RELIGIOUS IDENTITY, (SELF-)IDENTIFICATION AND STATISTICS

Abstract

The article examines the problems of religious statistics due to the multifaceted nature of religious identity and flexibility of religious identification and self-identifi cation. This is the cause of frequent diff erences in the estimated data on the number of followers of a particular confession. Population censuses could be a universal and comparable source, but not all countries ask about religious affiliation in the census. And even when there is a question on religion in the census, differences in wording (and differences in the meaning behind the wording) do not always allow for valid comparisons. Therefore, it is more common to find estimates of the number of followers of denominations based on various surveys. Religious identity is very multidimensional, and it often overlaps with other types of identity: ethnic, civil, local. A person can be associated with a certain faith by accepting the dogmatics, or it can be a set of practices and actions that define a way of life or certain milestones of the life cycle or moments/ periods of the religious calendar. Finally, the very feeling of belonging to cultural and historic tradition can bind a person to a particular faith. Therefore, in order to study quantitative indicators of religiosity, it is more convenient to operate with the procedural concepts of identifi cation and self-identifi cation. Religious statistics, or religious demography, was developed in the 1960s, i.e. in the period when the traditional forms of religiosity were being eroded, when religious dynamics in diff erent regions of the world were becoming more and more different, when it seemed that, at least in the West, religion was losing its position. Religious statistics require the adoption of some form of categorization. This article examines whether classifi cation should always be based on denominational principle alone. Religious statistics is a complex and delicate instrument, but nevertheless it draws some contours of religious structure, reveals the peculiarities of the religious situation and allows us to see the trends of its development.