1984 5,113,500 4,684,060 91.6% 5,135,409 4,584,450 | 5,113,500 4,684,060 1990 5,135,409 4,584,450 89.3% | |
 | ||
Christianity is the predominant religion of Denmark, with 77% of the Danish population estimated as adherents of the "Folkekirken" ("People's Church"), Denmark's national Lutheran church. Aside from Lutheranism, there is a small Roman Catholic minority, as well as small Protestant denominations such as the Baptist Union of Denmark and the Reformed Synod of Denmark.
Contents
Denmark is today a very secular country, but has a culture that is heavily influenced by Christianity.
Lutheranism
According to official statistics from January 2016, 76,9% of the population of Denmark are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark (Den danske folkekirke), the country's state church since the Reformation in Denmark–Norway and Holstein, and designated "the Danish people's church" by the 1848 Constitution of Denmark.
This proportion is down by 0.9% as compared to the preceding year and 1.5% down compared to two years earlier. However, in similar fashion to the rest of Scandinavia, and also Britain, only a small minority (less than 5% of the total population) attends churches for Sunday services. In addition, the number of people leaving the Church has been on the rise: in 2012 21,118 Danes left the Church, an increase of 55% in comparison to 2011.
Other Protestant groups
A small Baptist community has existed since the 1840s, and is represented by the Baptist Union of Denmark. The Union claimed 55 churches and 5,412 congregants in 2011.
Reformed Protestantism is represented by four churches united in the Reformed Synod of Denmark. These are mainly ethnic congregations, including two Huguenot churches and a German Reformed church, founded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as the Korean Reformed Church founded in 1989. The German Reformed church also includes some Dutch, Swiss, Hungarian and American members, as well as Danes. There is an Anglican church and fellowship in Copenhagen and smaller congregations of Anglicans and Episcopalians in many Danish cities.
A 2015 study estimates some 4,000 Christian believers from a Muslim background in the country, most of them belonging to some form of Protestantism.
Roman Catholicism
After the separation of the Church of Denmark from the Roman Catholic Church in 1536, Roman Catholicism remained illegal in the country for over three centuries. The Church was able to reestablish itself after the Constitution of 1849 granted religious freedom to the Kingdom. Currently the country is covered by the Diocese of Copenhagen with 48 parishes in Denmark proper and two more in the Faeroe Islands and Greenland. There are nearly 40,000 Catholics in Denmark, though nearly a third are foreign born and others are born of foreign parents (for example, Denmark's Polish community, of which the current Bishop of Copenhagen is a member). Nevertheless, ethnic Danes are still the largest group among the Church's congregants.
Mormonism
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) has been sending missionaries to Denmark since 14 June 1850. Most of the early converts emigrated to the United States. There are currently over 4,500 Mormons in Denmark. There is a LDS temple in Copenhagen, known as the Copenhagen Denmark Temple.