Religions in Nauru

The Republic of Nauru officially has freedom of religion for its citizen and this is formally mentioned in the constitution as well. Thus every Nauruan has the choice to choose and practice whatever religion they want.

Currently Christianity is the most dominant religion of all on the Nauru province and among the Christians the Protestants are in majority, while the rest are Catholic Christians. After Christians the Buddhist (Including Confucian, Taoist, Christian, and nonreligious) are on the second spot. Baha’i faith also has a good number of users.

FACTUAL DATA ABOUT RELIGIONS IN NAURU:

Here is the factual data about the religions in Nauru:

• Protestantism branch of Christianity makes almost 51% of the Nauruan Population.
• Catholicism branch of Christianity makes almost 26% of the Nauru Island Population.
• Buddhist religion and its branches makes almost 11% of the population of Nauru.
• Baha’i religion makes almost 9% of tooal Nauru’s population.
• Islam is followed by almost 2% of the Nauru Population.
• Rest of the remaining population has various different religions.

There are a few active Christian missionary organizations, including representatives of Anglicanism, Methodism, and Catholicism. Although the Constitution provides for freedom of religion; however, the Government restricted this right in some circumstances to avoid problems. There are no indications of widespread societal discrimination against particular religious denominations; however, some elements of the Nauru Protestant and Roman Catholic communities occasionally voice discomfort with religious groups perceived as foreign, in particular The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

THE INDIGINEOUS RELIGION OF NAURU:

The fact is worth mentioning here that the Christianity and the rest of the religions came long after the Europeans came into contact with the Nauruans; here one may wonder what were the Nauru Islanders following before the arrival of Christian Missionaries, the answer is the presence of the Nauruan Indigenous Religion. It’s a monotheistic system of belief that follows a female deity known as Eijebong and an island of spirits called a Buitani. The followers of religion believed that the earth and the sky were created by Areop-Enap, which was a spider. Currently there are no exact figures or facts about the presence of this religion, Even if there are some followers of this belief they would be in very little number that hardly make any percentage in the population of the Island.

Overall, there is peaceful coexistence of all the religion and there are not as such reported incidents of religious violence on the Island.