Cartoons came to my mind and I wondered what the most popular cartoon might be. But I find I am far out of date on this topic. Perhaps I was distracting myself from the events in Afghanistan. I also wonder about religious nations compared to non-religious nations. Clearly Afghanistan is turning a big corner towards a "religious" nation, a religious rule nation. My sense is that this is very worrisome for Canadians, so I went looking to find out about our sense of religion and religious rule.
Who would you guess to be the least religious country in the world? The answer is China, but look who is second, Japan. Here are the numbers in the article covering this topic in worldpopulationreview.com when they asked residents whether they "feel" religious.
China (7% feel religious)
Japan (13% feel religious)
Estonia (16% feel religious)
Sweden (19% feel religious)
Norway (21% feel religious)
Czech Republic (23% feel religious)
Hong Kong (26% feel religious)
Netherlands (26% feel religious)
Israel (30% feel religious)
United Kingdom (30% feel religious)
Can you imagine only 30% of Israelis feel religious. The article then distinguishes public perception on which country is the least religious. We Canadians find ourselves in the top 10:
Australia
Sweden
Germany
the Netherlands
New Zealand
Luxembourg
Denmark
Canada
France
Austria
But alas, just as we see some interesting data, the article ends there. There's no follow-on article or analysis on how this plays out in governments and societies. There's likely a book coming out soon...
A nice image from the past - pretty Echinacea, a great summer bloomer.
