Talk:Religion in the Czech Republic

Change in census methodology?

Did the Czech census change significantly between 2001 and 2011? I'm curious as to why the number of people who simply didn't respond to the question soared from 8.8% to 45.2%. All other categories - even those stating no religion - plummeted. It seems odd that 91% of Czechs would answer the question in 2001 but only 55% would do so a decade later.108.254.160.23 (talk) 00:44, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

In 2011 a large part of the Czech population boycotted this question as a sign of protest against government sponsored census. The same way they boycotted the nationality question (2.7 million people didn't answer question about their nationality). --History331 (talk) 10:24, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Any source for such statement? People I know simply don´t care... Pavlor (talk) 17:22, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't agree with History331 as I don't know anyone who did boycott those questions. Even though that is just anecdotal evidence, it speaks on how "large" could that part of czech population be. The facts are that the wording was different. In 2001 census, they used checkboxes (Roman catholic, protestant, no religion, etc.) and then last checkbox was labeled "other" and you could write whatever you liked. In 2011 census, there was just one textbox labeled "religion". I for example, as an atheist, crossed the box and that placed me to "undeclared", if I had written down "none", I would end up in different ("no religion") cathegory. Other factor was that 2011 census was the first one that could be done via internet and more young people had their own responses, in the older census, it was more common that one person filled papers for whole family (for example in my case, my dad put "roman catholic" for entire family in 2001).

Overall, the notion that so many catholics ended up in the "no response" cathegory is flawed. Czech governemnt subsidises different registered churches by law. And those polls are used to count the amount of money those churches will get. So they were urging their followers to subscribe to them, the only way people didn't know is if they don't go to church , don't meet other church going believers or don't belong to organized group.Mrkev09 (talk) 13:27, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Again, while I've argued that raw census figures are WP:PRIMARY sources on numerous articles using them, we're talking about individual editors' personal experience and conjecture as to how to read them. Third party reliable sources analysing the figures are the most desirable ones... if they are to be found. If we can't find them, we're in breach of NOR interpreting the why, what, and wherefore as to any intent on behalf of those who filled in the census form. The only option we're left with is presenting those figures in their raw form without any form of commentary or analysis on our behalf. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:53, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Islam and Buddhism in lede

In a population of 10.5 million there are 6,800 Buddhists and 3,700 Muslims. Hardly significant enough for the intro. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 07:47, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. It is completely WP:UNDUE. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:37, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Agree, similar to Religion in Croatia JimRenge (talk) 11:34, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

@JimRenge, If you are comparing religion in Croatia and religion in Czech republic, then Protestantism should also be removed from lede because it is practiced by only 0.8% of the population of Czech republic compared to 1.47% Muslims in Croatia.Septate (talk) 09:59, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I have no issue removing Protestantism from this article's lede. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:46, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Considering that Protestantism constitutes a mere 0.8%, it should be merged into 'other' religions in the pie chart, as well as removed from the lead. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:36, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Good solution, I will correct Religion in Latvia correspondingly. See also: Religion in Lithuania, Religion in Estonia. JimRenge (talk) 07:54, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Jedis

15000 thousand claimed to be "Jedi". Sure, they may have been joking, but still... Andreas George Skinner (talk) 15:01, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@Andreas George Skinner: Are you making an obtuse comment about something you don't feel to be WP:DUE in the article? If so, you can either leave a constructive comment about the content here, or you can WP:FIXIT yourself and leave a message here as to what changes you've made and why. Please be reminded that this is an article talk page, WP:NOTTWITTER. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:44, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Hey, I'm just asking if it should be included, don't shoot me for it! Andreas George Skinner (talk) 10:25, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

No need to mention the Jedis. JimRenge (talk) 10:33, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Unless the 390,000 in Britain are added to the relevant pages... Andreas George Skinner, please remember that, while having a sense of humour is a good thing, it doesn't go down well with people who work primarily on contentious areas of Wikipedia. Consider yourself fortunate that my Kalashnikov AK-12 was in another room when I responded. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:28, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

...I wasn't joking, they were, my edits are to do with football, not religion, I don't know what to put in a religion page... Andreas George Skinner (talk) 13:30, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Pie chart

De wafelenbak, I reverted your change of the census figures in the pie chart, because the census does not report Catholic Church (18.8%) etc. You removed the "no response" figure with the edit summary: “No response” does not equal “no religion,” and you removed the 45.2% who did not respond, changing the caption to "Religion in the Czech Republic (2011, only those who responded the question)".

Did you recalculate the figures without the number for "no response"?

I think the article should reflect what the source actually states. The fact that 45.2% don´t want to tell their government what religion they adhere to, appears to be significant. I think a recalculation might imply that the beliefs of the "no response" group are the same or very similar to the group of "responders". However we do not know. Best regards JimRenge (talk) 08:10, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with JimRenge on this issue. Conflating 'no response' with 'not religious' is WP:SYNTH. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:12, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I don’t oppose this change, but I do oppose it when the article bluntly states that “only 10.3% of the Czechs are Catholic”, which is clearly not something that can be read in the census and is WP:SYNTH as well. Whit this data, you could as well say that “up to 55.5% of the Czechs are Catholics”. To me, both formulations seems biased.

Furthermore, I don’t see why my other changes are reversed as well. It does not seem wrong to me to mention the statistics given by the Catholic Church herself. De wafelenbak (talk) 15:41, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

@De wafelenbak: Firstly, where does your invoking SYNTH come from? WP:CALC is standard practice, hence the percentages are drawn from the most reliable source for such articles which any reader can verify by running their own calculations against the source. Using the national census for any given country is standard practice for the purposes of Wikipedia. The only point at which any other stats have been used on related articles is where there hasn't been a census for a protracted period of time (i.e., Religion in Ukraine where the last census was in 2001), or in instances where it was recognised that some minority groups had not been catered for (i.e., Religion in Russia), or particularly complex articles like Religion in China where the census of The People's Republic of China doesn't cater for ethnic self-identification, primary language, or religious concerns.

Even for more complex situations, any adjustments are made via consensus as to who the highest quality statistical institutions running their own polls are (i.e., the methodology must be transparent) and, where potentially BIASED, attributed WP:INTEXT. The Catholic Church's estimates are to be understood as WP:BIASED towards their concept of being a Catholic means and would include baptisms, etc. Such figures run contrary to self-identification and, hence, the point of the statistics featuring in this article. There is no reason to doubt the Czech Republic's census, nor is the information urgent need of updating until their next census. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:08, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

As I wrote before, I doubt that there were many believers from organised churches in the group labeled as "unknown". Since this census was used to count the ammount of subsidies czech government gives to all registered groups and believers were urged to state their affilitation. Also, the textbox was just labeled "religion" and it wasn't intuitive that if you just leave it empty or cross it, you will end up in "unknown" cathegory.Mrkev09 (talk) 13:27, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

As per my response in the Change in census methodology? section, and directly above your observation here, there is nothing to be done unless you can find reliable sources criticising the sources in use. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:58, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to Merge Coinmanj (talk) 21:24, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

---

I propose that Irreligion in the Czech Republic be merged into this article. The irreligion article is a stub and all of the information in it is already covered by this article. Coinmanj (talk) 00:43, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

The article has been expanded so it should be remain. Dwanyewest (talk) 18:59, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

That information is still found in "Religion in the Czech Republic". Even the article Irreligion in Europe redirects to Religion in Europe. Per WP:MERGEREASON, the information is duplicate, the topics largely overlap, and the text is still short (predominately consisting of surveys). It should be merged. There's no need to have an article for each permutation of a main topic. Coinmanj (talk) 21:25, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree with this merger proposal. The main article would benefit from being more detailed about the other side, I personally don't think irreligion should be a separate page because they're so intertwined. st170e^talk 20:04, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

April 2018

About this edit: The two categories (no response and none) were the same in the 1930 census, so there is no way to represent the two data as separate in the table.--Wddan (talk) 23:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Okay then, leave that data point out for the 1930s and plot it as available for the rest of them. Canterbury Tail talk 23:16, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Done.--Wddan (talk) 14:16, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

2021 census update

I have updated the article according to the complete data from the 2021 census (cf. https://www.czso.cz/documents/142154812/176236044/sldb2021_pv_obyvatelstvo_podle_cirkvi_a_kraju.xlsx).

Note that the general summary (cf. https://www.czso.cz/csu/scitani2021/nabozenska-vira) does not provide the complete list of religions and denominations, and especially gives a slight underestimate of Catholics, as it reports merely Catholics who clearly identified themselves with the Roman Catholic Church (Církev římskokatolická, 741,019 or 7%), while the complete data give an additional 235,834 people, or 2.2% of the population, who reported that they are Catholic by faith (katolická víra) but do not clearly identify themselves with the Roman Catholic Church.--Æo (talk) 17:02, 21 January 2022 (UTC)