08/23/least-religious-countries/ as a supporting source.

I see that the cited supporting source is a page on a blog named gadling.com (note:see WP:V and WP:RS). Opposite a photo of the cover of the April 8, 1966 issue of Time magazine (that's a bit over 41 years ago). On the blog, there is a comment which rates Sweden as the least religious country on earth and lists Sweden as: "1. Sweden (up to 85% non-believer, atheist, agnostic)". AFAICT, the cited supporting source clearly fails WP's reliability standards.

The blog entry does, however, provide a link to http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/atheism.html, which it labels "survey". That is a dead link, but the [internet archive does have copies of it. The Aug 13, 2007 copy is a copy of a paper by Phil Zuckerman titled "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns". That paper contains the following:

“ According to Norris and Inglehart (2004), 64% of those in Sweden do not believe in God. According to Bondeson (2003), 74% of Swedes said that they did not believe in “a personal God.” According to Greeley (2003), 46% of Swedes do not believe in God, although only 17% self-identify as “atheist.” According to Froese (2001), 69% of Swedes are either atheist or agnostic. According to Gustafsoon and Pettersson (2000), 82% of Swedes do not believe in a “personal God.” According to Davie (1999), 85% of Swedes do not believe in God. ”

Citing (in the order mentioned):

• Bondeson, Ulla. 2003. Nordic Moral Climates. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
• Greeley, Andrew. 2003. Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
• Froese, Paul. 2001. “ Hungary for Religion: A Supply-Side Interpretation of the Hungarian Religious Revival.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40(2): 251-268.
• Gustafsson, Goran and Thorleif Pettersson. 2000. Folkkyrk och religios pluraism – den nordiska religiosa modellen. Stockholm, Sweden: Verbum Forlag.
• Davie, Grace. 1999. “ Europe: The Exception that Proves the Rule?” pages 65-83. in The Desecularization of the World, edited by Peter Berger. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

So, I've changed the assertion reading, "Another report states that the number of atheists, agnostics and non-believers in Sweden is 85%, the highest number on earth." to read "Phil Zuckerman, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College writes of several academic sources who have in recent years placed athiesm rates in Sweden between 46% and 85%, with one source reporting that only 17% of respondents self-identifed as "atheist"."

Googling around, I see that the Zuckerman paper appears (probably with some changes, though the paragraph I've requoted above appears unchanged) in a book, so I've cited that:

• Zuckerman, Phil (2006), "Atheism—Contemporary numbers and Practices", in Michael Martin (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Cambridge University Press -, pp. 47–50, ISBN 0521842700, retrieved 2007-11-15

-- Boracay Bill 02:58, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

POV / christian tradition

It's not a grounded fact that christian traditions does not affect other religios group negatively. Please discuss freely. --83.248.178.5 (talk) 08:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

"does not appear to affect" looks like weasel phrase to me - does not appear to whom? Delete. Further, I'd say the reason those holidays are national holidays in the first place is that that the Swedish population used to be predominantly Christian. Orcoteuthis (talk) 17:22, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Freedom of religion

What exactly is freedom of religion? In Sweden

1. production of kosher & halal meat is illegal
2. circumcision is illegal without medical supervision, which most medical professionals refuse to provide
3. a clergyman was sent to prison a few years ago for preaching against homosexuality

Perhaps these issues should be discussed in the article. Peter jackson (talk) 10:28, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

• Halal meat is produced in Sweden. Kosher meat isn't, because jewish authorities refuse to accept that the animal is sedated before it's throat is cut. Religious rights issue or animal rights issue? Interesting question - feel free to add a section if you want to.
• Thousands of moslem boys, and about fourty jewish boys, are circumcised in Sweden every year. If there's a problem finding a medical professional to help, then please provide a reliable source. Yet again it's an interesting question: Is carving into your children with a knife a religious right of the parent? It is then a strange right indeed, since rights are usually personal.
• Åke Green was acquitted. He spent no time in prison at all.

-Duribald (talk) 11:06, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, the places I read those things may be mistaken or biased. I simply assumed they were uncontroversial. I can't remember what they were for 1 & 2, probably articles in the Spectator. 3 was from an interview by the now Pope. Obviouly doesn't count as reliable source, but you might expect the then Cardinal Ratzinger to know what he was talking about. He didn't name the clergyman, but said he was given 28 days, which sounds quite circumstantial.

The statistics you cite would have to be looked @ in context of total figures to mean anything.

I wasn't planning on trying to do any editing on this topic myself. I was simply suggesting it as something those of you with detailed knowledge might like to deal with. The sorts of questions you raise in your reply are just the sorts I was thinking of. Do any Swedish groups, human rights bodies, religious groups, animal rights groups &c have anything to say on this? I leave it to you people to think about it. Peter jackson (talk) 11:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I just linked him & found the article saying that he was indeed sentenced to a month in prison, so Ratzinger was right, but this was overturned on appeal, so your statement was sort of right too. Peter jackson (talk) 11:06, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, for the third issue, it's an interesting question as well, since Sweden has laws against hate speech directed at, among others, sexual minorities, so this is yet another issue of freedom of religion vs. freedom of minorities. I think Åke Green's exact wording was describing homosexuals as a "cancer abscess". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:06, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

And personally, I don't think actual absolute "freedom of religion" would be preferable, considering conflicts between religious practices and legislation, or conflicts between different religious practices. In a democratic soiety, there should always remain a possibility to change a law, which is much harder for a religious decree considerad an infallible message from God. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:46, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

First sentence of the lead section

The first sentence "Religion in Sweden was pagan before the 11th century, ..." feels awkward to me. It looks like an amalgam of the title Religion in Sweden and the sentence "Sweden was pagan before the 11th century, ...", resulting in something which could be parsed as "The Wikipedia article Religion in Sweden was pagan ...".

"If the topic of an article has no name and the title is merely descriptive ... the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does, it is not in boldface." (Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#First_sentences)
--83.253.248.49 (talk) 17:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Edit. --83.253.248.49 (talk) 18:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

"Liberalization"?

Is that Liberal Christianity?? ... said: Rursus (bork²) 06:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The intention of "liberal" here means more permissive toward other religions.

Fred-J 20:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

OK. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 19:15, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Kopimism

The Church of Kopimism was officially recognized as a religion recently (Jan. 4, 2012). I think that this should be looked into and possibly added.

File sharing recognized as official religion in Sweden

kopimistsamfundet.se — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nexxuz (talk • contribs) 21:04, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't seem notable in this context. It's apparently not that hard to become a recognized religion, and the adherents seem to be a very small group. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

bar chart on Sweden Religiosity seems to have unsupported data

The bar chart seems to be confusing things. First for 'Lutheranism' it is using only the Church of Sweden though there are apparently other Lutheran Churches in Sweden (though they may be so small as not to affect the statistics). I'm not sure where the figure for 'atheism' came from and though it is titled 'Sweden religiosity' it is more a table on 'Religion in Sweden' (religiosity would be on how religious people are not what religion they are [e.g., how often do they attend religious services, pray, title, believe] and people in Sweden are by evidence in the article not very religious). 'Atheism' is the only bit that deals with religiosity (and even there one could be a religious humanist and rank high in religiosity). Unfortunately I don't know Swedish so I don't have the access to sources to either make this the chart on religiosity or the chart on religious identity in Sweden. --Erp (talk) 03:36, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Circle diagram

The number for religious affilitation of the circle diagram seems to be badly sourced. I particularly find it hard to believe that buddhism is a larger religion that islam. For ethnic Swedes, the numbers are minimal, and for immigrants, Islam would likely be much bigger. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 17:57, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

This source states the number of buddhists are around 8.000 of 8.000.000. Granted, the population is closer to 9.000.000 now, but for simplicity's sake, that would mean the number of practicing buddhists is closer to 0.1%. [1] Also, the article Islam in Sweden estimates the number of muslims today as 5% (although that number also includes a population that has emigrated from predominantly muslim countries, but might not necessarily be religious, sort of "ethnic muslims", or the like). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I suspect there are two reasons for discrepancy. (1) The difference between official religion (the Church of Sweden still has over 60% of the population registered) and self-identified religion (e.g., the 35% who consider themselves religiously Christian in this survey). (2) How good is the protocol of this survey (this can include how large, how was the question worded, did they get a good cross-section of the population, etc). Several sources seem to indicate that Islam in Sweden like Christianity has a lot of cultural members but fewer religious members. Unfortunately I suspect the best sources on numbers are in Swedish, and, we'll need a Swedish reading person to track them down. --Erp (talk) 00:21, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

The survey cited doesn't seem to be of very high quality, and so small that statistical errors are very likely. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:29, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

::::Exactly why the new one was needed. There were very, very few respondents in Sweden. The current chart uses data from official government sources. BlueMan22 (talk) 04:52, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Another sock - Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Perfect Red Cube/Archive. Dougweller (talk) 17:39, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Pie Chart

The CIA Factbook is not reliable enough to be in the first place.I think it the Pie Chart should be removed altogether because it contradicts the whole article Vargmali (talk) 20:58, 10 February 2013 (UTC) : The CIA Factbook is used throughout Wikipedia as a reliable source. Perfect Red Cube (talk) 04:45, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I removed the pie chart as it was mixing source materials E.g., the CIA Factbook has stats on Lutherans and Others but doesn't breakdown others. The other sources give numbers for the sub groups but may well have been using the a different value for number of Lutherans (which is way higher than the number actually paying the tax as Lutherans). All numbers should come from one reliable source. According to the US State Department Religious report for 2013 http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm#wrapper the breakdown is ~70% Church of Sweden, <5% all other Christian denominations, 9,000 to 20,000 Jews, and about 5% Muslim (450,000 to 500,000). the numbers for other religions was too small to list so that leaves about 20% who are non-religious. The latest report which includes numbers for Catholics, 2009, states "There are an estimated 140,000 Roman Catholics, of whom 83,528 are registered with the Roman Catholic Church." This I calculate to be about 1% of the population (9.1 million) --Erp (talk) 02:14, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

The CIA Factbook might be reliable; however, it wasn't the sole source used (otherwise the chart would consist of two colors). Given that the registered Lutherans are down about 70% not 87%, the other sources may well be using figures that encroach into the 87% not the 13%. Also the Catholic source is not reliable (it likely includes everyone ever baptized or confirmed Catholic and not just active Catholics) and I would trust the State department report of a few years ago with closer to 1%.. --Erp (talk) 14:47, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Although considered reliable the CIA Factbook contradicts all of the other reliable polls made and even the churches own numbers.From which year do they even come from?There have been cases in which the Factbook uses outdated numbers.For example for the Czech Republic the Factbook uses the 2001 census figures and not the recent 2011 figures(there are also other cases) Vargmali (talk) 14:58, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Vargmalil. Please check what year the CIA data is referring to, furthermore using local yearly updated sources is evidently more accurate. Grsd (talk) 22:21, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Since we seem to be be having a quiet edit war on the Pie Chart, I'm going to list the references and why they are/aren't useful.

1. CIA World Factbook - useful but only gives two figures: "Lutheran 87%, other (includes Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist) 13%". We don't even know if they are including the non-religious in the overall (in fact if they aren't, it makes sense of the 87% Lutheran since from other sources we know about 80% of the total population is religious and 70% of the total population is Lutheran so Lutherans make 7/8 or approximately 87% of the religious population).
2. http://www.svd.se/nyheter/idagsidan/existentiellt/fralst-pa-biologi_382108.svd This is a Swedish Newspaper(?) article about humanism. The side bar includes figures on belief in god and some others (but my Swedish is non-existent). The figures seem to date from 1995 and 1999.
3. http://www.culturalcatholic.com/CatholicFunFacts.htm "Cultural Catholic" web site in a page titled "Catholic Fun Facts" and states "Sweden is 2% Catholic". No sources are cited and the site doesn't seem authoritative.
4. http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Society/Religion/ This seems to be a government or government approved website "Official gateway to Sweden" so somewhat more authoritative. It states "With an estimated 400,000 Muslims in Sweden" and are the second largest religion and "Up to 7 million people living in Sweden are members of the Church of Sweden" (which btw contradicts the CIA Factbook since 7 million is less than 80% of the population).

The pie chart needs much more reliable data before it should go back and frankly I now think the CIA Factbook is listing percentages of the religious population and not the total population. --Erp (talk) 16:49, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I think you summed it up perfectly so lets hope the edit war truly ends now Vargmali (talk) 17:31, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

You do understand that not every Lutheran in Sweden is part of the official Church of Sweden, right? Your logic that "that's not how many people are in the official church, so it must be wrong" doesn't make a bit of sense. Should we list 0% Lutheran for every other country, since they have no official Church of Sweden members? Also, basic research into what the Factbook reports would have told you they do not report "percentages of the religious population and not the total population". What use would that be? Look at their entry for Vietnam, for example. They list "none" at being about 80%. If they only reported "percentages of the religious population and not the total population" there would not be that stat. What you're doing is essentially WP:RS, which is not allowed on Wikipedia. As WP:SCHOLARSHIP says, " Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves". This is what the Factbook, published by a reliable organization says. It is a primary source, and we do not interpret those for ourselves here. We simply gather and report what is said. Perfect Red Cube (talk) 18:06, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Well yes I do understand that not every Lutheran in Sweden is in the State Church though the percentage who aren't as far as I can gather is far smaller than the 17% that would be needed to make the CIA Factbook accurate. I note the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden (a Lutheran splinter) claims to be the second largest church in Sweden and according to its website it has 135,000 members (about 1.4% of the population); you'll need a lot of splinters (the only other one with figures I could find has less than 30 members). And as the US State Department International Religion Freedom report for 2011[2] states for Sweden: "Religious membership or affiliation is concentrated in a few major denominations. According to the Church of Sweden (Lutheran), approximately 70 percent of citizens are members; other Christian groups, such as the Pentecostal movement, the Missionary (or Missions) Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) total less than 5 percent of the population." That gives us a 75% total for all Christians in Sweden. The Factbook is a secondary source (or even possibly a tertiary source) not a primary source since it does not conduct these surveys itself and what I'm doing is impugning its reliability by using a little intelligence (note I'm not doing this in the article where it would not be appropriate). Also the compiler of the pie chart did not only gather and report what it says which would yield a two color chart but instead interpreted other sources and used them to split the 13$ other. Both the State Department report and the CIA Factbook are by the US government so somewhat reliable though neither cite source but in this instance I would give the edge on reliability and usefulness to the State Department report as (a) its figures match what are reported elsewhere, (2) it gives more detail, (3) its primary purpose is to provide information on religion in various countries so is likely to be more careful. --Erp (talk) 04:57, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I found that The Eurobarometer 2012 asked also about religion and gives these numbers on Sweden

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_393_en.pdf p.233,234

• Protestants 41%
• Orthodox 1%
• Catholics 2%
• Other Christian 9%
• Buddhist 1%
• Atheist 13%
• Agnostics 30%
• Other 3%

I think that the Eurobarometer can be considered very reliable.Should we add a Chart? Vargmali (talk) 15:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the question is whether we go by registered religion (assuming such data is available) or by surveys. I'm inclined to go with a good recent survey for the pie chart but ideally we should also report the registered religion info though pointing out it only applies to a limited number of denominations and those that opt out may well belong to a religion that chooses not to participate. I suspect both the CIA Factbook (which I think in error ignored that a large part of the population aren't registered) and the State Department are using the registered figures plus a little. We need someone who reads Swedish who can navigate Swedish sites to find relevant data. I think http://www.sst.a.se/statistik/statistik2011.4.4bf439da1355ecafdd2243b.html may be useful for religious but not Church of Sweden. --Erp (talk) 19:46, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that i'll write the numbers without the a Pie Chart to avoid the edit war since the edit war was caused by the Pie Chart that was added by me Vargmali (talk) 22:22, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

::::Established Wikipedia policy simply does not side with you. Its not up to us what goes in articles, but those policies. We can't interpret sources like you want to. Even if what you're saying is right, we can't do it. Policy decides what goes in a page, not truth, as WP:NOTTRUTH describes. I hate it, but that's how it is. Perfect Red Cube (talk) 00:34, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

What we are doing is establishing that (a) one source, the CIA World Factbook, is in conflict with other reliable sources on the religion percentages for Sweden (and those other sources are fairly close in agreement with each other) so the verified figures are those from the other sources and (b) the pie chart itself is an interpretation and so not allowed by the very policy you are quoting. Editors do have to use their judgement in deciding whether a source is reliable in a particular instance and frankly the CIA World Factbook is not that reliable (e.g, it does not cite its sources and the others are citing a particular survey or the government registry). --Erp (talk) 04:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

In the list from Eurobarometer there is no entro giving the percentage of muslim. This number is now considerable, as also seen in adjacent entries. This indicates that the list is not very reliable. Lave Fischer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.154.85.186 (talk) 21:14, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Noting that an IP User talk:98.163.22.137 reverted back to the original pie chart, I removed and placed a note on the talk page suggesting the person discuss it here. The same IP also tried this in June. --Erp (talk) 04:09, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

And then the IP blanked all the above. I've struck through the sock edits but left them to make sense of the discussion. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Perfect Red Cube/Archive

Noting that another attempt to introduce the pie chart with the bad data from User talk:208.95.49.166 --Erp (talk) 02:07, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

The apatheistic nation bit isn't in the source cited

So it should be removed. 208.54.45.254 (talk) 04:57, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the problem is the citation got updated and the updated version did not have that word. I found a new source with gives equivalent info (and changed the wording to reflect it). --Erp (talk) 13:39, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Ipsos Mori

The Ipsos Mori study is not reliable. They note that for Sweden, they interviewed only 500 adults. That is far fewer than the number needed for an accurate, scientific poll. Their data should not be held as superior to that of many other polls, especially since they themselves note its less reliable nature given the low number of participants. GothenburgGuy (talk) 16:08, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

A source which assume that that all of the population follow a religion without any base for this what so ever is even less reliable. The current pie-chart is extremely misleading since all serious studies show that a large part of the Swedish population do not believe in god or do not follow a religion. I assume you malicious intentions and deliberately want to mislead the readers of the article; therefore I'll revert your edit.Tallungs (talk) 04:56, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

The source does not assume that. Please do your research before making claims. Look at the entry for the Czech Republic for example, 34.2% are listed under "none". Then look at the entry for Vietnam, 80.8% are listed as "none". There are countless examples of these things. The source does not assume that. Given the large number of sources that disagree, you saying "all serious studies show that a large part of the Swedish population do not...follow a religion" seems just as unsupported by the data. The portion that do not is, by all indications, the portion given in the pie chart. When you say "I assume you malicious intentions", you're directly violating WP:GF. No offense but much of what you're doing does not fit with standard Wiki policy. Remember, we must assume good faith and have a neutral point of view. The standard is "verifiability, not truth". We must report what the sources say. GothenburgGuy (talk) 05:30, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

There simply has not been brought up enough evidence for me to trust the CIA world factbook in this instance. Maybe if someone can find exactly what question they asked the people and what the group surveyed was. At this instance I have a hard time even believing they conducted a survey based on the great difference I have noticed to all the other recent surveys conducted. It seems very unscientific to present their numbers without any knowledge on how and when they got them. If you'd present this information to me I would most likely change my mind. Tallungs (talk) 21:07, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

::::Its not about you trusting it. We don't interpret sources. We simply stick on pages what sources report. Earlier diagrams cited a large number of sources, but that had to be stopped because of WP:SYNTH. And as we've just seen, to be fully honest you're quite ignorant of the Factbook, what it reports, and how it reports it. My previous reply demonstrated that. GothenburgGuy (talk) 15:53, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, trust is very relevant. If you have more information on the reliability of this information shown on the Factbook you should share it with me so that I can stop being so ignorant in the matter.Tallungs (talk) 18:55, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

::The source states how it found its data. You say: "all serious studies show that a large part of the Swedish population do not believe in god or do not follow a religion" without giving any source, yet the CIA World Factbook, and SvD disagree with you. This at least three quite reliable sources so far. You have one single study by a marketing agency that had too few respondents to be statistically reliable. On a personal note, we who actually live here find it very odd when everyone talks about how Sweden is completely atheistic. I encourage you to visit sometime, talk to ten random people. You'll see that that is not the case. GothenburgGuy (talk) 15:30, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

SvD Includes three surveys all stating that a large portion of the Swedish population do not believe in god; the pecent of people who believed in god where 25%, 15% and 43%. CIA world factbook does not include any information on the subject on who is religious and who is not, it simply states what religion the religious people follow. I do live in Sweden and do talk to people so I know that you're full of bullshit. I do not find the current source reliable what so ever, you are misusing the statistics.Tallungs (talk) 17:58, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

::::Surveys like these can give odd results. For example, Gallup found that among atheists in the United States, 1/5 believed in God. Remember WP:SYNTH. We do not interpret sources. We simply report what they say. See my previous reply for proof that it does in fact give information on who is religious and who is not. Also, when you say things like "so I know that you're full of bullshit", that is not language fitting of a discussion for an encyclopedia. You are violating WP:Civil. On Wikipedia, we must follow Wikipedia policy. We cannot interpret the sources and sling insults around and not do our research. GothenburgGuy (talk) 05:35, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

You say "We cannot interpret the sources", which is true. But we can however judge how trustworthy it is, and choose not to present it as fact.Tallungs (talk) 21:14, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

The CIA world factbook uses mostly outdated information ,not always gives actual sources and they update their figures rather infrequently.For my country Albania they use figures from 1930 about religion and there are other examples like the UK,France,Belgium etc. where the info is mostly outdated .I think the Eurobarometer is mostly reliable since it's figures are up to date Vargmali (talk) 16:04, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree, the Eurobarometer would be the optimal source to use.Tallungs (talk) 11:42, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

::::::Vargmali, all of what you have said is, frankly, either incorrect or anecdotal. You say it "uses mostly outdated information", what is your source for that? And your statement "they update their figures rather infrequently." is simply false. According to this source, they say "Formerly...the published Factbook were only updated annually. In November 2001, we began more frequent online updating and for many years bi-weekly updates were the norm. In late 2010 we began to update the online Factbook on a weekly schedule.". The thing receives a large update annually and smaller updates weekly, it appears. Next, you say "For my country Albania they use figures from 1930 about religion and there are other examples like the UK,France,Belgium etc. where the info is mostly outdated", again, a citation is needed. Remember, the standard is verifiability. Anecdotes are not proper evidence for an encyclopedia. Perfect Purple Pyramid (talk) 12:55, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

How often they update their website is quite irrelevant, they do not say that they do a new survey every week if that is what you think. The fact is that I don't know what source CIA have for religion in Sweden but their information seems to wildly differ from most other sources. Can you give me any reason to trust their information?Tallungs (talk) 16:13, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Struck edits from 2 socks, again see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Perfect Red Cube/Archive

Sorry, I am new to Wikipedia so I don't know how to properly edit or change existing pages. Shouldn't there be more uniformity in the country/religion pages, i.e. the US and UK ones have tables showing the percentage population of Christians, Muslims, Atheists etc. It would be good for readers to have the same table displayed for each country that has a Wiki article on the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.18.162.44 (talk) 01:15, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Ann af Burén

Ann af Burén recently published her doctoral dissertation Living Simultaneity: On religion among semi-secular Swedes. It may shed some light on the subject. A situation when self-identified Agnostics infrequently actually practice Lutheran Christianity (which is exactly what happens in Sweden at weddings, funeral services, St. Lucy's day, Christmas and All Saints' day) is by necessity hard to describe in an intelligible way, especially for observers outside this socio-cultural pattern. An analysis of Lutheran behaviour must by necessity give another statistic result than an analysis of Agnostic self-perception. 81.236.219.119 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 19:04, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

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Pie charts, sources, and edit squabbles.

First on a Pie Chart like should go with like so that people can easily get a feel, in this case, of the ratio of Christians to non-Christians as well as the various Christian denominations to each other. Second what is the reliability of the data. The source is to a jpg with a brief mention of the number surveyed (but this is over multiple countries). Is there a source for a general discussion of the survey including info on error rates etc.? Third given the amount of back and forth edits going on, we should probably have a discussion on the talk page. --Erp (talk) 04:16, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

It's a multi nation survey and its sample is not representative of the country, since it excludes the over 64 population that they are an huge part of the population. The source also say that his results should be viewed as the results of the more urban areas of the countries in question, of people in working age. Read here: https://www.ipsosglobaltrends.com/about/FrankCesco26 (talk) 17:35, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Old data, again

Might anyone explain why this article has to be filled with old (2014-2015) counts of church membership while the 2016 official count was enough? Eurel data come from the Sweden Office of Statistics; in other words why should we keep the 2015 Church of Sweden membership of around 63% while we have the official datum of 2016, which is around 61%? Not to mention the totally irrelevant data from the Pew Research Center, which is notorious for exaggerating statistics for Christians as in its 2010 worldwide count.--Wddan (talk) 09:05, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

First of all, data is new. Official data statistics are the most recent one and are from 2015, so isn't correct using a merging of 2015 and 2016 data. When the 2016 official data will be released, the table will be updated. Also, Pew Research Center is a very reliable and serious statistical agency and many Wikipedia sources are from them. Maybe you don't like that, but it's known for its reliability. Pew Research center accumuled conducted the survey beetween Apr.4-23, 2016 so it's a very recent time and it takes in account the population from 18 years to also 97 years old, so the sample is representative of the total population, and thus it's reliable. It's a nationally representative recent survey, and it's relevant to the article.--FrankCesco26 (talk) 12:14, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

I disagree with using PEW data that has not been published in preferably a PEER reviewed article. Using a dataset without a proper independent validation is hardly a source to be trusted. And I agree with Wddan that the 2010 PEW research data was considerably higher than other sources.and yes, PEW did correct some numbers downwards afterwardsGrsd (talk) 12:27, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I cannot acces the PEW data, hence I cannot verify the rather high claims with respect to the percentage of christians. Grsd (talk) 07:55, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Pew data are mostly invented and they are now largely outdated. They should be expunged from all Wikipedia articles.--Wddan (talk) 08:44, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Line chart?

Sweden provides official data on religion demography each year. Here are the data from 2007 onwards. Maybe there are even older data, and in any case there are the official data for the Church of Sweden starting from 1972. We could add a Template:Line chart (already present in other articles, including religion in the Netherlands, religion in Switzerland and religion in Iceland). It would be an interesting addition to show the trends of religions in Sweden throughout the decades.--Wddan (talk) 16:59, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for listing this source. With this data the religious affiliation table can be updated from 2015 to 2016. Though maybe more insightfull is to change the table so it shows the recent trends -maybe from 2007 untill the most recent year for which data is available. I'll think about it, if you, anyone had suggestions ? Grsd (talk) 12:02, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Questionable and possibly deliberately misleading statistics

In the section Surveys under Demographics the reader gets the impression Sweden is a deeply Christian country. This is not true. Sweden is one of the world's most secularized countries, with the amount of atheists and agnostics being over 50% by far.

I sense these statistics has been put by people who, on the contrary to reality, wish to portray Sweden as being Christian and religious; a common agenda for the Christian far right. PEW is the source for the first section. That report is nowhere to be found. However that is, PEW itself in 2018 concluded:

• 10% of Swedes say religion is very important in their lives
• 11% say they attend worship services at least monthly
• 11% say they pray daily
• 14% say they believe in God with absolute certainty
• 10% of adults in Sweden are “highly religious,” based on an overall index

See https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/05/how-do-european-countries-differ-in-religious-commitment/

For Academic publications that contradict the current article, see the first section on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Religion_in_Sweden#Edit_to_Religion_in_Sweden_today

/2020-11-12 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.34.129.56 (talk) 00:50, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Separate the unaffiliated into 3 cohorts

You erroneously claim that the common hyperny of nontheism and all the religions is religion, and not the correct term metaphysical worldview, because not all personal views on metaphysics are necessarily religions or religious.

By promoting an erroneous hypernym, you believe that the main purpose is to emphasize the ideological battle between the forms of nontheism (which you presented united to boost them) and the different religions which you didn't merge (because you have racist views. You deem different opinions within nontheism are of lesser value than different religious beliefs. Your claim is biased.)

Separate the nontheists into:

1. Atheism
2. Agnosticism
3. Irreligion and religious indifference

You can add the option "Other nontheist" but only if you find enough people with rare nontheist views (if their number is very small, like smaller than 0.1% don't add that option.)

You erroneously believe that we are supposed not to represent well the beliefs of nontheists, but to present them merged in the battle against religion. You are wrong. That's not the purpose of this page. We should contact Swedish statisticians to provide better data.

Arguably there is significant overlap between the three different definitions. But more importantly, there's only official registers and statistics for people actively being members of an organized church. If people don't actively join - or choose to quit - an organized church, there's no way of telling the reason or personal beliefs from the registers. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 09:40, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Atheism is the lack of theism. If you don't answer "yes", to the question "do you believe in a god or gods?", then you are an atheist (so "no", "I don't know", "I don't care", or anything else, other than a "yes" or possibly "maybe"). As such, those who term themselves agnostic, are atheists (except if you term ourself an agnostic theist, because you believe that there is a god or gods, but you wouldn't say that you know that there is) ...and irreligion, is a completely separate issue. You can be an irreligious theist, or a religious atheist. Religion doesn't require a god, nor does a belief in a god require religion.--155.4.221.27 (talk) 09:14, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Demographic table

I went over the table and removed the Latter Day Saints (LDS) and modified the Jehovah's Witnesses rows because they weren't in the 2020 Swedish statistics source (a table should not mingle sources). LDS seem not to have chosen to apply for state funding hence aren't in the source at all (I added a separate short section with their self-reported numbers there [note the LDS numbers almost always includes large numbers of people who no longer consider themselves LDS but have not formally resigned [even if they've joined another religion]]). I also added a note to the table to emphasize that not all religions are there. I also merged the Salvation Army in with Other Christians as the numbers were so low (we don't split out the separate Muslim or Eastern Christian groups even though their numbers are far higher). Also what was listed as Orthodox Christian with a link to Eastern Orthodoxy actually included several Oriental Orthodox churches as diverse as the Church of the East and a couple of Ethiopian Christian groups so I changed the wording and links. Erp (talk) 03:56, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Involuntary/unchosen church membership is NOT an indicator of ones faith!

The figures presented, to claim how many Swedes belong to a religion, are not opinion surveys. They are records of membership in a church ...which say NOTHING, as most members in a church, have been entered into membership without their consent or knowledge. Until relatively recently, you became a member at birth, if at least one of your parents was a member ...and even when that law was changed, you still automatically became a member if one of your parents was, when you were baptised (note that the vast majority of baptism, are done by non-believers, purely as a tradition. The same being true of confirmations [which are also done, because of the presents you get, when you get confirmed], and weddings in churches [which are also done, for the church aesthetic]).
A most members in the Church of Sweden, don't even believe in god(s).

As such, membership in a religious group, cannot be used, to indicate what religion you belong to, not to mention ones religiosity. 155.4.221.27 (talk) 08:54, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

See also: Talk:Religion_in_Sweden#Edit_to_Religion_in_Sweden_today and Talk:Religion_in_Sweden#Questionable_and_possibly_deliberately_misleading_statistics--155.4.221.27 (talk) 09:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

At least they are records, so it's a statistic that could be interpreted. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:12, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

It is relevant when discussing "involuntary" membership that it is very easy to leave the Church of Sweden. You just have to sign and mail a form that is available online [3]. This is well known in Sweden and there is even an economic incentive to do it for those that pay tax on their income; about 1% of the taxable income goes to the church tax. While many leave the Church of Sweden, others have chosen not to leave, which is why I argue that membership in the Church of Sweden is a relevant indicator for this article. Sjö (talk) 12:48, 26 July 2023 (UTC)