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Abstract:
The Religious Structure of the Romanian Population in 2011 by Counties and Geographical-Historical Provinces. Our study addresses the issue of religion, which is one of the essential geo-demographic structures in the study of the Romanian population. We were motivated by the fact that it was not possible to study this issue in the period of 1948-1989 since censuses did not include data on religion. The situation of religion has become more visible and individualized only since the last decade of the last century and afterwards once with the censuses of 1992 and 2002 up to present day. More broadly, this study examines the key aspects of denominational structure of the Romanian population, based on the census conducted on 20 October 2011 at national level, data being provided by the National Institute of Statistics. Our research work consisted in the collection and processing of statistical data, subsequently synthesised in tables and graphical material (three tables and three figures). Table 1 provides key comparative data on the general religious structure of the Romanian population registered at the censuses in 2002 and 2011. Table 2 is the main source of information of this study, revealing the religious structure and territorial distribution of the Romanian population in the geographical - historical provinces and counties in 2011. Table 3 is a synthesis in which we present the total population at county and provinces level as absolute data (digits) and rates in case of the five main religious denominations (i.e. Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Reformed, Pentecostal and Greek-Catholic, the remaining religious denominations being grouped into the category of Other religions and Atheists. The research results are also highlighted by three charts and maps, allowing for the easy tracking of the subject as a whole and territorially, at county level and in the geographical-historical provinces. In a brief presentation of the topic addressed it can be emphasized that the Romanian population recorded at the census in 2011 was of 20,121,641 inhabitants, of which 81.04 % Christian Orthodox, 4.33% Roman-Catholic, 2.99% Protestant, 1.80% Greek-Catholic, and 0.75% Pentecostal. The other 16 denominations (Baptist, Seventh-Day Adventists, Muslim, Unitarian, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Evangelical, Christian of Old Rite, Lutheran Evangelical, Serbian Orthodox, Evangelical, Evangelical of Augustan Confession, Mosaic, Armenian, another religion, free of religion and atheists) hold only 2.83% of the population of our country. Approximately 6.26% of the population did not provide information on their religion (see tables 1, 2 and 3). Regarding the degree of representativeness of religious denominations in Romania, we conclude that the share of Orthodox religion population (81.04% of the 20,121,641 inhabitants of the country) expresses normality, given that on the one hand 6.26% of the registered population (1,259,739 persons) was included in the category of Unavailable Information, and on the other hand the difference of 12.7% (2,554,898 people) belongs to other 20 recorded religions, emphasizing that only the Roman-Catholic, Reformed and Pentecostal denominations registered a little over 1% (see table 1).
Keywords: religious denomination, Orthodox, Roman-Catholic, Reformed, Geographical-Historical Provinces.
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