Religion inSwitzerland is predominantlyChristianity. According to the national survey of theSwiss Federal Statistical Office,^[a] in 2023, Christians accounted for 56% of theresident population (aged fifteen years and older), of whom 30.7% wereCatholics, 19.5% wereSwiss Protestants, and 5.8% were followers of otherChristian denominations (about halfOrthodox and half otherProtestants).^[3] The proportion of Christians has declined significantly since 1980, when they constituted about 94% of the population; during the same timespan,unaffiliated Swiss residents have grown from about 4% to 31% of the population, and people professing non-Christian religions have grown from about 1% to 7.2% of the population.^[4] In 2020, according to church registers, 35.2% of the resident population were registered members of the country's Catholic Church, while 23.3% were registered members of theProtestant Church of Switzerland.^[5][b]

Christianity was adopted by theGaulish (mostlyHelvetii) andGermanic (mostlyAlemanni) ancestors of the modern Swiss, respectively, between the 4th- and 5th-centurylate Roman domination the former, and between the 6th- and 7th-centuryFrankish domination the latter, abandoning their indigenousGallo-Roman andGermanic paganisms. TheOld Swiss Confederacy which began to emerge in the 13th century remained entirely Catholic until the 16th century, when it becameone of the centres of theProtestant Reformation and a majority of the Swiss joined the Protestant movement ofCalvinism.^[6] Conflicts, and even civil wars, between Protestants and Catholics persisted until theSonderbund War in 1847, after which freedom of conscience was established by law — only for Christians.^[7] Legal discrimination againstJews and some restrictions against the Catholic Church persisted, respectively, until the late 19th century the former and the end of the 20th century the latter.^[8] In the early 20th century, Switzerland had an absolute majority of Protestants (about 60%) and a large population of Catholics (about 40%); since the late 20th century and throughout the 21st century, the religious composition of the country has changed significantly, with a rise of the irreligious population, a sharp decline of Protestantism to about two tenths of the population, and a less sharp decline of Catholicism to about three tenths of the population.^[4]

Switzerland has nostate religion, though most of itscantons (except forGeneva andNeuchâtel) recognise official churches (Landeskirchen), in all cases Catholic and Swiss Protestant, and in some cantons also theOld Catholic Church andJewish congregations.^[9] These churches are financed bytaxation of their adherents.^[10][11]

Census/structural survey's statistics 1900–2020:^[4]

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Religion in Switzerland by canton, 2018 (absolute majorities with coloured background)^[b][14][15]

Arms	Canton	Population (numbers)			Percentages
		Total	Catholic	Protestant	Catholic	Protestant	Protestant + Catholic	Unaffiliated + other*
	Zürich	1,520,968	387,325	425,145	25.5	28.0	53.4	46.6
	Bern	1,034,977	164,866	541,148	15.9	52.3	68.2	31.8
	Vaud	799,145	250,543	205,775	31.4	25.7	57.1	42.9
	Aargau	678,207	215,984	161,317	31.8	23.8	55.6	44.4
	St. Gallen	507,697	226,264	104,851	44.6	20.7	65.2	34.8
	Genève	499,480	219,477	62,769	43.9	12.6	56.5	43.5
	Luzern	409,557	245,397	41,673	59.9	10.2	70.1	29.9
	Ticino	353,343	235,570	5,356	66.7	1.5	68.2	31.8
	Valais	343,955	261,963	20,042	76.2	5.8	82.0	18.0
	Fribourg	318,714	197,559	41,534	62.0	13.0	75.0	25.0
	Basel-Landschaft	288,132	71,541	85,388	24.8	29.6	54.5	45.5
	Thurgau	276,472	85,104	93,628	30.8	33.9	64.6	35.4
	Solothurn	274,748	86,518	58,522	31.5	21.3	52.8	47.2
	Graubünden	198,379	89,768	66,536	45.3	33.5	78.8	21.2
	Basel-Stadt	194,766	24,783	26,380	12.7	13.5	26.3	73.7
	Neuchâtel	176,850	64,258	51,378	36.3	29.1	65.4	34.6
	Schwyz	159,165	95,794	18,390	60.2	11.6	71.7	28.3
	Zug	126,837	61,999	17,070	48.9	13.5	62.3	37.7
	Schaffhausen	81,991	17,155	29,190	20.9	35.6	56.5	43.5
	Jura	73,419	55,000	7,023	74.9	9.6	84.5	15.5
	Appenzell Ausserrhoden & Innerrhoden[c]	71,379	27,942	23,513	39.1	32.9	72.1	27.9
	Nidwalden	43,223	28,363	4,336	65.6	10.0	75.6	24.3
	Glarus	40,403	13,383	13,768	33.1	34.1	67.2	32.8
	Obwalden	37,841	26,944	2,937	71.2	7.8	79.0	21.0
	Uri	36,433	28,582	1,691	78.5	4.6	83.1	16.9
	Switzerland	8,546,081	3,182,082	2,109,360	37.2	24.7	61.9	38.1

* Includes other Christians, Muslims and other religions.

According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, based on cumulative data collected between 2013 and 2017, there were significant differences in the religious affiliations of the five most common ethno-national groups in Switzerland:Swiss nationals were mostly Christians (73%), evenly divided between Catholics (37%), Swiss Protestants (31%) and other Christians (5%); the vast majority ofItalian andPortuguese nationals living in Switzerland were Catholics (77% and 74%, respectively); half ofGerman nationals in Switzerland were unaffiliated, while Christians were minority accounting for 47%; andFrenchmen in Switzerland were mostly unaffiliated (55%), while only 38% of them were Christians.^[16]

According to the national structural survey of 2020, Christianity was the religion of 61.2% of the population, of whom 33.8% were Catholics, 21.8% were Swiss Protestants - almost all adherents ofCalvinism -, and 5.6% were adherents of other Christian denominations - includingOrthodox Christians,Lutherans, nondenominationalEvangelicals,Jehovah's Witnesses, and other Christian movements.^[4] Christianity has declined significantly since the 1970s, at first in the urban centres and later also in the rural countrysides.^[8]

• 
  Church of Our Lady of the Hermits of theEinsiedeln Abbey, a monastery of the CatholicBenedictines inEinsiedeln,canton of Schwyz.
• 
  CalvinistChurch of Saint Paul, inBasel.
• 
  Russian Orthodox church inGeneva.
• 
  Armenian Apostolic Church of Saint Hagop in Geneva.
• 
  Bern Switzerland Temple ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• 
  Seventh-day Adventist church inSchaffhausen.

Islam is the second largest religion in Switzerland after Christianity,^[8] adhered to by 5.4% of the population in 2020.^[4] Swiss Muslims are mostly of foreign origin (mostly ofArab ancestry those in the Gallo-Romance regions, and mostly ofBalkan,Turkish andIranian ancestry those in the Germanic regions), although there is an increasing number of native Swiss converts.^[18] ReligiousJews represented 0.2% of the Swiss population in 2020.^[4] Other religions present in the country includeHinduism andBuddhism, practised by both local Swiss who have nurtured interest in Eastern doctrines and by immigrants fromAsia.^[18] There is aTaoist temple,Ming Shan (明山, "Mountain of Light"), located inBullet,Vaud, and built according to the rules offeng shui; it is the headquarters of the Swiss Taoist Association and the main centre in Europe of theTaoist tradition ofWujimen (无极门, "Gate ofInfinity"),^[d] which originated on theMin Mountains ofSichuan,China.^[19] In the country there are also variousnew religious movements, among which one of the most influential has been theTheosophy-derivedAnthroposophy; theAnthroposophical Society was established by the AustrianoccultistRudolf Steiner in the 1920s and 1930s inDornach,Solothurn, and it is known for its promotion of the well-reputedWaldorf schools.^[20]

• 
  Mosque ofWil,canton of St. Gallen.
• 
  Statue of the goddessDurga at the Hindu temple ofTrimbach,canton of Solothurn.
• 
  A ThaiTheravada Buddhist temple inGretzenbach, canton of Solothurn.
• 
  Jewish synagogue ofLa Chaux-de-Fonds,canton of Neuchâtel.
• 
  Masonic temple ofLindenhof hill, centralZürich.
• 
  TheGoetheanum, the headquarters of theAnthroposophical Society.

The ancestors of the modern Swiss were:

• theGaulishHelvetii andGallicisedRhaetians, who between the 1st century BCE and the4th century wereRomanised and had become part of theRoman Empire, and
• theGermanic peoples who settled the area of modern Switzerland in theMigration Period during the 6th and the 7th centuries, after the collapse of the Roman power; these included:
  • theAlemanni, who settled the eastern regions and maintained theirAlemannic German language, and
  • theBurgundians, who settled the western fringes of modern Switzerland andBurgundy and were assimilated by the Gallo-Romans.^[21]

During the 8th and 9th centuries the linguistic boundary between theGallo-Romance-speaking western regions and the central and western Alemannic-speaking regions had already formed clearly, and during the 13th and 14th centuries theSwiss Plateau became completely Alemannic-speaking.^[21] Pockets ofRhaeto-Romance speakers persisted in isolated valleys of the south-eastern region of modern Switzerland.^[21]

A Roman inscription with theChi Rho symbol inSion, dated 377, is the earliest datable record ofChristianity in the territory of modern Switzerland.^[22] The Gallo-Romans abandonedGallo-Roman syncretism and adopted Christianity during the 4th and 5th centuries. The Alemanni, originally practitioners ofGermanic paganism, became Christians during the 6th and 7th centuries when the area was under theFrankish Empire; the Christianisation of the Gauls was promoted at first by Roman officials and local landowners, while the later Christianisation of the Alemanii was carried out mostly byconvents.^[18] Theologicallymonotheistic, early Christianity integrated popularpolytheism by turning it into the cult of Christiansaints.^[18]

At the beginning of the 13th century, theOld Swiss Confederacy began to emerge within theHoly Roman Empire from a pact between the cantons ofUri,Schwyz andUnterwalden to resist the power of theHouse of Habsburg; the pact was soon joined by other territories and by the cities ofZürich,Bern andBasel, who wanted to remain independent from the Habsburgs and from theDukes of Burgundy.^[23] During the following centuries, the confederacy expanded to the entire territory of modern Switzerland as a network of alliances and tributary relations.^[6] The Swiss confederacy remained entirelyCatholic until the 16th century,^[24] although with tiny communities ofJews attested in Swiss cities since the 12th century.^[18]

In the 16th century, Switzerland was swept by the ideas of theProtestant Reformation, and it became the world centre of the Protestant movement ofCalvinism, to which a majority of the Swiss converted.^[6]Anabaptism and theRadical Reformation, and in the following centuryPietism, also made inroads in Switzerland.^[18] The development of Protestantism was closely linked to the growth in power of the cities and their guilds of artisans and merchants. Elements of Christianity linked to agrarian life, the cult of saints and images, andmonasticism, were all abolished, and religious life became centred no longer on ritual but on moral teaching drawn from the interpretation of theBible.^[18] The Alemannic cantons ofZürich,Bern,Basel andSchaffhausen were the first to officially adopt the new religion under the influence ofHuldrych Zwingli, whileGeneva became the centre of the movement under the sway ofJohn Calvin, who was French in origin.^[23] Geneva came to be known as the "Calvinist Rome" or the "Protestant Rome".^[18] Other areas of Switzerland remained Catholic.^[24] During theCounter-Reformation enacted by the Catholic Church in theCouncil of Trent (1545–1563) to thwart the spread of Protestant movements, Geneva and other Protestant cantons became havens of refuge for Calvinists from elsewhere, and in the 17th century Switzerland welcomed FrenchHuguenots who fled France after theEdict of Nantes (1598), through whichHenry IV had granted them freedom in France, was revoked byLouis XIV with theEdict of Fontainebleau (1685).^[23]

Conflicts, and even civil wars, between Protestant and Catholic cantons and cantons' districts arose.^[6] To avoid the laceration of the system of alliances between territories, the confederacy adopted the principle of territorial exclusivity of religion (cuius regio, eius religio), thereby recognising the plurality of Christian denominations on a constitutional level, although in areas of mixed religious affiliation, includingAargau,Thurgau, the surroundings ofSt. Gallen, theGrisons and Geneva, armed conflicts between Catholics and Protestants continued.^[6] The complete constitutional parity of the two denominations was reached through fourLandfriede (land peaces), the first in 1529 and the fourth one in 1712.^[24] Meanwhile, the Swiss confederacy was recognised as fully independent from the Holy Roman Empire as part of thePeace of Westphalia in 1648.^[23] It was within Protestantism that embryonic ideas of separation of spiritual life from secular life were first developed; in Switzerland, Protestant cantons became the drivers of the economic, political and social innovation of the country, while Catholic cantons would have remained agrarian and backward until the 19th century.^[18]

The principle of exclusivity of religion in autonomous regions remained in force until 1798; whoever did not want to be part of a territory's official religion could emigrate, but had to leave all his possessions, although a few Protestant cantons granted a mercifulius emigrandi (right of emigration).^[25] The short-livedHelvetic Republic, established as asister republic of France between 1798 and 1803, was a secular state according to the principles of theFrench Revolution.^[26] After the end of the Helvetic Republic and the restoration of Switzerland as a confederation of states, conflicts between Catholics and Protestants arose again, although popular uprisings after 1830 led many cantons to adopt liberal constitutions which granted religious freedom.^[26] In 1845, two Catholic cantons of central Switzerland, namelyFribourg andValais, formed a separate league, theSonderbund, which opposed Protestants and liberals.^[26] As more cantons joined the Protestant and liberal faction than theSonderbund, the general diet of the cantons asked for the dissolution of the latter.^[26] A civil war, theSonderbund War, ensued in 1847, and it resulted in the defeat of the Catholic forces and in the establishment of Switzerland as afederal republic in 1848, under theSwiss Federal Constitution.^[27]

The constitution of 1848 declared Switzerland a multilingual and multireligious country; freedom of conscience was recognised as a fundamental right, though only for Christians.^[28] However, the cantons continued to have responsibility over the detailed regulation of the relations between church and state, and this led to differing systems, ranging from total separation to official churches (Landeskirchen) with a subordinated official recognition of other churches.^[29][e] Legal discrimination against non-Christians such as Jews continued, as they had neither freedom of establishment nor freedom of worship, they could live only in the two "Jewish villages" ofEndingen andLengnau, and they could bury their dead only on a designated island in theRhine; the bans on Jewish establishment and worship were abolished with revisions of the constitution respectively in 1866 and 1874.^[8]

The revision of the constitution in 1874 had introduced some restrictions against Catholic institutions: the prohibition of theSociety of Jesus (Jesuits), the prohibition ofconvents, and the prohibition of electing clerks in the highest federal authorities; these norms were abolished respectively in 1979, 1999 and 2001.^[30] The ban on Jesuits was abrogated from the constitution by popular vote, from which resulted that 54.9% of the Swiss were in favour of lifting the ban.^[31][32] At the same time, the 1874 revision of the constitution finally secured some fundamental secular principles: the separation ofcivil marriage fromreligious marriage and the separation of the teaching of religion from the rest of education.^[29] Over the following decades, freedom of worship and secular principles, combined with free movement of the population, gradually loosened the system of territorial exclusivity of religions which was characteristic of old Switzerland.^[29] However, in 1980, a popular vote to gauge the completeseparation of church and state resulted in opposition to such change, with only 21.1% voting in support, so that the system of theLandeskirchen was retained.^[33]

In the early 20th century, Switzerland had an absolute majority of Protestants, about 60%, and a large population of Catholics, about 40%.^[34] After theWorld War II, the religious composition of the country began to change significantly; the immigration of workers fromItaly andSpain sustained a growth of the Catholic population until 1970.^[8] Geneva, once the "Protestant Rome", in 1948 became the centre of world Christianecumenism, hosting theWorld Council of Churches.^[18] Interest among locals brought to SwitzerlandEastern religions, mostlyHinduism andBuddhism, first as intellectual systems, later established as practised religions by waves of immigration towards the end of the century.^[18] The same strain of comparative synthesis ofworld religions which in the 19th century had given rise toTheosophy and even earlier toFreemasonry (present among the elites in Switzerland since the 18th century), in the early 20th century led to the establishment ofAnthroposophy in Switzerland by the AustrianoccultistRudolf Steiner.^[18] Starting in the mid-1970s, new waves of migration brought to SwitzerlandOrthodox Christian andIslamic populations from theBalkans, which increased in the 1990s with the welcoming of refugees fleeing theYugoslav Wars.^[8] As a consequence, Islam grew to become today the second largest religion in the country after Christianity.^[8] At the same time, identification with, practice of Christianity, and membership in the traditional Christian churches, began to decline, first in the urban centres of Zürich, Basel and Geneva, and then also in the rural countrysides.^[8] Since then, Protestantism has declined to about two-tenths of the population, and Catholicism to about three-tenths of the population, while the proportion of Swiss people not believing in any religion has grown about thirty times.^[4]

The Swiss federal state does not have any official religion and does not favour any religion, and on the federal level there is not any administrative office which deals specifically with religious affairs, thus on such level the church and the state are fully separated.^[35] Although the preamble of theSwiss Federal Constitution beginsIn the name of God Almighty!, the invoked higher power is not to be intended in the Christian sense, but as the higher power of any religion.^[35] According to the Constitution, the relationship between the churches and the state has to be governed by the cantons themselves, so that the twenty-six cantons have twenty-six different systems of legislation on religious affairs.^[35] If a member of theFederal Council receives religious communities, this only happens in the form of a delegation of the representatives of all the country's major religious communities, so that no single religion has privileged access to the supreme federal authority.^[35] The majority of politicians keep a certain distance from religious communities, and political parties of religious character established by the religious communities themselves are marginal, so that religious ideas have little importance in the contemporary Swiss political process.^[35]

Law defines that Swiss public schools must be religiously neutral, and that the teaching of religious studies in public schools must not identify unilaterally with any religion or proseytise for it.^[36] Moreover, religious symbols are prohibited from being displayed by public schools and public school officials, be itcrucifixes in classrooms or headscarves of Muslim female teachers.^[37] The state allows religious or philosophical communities to establish confessional private school, though they are still supervised by the state, which imposes certain requirements and conducts inspections; there are private Protestant, Catholic,Montessori,Waldorf (Anthroposophical), Jewish schools, and plans for Islamic schools.^[36]

The Article 15 of the Constitution protects as fundamental rights of individual citizens the belief in any religion or unbelief in any religion, and the performance of religiouscult activities, alone or in community with others, and it makes clear that "no one shall be forced" to believe in a religion or participate in religious activities;^[38] the Article 36 also introduces a limitation to these rights if they threaten public order or if they encroach upon the basic rights of others, for example prohibitingritual slaughter as it conflicts with Swissanimal laws and limiting certain public missionary practices.^[39] The Article 261 of theSwiss Criminal Code punishes the malicious disturbance or public mocking of religious beliefs and religious practices, and the dishonouring of locations and objects of worship.^[40]

While the federal state is completely neutral in matters of religion, each canton may recognise individual religious communities as juristic persons under public law due to their church sovereignty, thereby subjecting them to better conditions than unrecognised religious communities — it is the case of theLandeskirchen.^[41] The use of cantonal taxes to support cantonal churches has been ruled legal by theFederal Supreme Court, even though they are collected from juristic persons (e.g. corporations) of which irreligious citizens or citizens of unrecognised religions are shareholders.^[42][43]

Some observers have identified persisting discrimination againstJews andMuslims in Switzerland; while cases of harassment have mostly been verbal, after 2016 there were a few reports of physical assault against Jews, and Muslim cemeteries were targets of vandalism.^[44] In areferendum of November 2009, 57.5% of Swiss voters approved apopular initiative which prohibited the construction ofminarets as part of Swiss Islamicmosques (though the four existing minarets of mosques inZürich,Geneva,Winterthur andWangen bei Olten were not affected retroactively and remained in place).^[45]

Media related toReligion in Switzerland at Wikimedia Commons

• Religion in Germany
• Religion in Liechtenstein
• Religion in Austria
• Religion in Europe
• Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein

• Pahud de Mortanges, René (2015)."Religion and the Secular State in Switzerland"(PDF). In Martínez-Torrón, Javier; Durham, W. Cole (eds.).Religion and the Secular State.Complutense University of Madrid. pp. 687–699.ISBN 9788484811626. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 21 January 2022.
• Stolz, Jörg (2006)."Switzerland and new religious movements". Observatory of Religions in Switzerland,University of Lausanne.{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)
• Haug, W.; Wanner, P. (27 October 1999)."The demographic characteristics of linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland". The demographic characteristics of national minorities in certain European States. CM Documents.99 (138,Addendum 5).Council of Europe. Archived fromthe original on 19 November 2020.{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)
• Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HDS):
  • Bischof, Franz Xaver: Jesuits inGerman,French andItalian in the onlineHistorical Dictionary of Switzerland, 13 January 2011.
  • Frey, Jakob: Church tax inGerman,French andItalian in the onlineHistorical Dictionary of Switzerland, 13 August 2007.
  • Nerlich, Daniel: Pontius Asclepiodotus inGerman,French andItalian in the onlineHistorical Dictionary of Switzerland, 19 October 2001.
  • Uehlinger, Christoph: Religion inGerman,French andItalian in the onlineHistorical Dictionary of Switzerland, 23 December 2011.

• Religion in Switzerland
• Society of Switzerland
• Culture of Switzerland

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