In 2023 roughly half of the Dutch population did not identify with any religious denomination. Of the religious population, the largest number of people at 17 percent identified themselves as Roman Catholics. That is particularly interesting, as the dominating church in the Netherlands since the Reformation had been the Protestant church. According to the source, approximately 13 percent of the Dutch population considered themselves a member of the three main protestant churches, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. The category 'other' includes not only the smaller protestant churches, but also religions that are newer to the Netherlands, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. According to this statistic, Muslims made up six percent of the population in the Netherlands.

Between 2010 and 2024 in the Netherlands, the percentage of people who do not identify with any religion increased from 45 percent to 56 percent. The largest religious group in 2024 was the Roman Catholic group, with 17 percent of Dutch people identifying as Roman Catholic. In 2024, 14 percent of the Dutch population considered themselves a member of the three main protestant churches, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. The percentage of people who identify as Muslim has remained the same at five percent over the years. Do the people who identify with a religion always participate? The percentage of people in the Netherlands who participate in a religion is not necessarily the same as that of people who identify with a religion. The most prominent religious group, the Roman Catholics, only saw a participation of three percent, the same as those identifying with the Protestant Church, despite only six percent identifying with that denomination. The highest participation rate is in the group 'other' with four percent, despite only 10 percent identifying in those religions. It shows, therefore, that some religions see significantly higher participation rates despite a lower percentage identifying with it. Does the percentage of Muslims in the Netherlands align with the perceived percentage of Muslims? In 2018, the Dutch population believed that 20 percent of the population was Muslim, even though only five percent were Muslim. This overestimation of the Muslim population is in line with the rest of Europe. Germany, for example, predicted a Muslim population of 21 percent while the actual Muslim population was four percent. In Belgium, residents believed that 27 percent of the population was Muslim, while in reality, it was only five percent.

This statistic displays the distribution of the population of the Caribbean Netherlands in 2021, by religion. It shows that the largest share of the population was Roman Catholic, at nearly 50 percent. Next to that, the largest groups were the Methodists (7.6 percent) and the Adventists (7.4 percent). In contrast, only 0.2 percent of the population in the Caribbean Netherlands was Muslim.

This statistic shows the religious participation in the Netherlands in 2021, by frequency. It shows that the large majority of the Dutch population (83 percent) rarely or never visited a religious service or meeting in 2021. Eight percent of the Dutch population participated in religious services or meetings at least once a week.

The Netherlands: Non religious people as percent of the population: The latest value from 2013 is 46 percent, an increase from 45.7 percent in 2012. In comparison, the world average is 21.6 percent, based on data from 20 countries. Historically, the average for the Netherlands from 1960 to 2013 is 33.6 percent. The minimum value, 20.8 percent, was reached in 1960 while the maximum of 46 percent was recorded in 2013.

This statistic shows the religious participation in the Netherlands in 2024, by age and frequency. It shows that in 2024, 12 percent of the people in the Netherlands that were 75 or older participated in a religious service/meeting at least once a week.

The SOCON 1985 survey, formally titled "Religion in Dutch Society 85," was designed to document and analyze religious and secular attitudes in the Netherlands. The survey's core objective was to explore how religious beliefs, particularly those oriented toward Christianity, influence values, opinions, attitudes, and behaviors within various secular contexts. It aimed to assess the social relevance of religious and secular attitudes across a range of themes, including religion, value systems, labor, education, family and welfare state, ethnocentrism, politics, ecology, and health.

This large-scale national survey involved multiple themes organized into two main questionnaires, each distributed to separate samples. The study sought to address both continuity and changes in Dutch society's cultural and religious landscapes, providing a detailed examination of secularization, de-pillarization (the breakdown of religious or ideological communities), and social value transformations in 1985.

Researchers intended for the survey data to support analyses by academics on the intersection of religious beliefs and secular societal values, enabling insights into the cultural integration of religious and non-religious attitudes in the Dutch population.

This table provides data on religious denomination and church visits of the population of the Caribbean Netherlands aged 15 years and older in private households. Breakdowns by sex, age and level of education are presented. These aspects are shown for the Caribbean Netherlands and also for the islands Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba separately. The research is a sample survey. This means that the figures shown are estimates for which reliability margins apply. These margins are also included in the table. The Omnibus survey was carried out for the first time on Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius in 2013 during the month of June and the first week of July. For the second time the Omnibus survey was carried out on Bonaire during the months of October and November 2017, and on Saba and St. Eustatius in the period January to March 2018. Data available from: 2013 Status of the figures: The figures in this table are final. Changes as of 4 April 2019 None, this is a new table. When will new figures be published? New data will be published every four years.

This data set is part of the following publication:

Jetten, M. (2018). Knowledge of interaction styles and dimensions of interpretation in interreligious adult education. An empirical study of the effects of a hermeneutic-communicative curriculum. Radboud University. Münster: LIT Verlag.

This book reports on an evaluation study of a curriculum on interreligious dialogue among Christian and Muslims adults in the Netherlands. It was organized as a PhD-project between 2007 and 2013 at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies of Radboud University, financed by Stichting Nieuwegen.

The primary aim of this research is to explain the contribution of a curriculum to knowledge of interaction styles and hermeneutic distinctions that are used to express and interpret the views on religious phenomena of adherents from different religious traditions. We consider knowledge of communication and interpretation conditional for mutual understanding between adherents of different religious traditions. We refer to this as hermeneutic-communicative learning. The focus of this dissertation is not solely religious phenomena, but the way that participants express and interpret these phenomena. Hence, the research goal of this study is: explaining the contribution of a hermeneutic-communicative curriculum using the method of mediated learning to the acquisition of knowledge of interaction styles and dimensions for interpreting religious phenomena.

This study uses a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test, based on two non-equivalent groups (“untreated non-equivalent control group design with pre-test and post-test”, Cook & Campbell 1979, 103-129). To study the effects of participation in our curriculum, we distinguish two research groups, an experimental group that participates in the intervention, and a control group that does not participate. In both groups a pre-test and a post-test is held, respectively before and after the intervention.

Our research population are Christian and Muslim adults in the Netherlands who are interested in interreligious meetings. To be able to reliably estimate the characteristics of the research population, we required a sample of at least 400 respondents in total, with 200 participants in the experimental group and 200 in the control group. Regarding the experimental group, we aimed at 20 curriculum locations, each with about twelve participants, making sure that respondent still feel secure to exchange religious beliefs and practices in a personal and informal way. We sought a group distribution of at least a third Christians or a third Muslims at each location. Regarding religion, the relative number of Christians in the control group appeared to be higher than in the experimental group. Therefore, in the analyses, we randomly reduced the number of Christians in the control group by 40%, by deleting the third and fifth of each five Christian respondents in the control group. This resulted in a total number of 260 respondents in the experimental group and 132 respondents in the control group.

Part of this research project of Radboud University is the material for an interreligious course. It has been developed for Christian and Muslim adults with interest in interreligious communication. Participants get acquainted with a practical method that eases interreligious dialogue, focused at both enriching one’s own religious identity as well as getting familiar with the religion of the other. Focus is learning to communicate from the personal perspective, applied to substantive themes from Christianity and Islam.
You are welcome to re-use and adjust all available curriculum materials and guidance sheets. Feel free to use part of the material, split up the material in separate units, or adjust to materials to your own needs, as long as you respect the copyright. Please refer to this dataset and the aforementioned publication.

The data set contains various types of files, which are further explained in the read me first file.
- Read me first file
- Data files (SPSS files)
- Documentation on the data set (methodology and measuring instruments)
- Documentation on the interreligious curriculum (including the full program and guidance sheets for educators)

The table "Church denomination; history" provides a historical overview of the changes in the percentage of people in the Netherlands aged 18 and over who consider themselves to belong to a certain denomination. The following categories of religious denomination are distinguished: no religious denomination, Roman Catholic, Protestant Church in the Netherlands (since 2004), Dutch Reformed, Reformed and other denominational denominations. It also shows the percentage of people over the age of 18 who regularly go to church or another religious gathering. Data available from: 1849 - 2018 Status of the figures: The figures in this table are final Changes as of 1 August 2019: Figures 2018 have been added. When will new figures come out? A new table on religion will be published in 2020.

This statistic shows the religious participation in the Netherlands in 2021, by gender and frequency. It shows that in 2021, 82 percent of the female population in the Netherlands rarely or never attended a religious service/meeting.

This data collection contains voting information from percentagized election returns for each of the nine general elections to the Lower House (Tweede Kamer) of the Dutch Parliament in the period 1888-1917, as well as information on religious composition for all of the 100 municipalities of the Netherlands. Variables computed from the basic election statistics on the basis of a left-right dimension of the political parties provide information on the number and percentage of votes cast for the Conservatives, the Liberals, the Radicals, the Social-Democrats, the Anti-Revolutionary Party, the Catholics, and the other left-wing and right-wing parties. Additional variables provide information on age, the number of registered voters, and the total number of votes cast. Religious variables provide information on the percentage of the population associated with specific denominations, such as the Dutch Reformed Church, the Wallon Church, the New Lutheran Church, the Remonstrant Church, the Mennonite Church, the Christian Reformed Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Old Roman Catholic Church, the Jewish religion, and other churches and sects, including those with no religious association.

The table gives an overview of the changes in the percentage of people in the Netherlands from 15 years who count themselves to a particular church spirit. The following categories of religion are distinguished: no ecclesiastical denomination, total ecclesiastical denomination, Roman Catholic, Protestant Church in the Netherlands, Dutch Reformed, Reformed, Islam and other denominations. It also shows the percentage of people aged 15 and over who go to a religious gathering. Ecclesiastical disposition and visit religious service are broken down by country and province.

Data available from: 2010 to 2015

Status of the figures: The figures in this table are final.

Changes as of 23 January 2020: None, this table has been discontinued.

When will there be new figures? No longer applicable.

This table provides an overview of the changes in the percentage of people in the Netherlands aged 15 to 25 who consider themselves to belong to a certain denomination. The following categories of religion are distinguished: No religious denomination, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Islam and other denomination. It also shows the percentage of people aged 15 to 25 who attend a religious gathering. Religious denomination and attendance at religious services are broken down into various personal characteristics. In order to show how young people in the Netherlands are doing, the National Youth Monitor describes more than 70 topics in addition to this topic. The subjects are called indicators. Data available from: 2021 Status of the figures: The figures in this table are final. Changes as of April 7, 2023: None This is a new table. When will new numbers come out? Figures for 2023 will be added in the first half of 2024.

Introduction

Welcome to the English-Dutch Bilingual Parallel Corpora dataset for Religion domain! This comprehensive dataset contains a vast collection of bilingual text data, carefully translated between English and Dutch, to support the development of religion-specific language models and machine translation engines.

Dataset Content

Domain Specific Content

This Parallel Corpus is meticulously curated to capture the linguistic intricacies and domain-specific nuances inherent to the Religion domain.

Format and Structure

Usage and Application

This survey is a not up-to-date version. Please, use the updated version included in the EVS integrated data files. This national dataset is only available for replication purposes and analysis with additional country-specific variables (see ´Further Remarks´).

Two online overviews offer comprehensive metadata on the EVS datasets and variables.

The extended study description for the EVS 2008 provides country-specific information on the origin and outcomes of the national surveys The variable overview of the four EVS waves 1981 1990 1999/2000 and 2008 allows for identifying country specific deviations in the question wording within and across the EVS waves.

These overviews can be found at: Extended Study Description Variable Overview

Moral, religious, societal, political, work, and family values of Europeans.

Topics: 1. Perceptions of life: importance of work, family, friends and acquaintances, leisure time, politics and religion; frequency of political discussions with friends; happiness; self-assessment of own health; memberships and unpaid work (volunteering) in: social welfare services, religious or church organisations, education, or cultural activities, labour unions, political parties, local political actions, human rights, environmental or peace movement, professional associations, youth work, sports clubs, women´s groups, voluntary associations concerned with health or other groups; tolerance towards minorities (people with a criminal record, of a different race, left/right wing extremists, alcohol addicts, large families, emotionally unstable people, Muslims, immigrants, AIDS sufferers, drug addicts, homosexuals, Jews, gypsies and Christians - social distance); trust in people; estimation of people´s fair and helpful behaviour; internal or external control; satisfaction with life.

1. Work: reasons for people to live in need; importance of selected aspects of occupational work; employment status; general work satisfaction; freedom of decision-taking in the job; importance of work (work ethics, scale); important aspects of leisure time; attitude towards following instructions at work without criticism (obedience work); give priority to nationals over foreigners as well as men over women in jobs.

2. Religion: Individual or general clear guidelines for good and evil; religious denomination; current and former religious denomination; current frequency of church attendance and at the age of 12; importance of religious celebration at birth, marriage, and funeral; self-assessment of religiousness; churches give adequate answers to moral questions, problems of family life, spiritual needs and social problems of the country; belief in God, life after death, hell, heaven, sin and re-incarnation; personal God versus spirit or life force; own way of connecting with the divine; interest in the sacred or the supernatural; attitude towards the existence of one true religion; importance of God in one´s life (10-point-scale); experience of comfort and strength from religion and belief; moments of prayer and meditation; frequency of prayers; belief in lucky charms or a talisman (10-point-scale); attitude towards the separation of church and state.

3. Family and marriage: most important criteria for a successful marriage (scale); attitude towards childcare (a child needs a home with father and mother, a woman has to have children to be fulfilled, marriage is an out-dated institution, woman as a single-parent); attitude towards marriage, children, and traditional family structure (scale); attitude towards traditional understanding of one´s role of man and woman in occupation and family (scale); attitude towards: respect and love for parents, parent´s responsibilities for their children and the responsibility of adult children for their parents when they are in need of long-term care; importance of educational goals; attitude towards abortion.

4. Politics and society: political interest; political participation; preference for individual freedom or social equality; self-assessment on a left-right continuum (10-point-scale); self-responsibility or governmental provision; free decision of job-taking of the unemployed or no permission to refuse a job; advantage or harmfulness of competition; liberty of firms or governmental control; equal incomes or incentives for individual efforts; attitude concerning capitalism versus government ownership; postmaterialism (scale); expectation of future development (less emphasis on money and material possessions, greater respect for authority); trust in institutions; satisfaction with democracy; assessment of the political system of the country as good or bad (10-point-scale); preferred type of political system (strong leader, expert decisions, army should rule the country, or democracy); attitude towards democracy (scale).

5. Moral attitudes (scale: claiming state benefits without entitlement, cheating on taxes, joyriding, taking soft drugs, lying, adultery,...

This statistic displays the results of a survey of opinions concerning the impact of declining Christian influence in Dutch society in the Netherlands in 2018. The survey outcome suggest that over half of the Dutch population saw the declining influence of the Christian religion on society as neither a strength nor a threat. Meanwhile, just over a fifth of respondents saw the decline of the impact of Christianity in society as a strength, while the share of people surveyed who saw this as a threat was slightly higher, at 23 percent.

Pays-Bas: Christians as percent of the total population: Pour cet indicateur, The Cline Center for Democracy fournit des données pour la Pays-Bas de 1960 à 2013. La valeur moyenne pour Pays-Bas pendant cette période était de 62.8 pour cent avec un minimum de 46.3 pour cent en 2013 et un maximum de 77.9 pour cent en 1960.

Social relevance of Christian religion in the Netherlands.Importance of career, money, social security / importance, of children, marriage, family life / importance of equality and democracy / hedonism / importance of autonomy, being independent, self-determinative / the existence of God, the meaning of life, suffering, death, good and evil / importance of the Christian faith to r., religious orthodoxy, particularism, r.'s attitude to his religious group, church, importance of church membership, church membership of people around r. / role of the media with respect to religion / attitude to trade-unions, class differences and government intervention, restriction of civil liberties, abortion, euthanasia / view on women / commitment to local community and parish / relative importance of (inter-)national versus local issues / norm conformism / attitude to the unification of Europe.Work ethic: work as a duty, working systematically, achievement oriented, most important aspects of a job / characteristics of r.'s job / commitment to work / protestant ethic with respect to work / attitudes towards material consumptionConsumption of human relationships: exert oneself for relationships / responsibility of society for individuals and the reverse / hedonism, fengality and rationalism with respect to consumption / honesty in financial affairs / protestant ethic and consumption / acceptance of women having jobs, consequences for children and marriage / sex-role stereotypes, distribution of household work / duty of children to provide for their parents / acceptance of alternative relationships / desirability of marriage / commitment and freedom in intimate relationships / ideas about the relationship between younger and older people, stereotypes / appreciation of the natural environment, improvement of old neighbourhoods, commitment to the protection of nature, optimism for the future / experience with environmental pollution / willingness to make efforts for the environment / authoritarianism / anomy / threat of competition by minorities / attitude towards Surinamese, Turks, Spaniards, Jews and Dutch / acceptance of people from these groups as neighbours, son- or daughter-in-law, classmate, experiences / anti-semitism / explanation of the social gap between the Dutch and ethnic minorities / importance of various political issues, satisfaction with democracy / postmaterialism, political interest and efficacy / confidence in politics, consequences of politics for daily life / political participation / cultural lifestyle of r. and r.'s parents, material lifestyle.Background variables: basic characteristics/ residence/ housing situation/ household characteristics/ occupation/employment/ income/capital assets/ education/ social class/ politics/ religion/ consumption of durables/ readership, mass media, and 'cultural' exposure/ organizational membership.The data- and documentation files of this dataset can be downloaded via the option Data Files.

This research explores the different ways in which Dutch and Flemish youth perceive the ideal relationship between religion and state governance. More specifically, it explains the level of agreement by committed Christian, Muslim, and humanist youth in the Netherlands and Flanders with different models of relationships between religion (and worldview in general) and state, against the backdrop of their religious and humanist beliefs, as well as individual and contextual level determinants.

The research is conducted by way of a questionnaire among committed Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and humanists, who are 15 to 25 years old and live in either the Netherlands or Flanders. To collect the data, cooperation is sought with organizations, individuals with a broad network in the field, churches and mosques that attract a substantial number of young people, and lecturers of higher education who prepare young people to become paid professionals of religious or humanist organizations. The data collection resulted in 643 usable questionnaires. The results are analysed in SPSS Statistics.