According to 2012 government statistics, Christian groups form about 96% of the Kiribati population by census counts, most of whom are either Catholic or Kiribati Uniting Church. Persons with no religious affiliation account for about .05% of the population. Members of the Catholic Church are concentrated in the northern islands, while Protestants are the majority in the southern islands.
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Missionaries introduced Christianity into the area in the mid-19th century. Missionaries continue to be present and operate freely. The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respects this right. Societal abuses or discrimination based on religious belief or practice occur, but are relatively infrequent.
Mormons
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints claims 17,462 members in 26 congregations in 2016 though the 2010 census had only 4,802 people identifying as Mormon.
Bahá'í Faith
The only substantial non-Christian population is of the Bahá'í Faith. The Bahá'í Faith in Kiribati begins after 1916 with a mention by `Abdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, that Bahá'ís should take the religion to the Gilbert Islands which form part of modern Kiribati. The first Bahá'ís pioneered to the island of Abaiang(aka Charlotte Island, of the Gilbert Islands), on March 4, 1954. They encountered serious opposition from some Catholics on the islands and were eventually deported and the first convert banished to his home island. However, in one year there was a community of more than 200 Bahá'ís and a Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly. Three years later the island where the first convert was sent to was found to now have 10 Bahá'ís. By 1963 there were 14 assemblies.
As the Ellice Islands gained independence as Tuvalu and the Gilbert Islands and others formed Kiribati, the communities of Bahá'ís also reformed into separate institutions of National Spiritual Assemblies in 1981. The Bahá'ís had established a number schools by 1963 and there are still such today - indeed the Ootan Marawa Bahá'í Vocational Institute being the only teacher training institution for pre-school teachers in Kiribati. The census figures are consistently between 2 and 3% for the Bahá'ís while the Bahá'ís claim numbers above 17%. All together the Bahá'ís now claim more than 10,000 local people have joined the religion over the last 50 years and there are 38 local spiritual assemblies.