We hear a lot about countries where religious commitment and religiosity is very important and very pervasive—Muslim-majority states, large swathes of Africa, Thailand, the US, India, and so on (the Vatican City and Islamic Sharia Law countries are obvious ones)—but what about the opposite end of the spectrum, countries where irreligion⓵ is in the ascendency?

Statistically, the least religious nation? Enter Estonia! In the national census of 2021 (Estonia Counts 2021) 58%⓶ of Estonians identified as irreligious (and among ethnic Estonians the percentage was appreciably higher, 71%). Conversely, only 29% of the population nominated that they were affiliated to a religion (mostly Orthodox Christianity and Lutheranism). This comes on top of a survey by Gallup in 2008 which found that only 14% of Estonians consider religion to be an important part of their lives, this figure was the lowest of all countries they surveyed. How do we explain this rebuffing of religiosity in Estonia? The origins of it go back to the 19th century when Estonians started to experience an awakening of national feelings…many Estonian nationalists and intellectuals repudiated Christianity as a foreign religion which inhibited the path to national independence. Tied up with these impulses was a growing anti-German sentiment aimed at Lutheranism which was the dominant religion in Estonia at the time. The roots could lie even further back in history, in the waves of foreign invaders (German and Danish Teutonic Knights) who tried to impose the Christian faith on Estonians by force in the 13th Century (‘Spirituality in Estonia – the world’s ’least religious’ country’, Tom Esslemont, BBC, 26-Aug-2011, www.bbc.com).

The Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940 further implanted irreligion in the country with the imposition of state atheism on the societies of the Baltic States. Moscow co-opted the Lutheran leadership and cowed the Orthodox Churches, helping to transform Estonia into perhaps the most highly secularised society in Europe. Independence in 1991 from the USSR didn’t free Estonia entirely from the legacy of its Soviet past, with irreligion still as prevalent as ever in the most northern Baltic State.

Estonian “Earth-belief”: All of which is not to say that the large numbers of Estonians who decline to align themselves with a “god” or “gods” believe in nothing or are nihilists. Many of them would self-identify, for lack of a better term, as nature or forest worshippers, a belief in a pagan or neopagan form of spiritualism – in Estonian, “Taaraism” and “Maausk” (Esslemont).

Footnote: Widespread propensity for non-belief Estonia is not “Robinson Crusoe” with regard to countries reporting a high incidence of its people self-identifying as atheist (or agnostic). Metrics vary but international polls show a number of other countries—including the Czech Republic, Latvia, Japan and Vietnam—in this same category. A 2023 Gallup International Survey found that Sweden had the highest percentage of citizens who didn’t believe in the existence of God. Other studies place the People’s Republic of China at the top of the list of non-believers with an estimated 78% (https://colinmathers.com/2020/09/30/global-trends-in-religiosity-and-atheism-1980-to-2020/)

⓵ when we use the term “irreligion” we are talking about a raft of areligious or contrarian personal beliefs including deism, agnosticism, ignosticism,  atheism, anti-religion, skepticism, ietsism, spiritual but not religious (SBNR), freethought, secular humanism, anti-theism, non-religious theism, pandeism, pantheism, panentheism, apatheism, non-belief, and New Age

⓶ a slight rise from 2011