09.30.09
Posted in Society & Politics at 12.15 am by Caitlin
I’ve put together a comparison of religious demographics in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. It’s not done to prove any kind of point – it’s for no reason other than the fact that I think it’s fascinating. If you do too, then enjoy…
One of my blogging friends Pam recently tweeted about the large percentage of people identifying with no religion in the Pacific North-West of the United States.
This got me curious about a comparison of religion around the world. We all know that Saudi Arabia is Muslim and Thailand is Buddhist and Spain or Costa Rica are Catholic, but I wanted to compare English-speaking countries. We share a language but not always a culture.
I compared the US, UK, Canada and Australia. I just used Wikipedia as a quick and ready source – I know it’s not an absolute authority but this isn’t an academic treatise. I would have looked at New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland as well but Wikipedia didn’t list the percentages in a readily accessible form.
In all four countries Christianity is the majority religion. There’s no surprises there, but what did surprise me is how Christianity is far less dominant in Australia than elsewhere. I knew Christianity was strong in North America but it’s also stronger in the UK than Australia – possibly since it’s the state religion. I was also intrigued by the differing make-up of the minority religions, reflecting immigration patterns and social change.
Percentage of population identifying as Christian in 2001
- Canada: 77%
- USA*: 76.7%
- UK: 71.6%
- Australia: 68%
* This is based on the 2001 Census in Australia, Canada and the UK. However, the US Census does not collect information on religious affiliation. For the US it’s based on the ARIS survey (but this only covers the contiguous states, not Alaska and Hawaii).
Australia does its Census every five rather than 10 years, like the UK and Canada. By 2006, the percentage of Australians identifying as Christian had dropped to 63.9%. That’s quite a significant change – a drop of 4.1 percentage points between 2001 and 2006.
By contrast, in the United States, Christianity held relatively steady – the 2008 ARIS survey shows 76% of Americans identified as Christian. That’s a decline of only 0.7 percentage points – practically a rounding error. The change over time is more dramatic – in the 1990 survey, the figure was 86.2%.
Other religions
Australia [2006 census]
- Christian: 63.9%
- No religion: 18.7%
- Not stated: 11.2%
- Buddhist: 2.1%
- Muslim: 1.7%
- Other : 1.2%
- Hindu: 0.7%
- Jewish: 0.5%
United Kingdom [2001 census]
- Christian: 71.6%
- No religion : 15.5%
- Not Answered: 7.3%
- Muslim: 2.7%
- Hindu: 1%
- Sikh: 0.6%
- Jewish: 0.5%
- Buddhist: 0.3%
- Other: 0.3%
United States [2007 survey*]
- Christianity: 78.4%
- Unaffiliated, including atheist or agnostic: 16.1%
- Judaism: 1.7%
- Other: 1.2%
- Buddhist: 0.7%
- Islam: 0.6%
- Hinduism: 0.4%
* This is now a different survey, done by the PEW Forum. I went with this one because the ARIS survey just had a generic category for “Eastern religions”. The statistics are pretty similar otherwise. (I wish I had Census data though!).
Canada – 2001 Census
- Christian: 77%
- No religion: 16.2%
- Muslim: 2%
- Jewish: 1.1%
- Buddhist: 1%
- Hindu: 1%
- Sikh: 0.9%
- Other: 0.8%
Australia is the most secular with 18.7% stating they have no religion and a further 11.2% not answering the question.
The biggest minority religions are Buddhism in Australia, Islam in Canada and the UK and Judaism in the US.
The smallest minority religions are Judaism in Australia, Buddhism in the UK, Hinduism in the US and Sikhism in Canada. (However, Sikhism is not broken out as a separate religion in the Australian or US survey results – presumably it is so small it is part of the ‘other’ category).
(As an aside, I once met a UK religious studies teacher who said she taught comparative religion in high school about the world’s six major world religions. I asked her what they were because I could only think of five that I would class as ‘major’ – was it Taoism perhaps, or maybe atheism, or maybe animism and nature worship? No, her six were: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism. Not to dismiss Sikhism in any way, but I suspect that had more to do with Britain’s demographics than anything else).
Islam is the biggest minority religion in Canada (2%) and the UK (2.7%) and and it is also a significant demographic in Australia (1.7%). However, both this PEW Forum survey and the ARIS one put the US Muslim population at 0.6% of the nation. I do wonder if this is accurate or if many Muslim-Americans prefer not to state their religion when taking a survey. There is no way for me to know but it seems plausible this might be a factor in the post 9/11 climate.
Types of Christianity
It gets messy when you look at brands of Christianity because denominations are defined and established differently in various countries. There are a few things I’ve been able to glean from the data.
Roman Catholicism as percentage of population
Canada [2001]: 43.6%
Australia [2006]: 25.8%
Australia [2001]: 26.6%
USA [2008]: 25.1%
USA [2001]: 24.5%
Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) [2007 survey]: 9%
Northern Ireland [2001]: 40.3%
Interesting that the percentage of Catholics in the US actually went up between 2001 and 2008. I’m guessing this might be due to immigration from Latin America.
Biggest Protestant denominations
The remaining Christians are mostly Protestant, with small numbers of Eastern Orthodox or Coptic Christians, and some that identify as “generically Christian”.
Here is the biggest Protestant denomination in each country:
Australia: Anglican | 18.7% of overall population [2006]
United States: Baptist | 15.8% of overall population [2008]
Great Britain: Church of England (Anglican church in England) | 20.9%
Canada: United Church of Canada | 9.6%
The Church of England is the established state religion in England and there are equivalents elsewhere in Great Britain. The Anglican Church of Australia is part of the worldwide Anglican communion and affiliated with the Church of England but it is not a state religion – Australia has separation of church and state.
The Anglican Church and the United Church of Canada (consisting of Presbyterians, Methodists and such like, similar to the Uniting Church in Australia) are both fairly liberal churches in their stances on things like ordination of women and gay marriage. (Though not without controversy, I might add!).
I’ve always thought of American Baptists as being conservative but according to Wikipedia there are varying types of Baptist and schisms between the Northern Baptists and the Southern Baptists and so on. I profess blissful ignorance about the differences.
In Australia, only 1.6% of the population is Baptist and another 1.1% identify as Pentecostal, according to the 2006 census.
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09.06.09
Posted in Twitter at 11.42 am by Caitlin
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08.30.09
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08.23.09
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08.16.09
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08.11.09
Posted in Environment, Family & Friends, Travel at 3.38 am by Caitlin
In the month before I left the UK for San Francisco, I went up to Scotland for work followed by some pleasure travel through the Highlands. I spent a few days visiting my uncle Jeff and aunt Judith and my cousin Jenny came down from Glasgow.
Jeff and Judith are now living in a mobile home next to their cottage up the glen (valley) from Inveraray, while they get building works done on the cottage. The work was three-quarters complete when I was there and it’s going to be very nice, with a lovely big kitchen and more bedrooms, but still keeping the charm of the old cottage.
Jenny (left) and I went for a hill walk directly behind the cottage on the first full day I was there. We didn’t go to the mountain peak a bit to our left, but went to the highest point in a straight line behind the cottage. We saw a family of red deer (sadly, I didn’t have my zoom lens with me so the photograph fails to do it justice), which was very exciting. It was pretty steep going and a lot of it was really scrambling or climbing rather than hiking but it was lots of fun. We called Judith when we reached the top so she could see our silhouettes waving from the ridge line. At the top the ground was flat and boggy – the treacherous peat bog sucked Jenny down to her knees at one point! It was pretty though, scattered with fluffy white bog cotton flowers and patches of red moss and 100 metres or so in from the ridge line, there’s a beautiful little freshwater tarn (lake).
Red deer
The tarn
While I was at the cottage, I also found time to go chanterelle-hunting with Judith (slim pickings though as we were a few weeks early and it had been quite dry) and hang out with my uncle Jeff and talk about the meaning of life. We had my other uncle Steven and Jenny’s cousin (and my friend) Andrew come to dinner on the Saturday night and Jenny and I drove back to Glasgow with Andrew. I stayed at Andrew’s place that night, then it was back to London by train on Sunday, and into the US Embassy for my visa appointment the following day.
Sunset at the cottage
***
See more photos from the hike on Flickr.
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08.09.09
Posted in Twitter at 11.42 am by Caitlin
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08.06.09
Posted in Environment, San Francisco at 5.37 pm by Caitlin
San Francisco is not especially warm in the summer and some days it is downright cold and foggy. While I am bemoaning the lack of opportunity to wear my favourite cotton sundresses, the local wildlife seems quite content.
We have a pair (maybe even a family?) of cute little red squirrels living out the back of our house. They have a couple of different hangouts but one of their favourites is this beautiful cedar tree* in the neighbour’s yard. I shot this picture above when I was eating my lunch on the back step a week or so ago (it was film so it took a while to get developed).
Our next door neighbours on the other side have a gorgeous flower garden, full of colourful chrysanthemums and dahlias and other blooms. We look out over this garden – and beyond to the city – from our kitchen and living room windows. This morning when I came back from a run, just as the automatic watering system turned off, a dozen tiny birds descended, feeding on the nectar of the flowers. I think they might have been hummingbirds. Gorgeous!
* Edited 1 October: I thought this was a Californian redwood but it’s actually a cedar tree of the same species found in Yosemite National Park, according to my neighbour.
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08.02.09
Posted in Twitter at 11.42 am by Caitlin
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Posted in Media & Internet, San Francisco at 2.58 am by Caitlin
It might be de rigeur to bitch about your internet provider but I want to take a moment to sing the praises of mine.
Getting internet connected was one of our first priorities when we moved into our new pad in San Francisco. Thanks to the wonders of Skype this also means we have a home phone. I asked around and it seemed that Comcast was the biggest provider but that many of its customers (or at least the vocal ones) were dissatisfied.
It was @aptinfrance on Twitter who tipped me off to the DSL Reports review site, which let me type in my zip code to see customer reviews for internet providers in my specific area.
I narrowed down the search and spoke to two different companies and eventually decided to go with the cable company Astound. They offer television and telephone as well but we just wanted broadband internet.
In Australia broadband internet costs the earth and comes with draconian download limits. In the UK, the price is not terrible but it’s normal to wait six to eight weeks for a connection, or to change providers, and ADSL is usually the only choice. By contrast, we have it pretty good in California, but I think Astound’s service has been above and beyond the usual.
The prices were competitive – it was a special offer and the price is guaranteed to remain the same for 12 months. We are paying $32 a month – $29 for the service and $3 for rental of the cable modem (we could buy our own if we wanted). This is the total cost as there’s no tax on internet here. It’s for the High Speed 10 plan, which is not their fastest but at 10Mbps download was faster than our previous ADSL connection in the UK.
Despite the price guarantee, we are not locked into a minimum contract so we can leave at any time. We expected to pay about $20 for the installation but we have not been charged for this on our first bill. I don’t know if we’ll end up being charged for it later, but as I’ve agreed to it, it’s fine either way.
I called on a Tuesday to get the prices and spoke to a woman called Megan. She sounded like she was local and was very helpful and pleasant. (this has been true of everyone I’ve dealt with at Astound). She talked me through the different plans. When I called back 10 minutes later to place my order, I spoke to the same person. She called me back 10 minutes later to set up an appointment for the installation. I opted for 2pm-5pm on Thursday – two days later.
I had a call the day before to confirm the appointment and then on the day, the engineer called half an hour early. When I said I was home, he asked if I would like him to come early since he was already in the area. I said yes.
It took him a little while to set things up as he needed to run a new connection from the street to the front of our house and then configure things with the modem in the house. He was probably there for 40 minutes all up, mostly outside. He remained entirely professional and courteous throughout and waited to check if the internet was working properly on my laptop before he left.
We had a customer service call a few days later just to check we were happy with everything so far. Of course we were.
After two weeks of smooth sailing, last night we got home to find our internet wasn’t working. We waited until this morning and it still wasn’t working. This evening we finally bit the bullet and called Astound. We placed the call at twenty minutes to six on a Saturday evening. They said they could have someone there by 8pm. The engineer showed up at 6.15pm!
It turned out that Comcast had been around the day before and disconnected us. (The engineer recognised the Astound cable with the Comcast terminator on the end). Presumably the previous tenants were with Comcast and they’d asked to be disconnected. The upstairs neighbours probably gave the technician access to the passageway while I was out. He didn’t think to check if it was actually a Comcast line or not and just disconnected it anyway.
The Astound guy got us back up and running within about 20 minutes. This meant it took under an hour for Astound to fix our internet, despite needing to send a technician to the property!
I don’t think I’ve ever written such a glowing review of ANY company before, let alone a utilities provider! Please note, I am just an anonymous customer and this review is unmotivated by anything other than complete satisfaction.
I am astounded!
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