Religion and History in Kiribati

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Kiribati spreads 33 atolls and reef islands across an area of ocean roughly the size of India, straddling the equator and the International Date Line, though its population lives on a total land area of about 800 square kilometers. Christianity arrived through rival missions and the split still shapes the religious map: Roman Catholic missionaries working the southern Gilbert Islands from the 1880s built the largest single denomination today, close to 59 per cent, while London Missionary Society Protestants built what is now the Kiribati Uniting Church, about 21 per cent, formed by a 2010s union of the older Kiribati Protestant Church with other Congregationalist bodies.

A minority who rejected that merger continue as the Kiribati Protestant Church in its own right, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown rapidly enough that its own membership claims now exceed the census figure. Formerly the Gilbert Islands, a British protectorate and colony administered jointly with the Ellice Islands until the two territories split along ethnic lines in a 1974 referendum, Kiribati became fully independent within the Commonwealth on 12 July 1979.