95% of believers in Russia consider themselves to be “traditional confessions”

The developers of the first interactive map of Russian religious communities claim that at the moment in Russia about 95% of the inhabitants belong to "traditional confessions." This was shown by an analysis of data on registered religious communities from 2004 to 2009.

Today in Russia there are 23 thousand religious organizations in the status of a legal entity. The ROC has the highest dynamics of community growth - in five years the share of its parishes and organizations in the total number of religious communities has grown from 53.2% to 55.1%.

In second place are Muslims, whose share of communities has grown from 16.3% to 17.1%. The share of Buddhist, Jewish, Charismatic and Pagan communities has not changed - respectively 0.8%, 1.3%, 7.2% and 0.1%. The total share of communities of all four "traditional" religions for Russia - Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism - is 75%, the total share of their followers is 95%.

The share of new religious movements ("Jehovah's Witnesses", Moonies, Mormons) decreased from 5.8% to 3.1%. There is a decrease in the number of Catholics and Old Believers, whose communities now account for 1% and 1.2% respectively.

Sources

• 95% of believers in Russia are adherents of traditional religions, according to the authors of an interactive map of religious communities // Interfax-religion. 2009. December 8.