Divinity Atlas

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Georgia

Also Known As Georgian
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Georgia became Christian in the fourth century through the mission of Nino of Cappadocia, and the Georgian Orthodox Church has been closely bound to national identity ever since, particularly during the periods of Persian, Ottoman and Russian domination when the church carried the language and the historical memory. The church lost its autocephaly under Russian imperial rule in 1811 and regained it in 1917, with Moscow recognising the restoration only in 1943. A constitutional agreement concluded with the state in 2002, often called the concordat, gives the Orthodox Church a legal status no other body holds, including property rights over historic churches and exemption from certain taxes. Muslim communities are long established, among the Georgian speaking population of Adjara and the Azeri population of Kvemo Kartli, and Armenian Apostolic and Jewish communities are ancient.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
Privileged Never Established 3
No church is established, but a 2002 constitutional agreement, often called the concordat, gives the Georgian Orthodox Church a legal status no other religious body in Georgia holds, including property rights over historic churches and tax exemptions.
State Funding Mechanism
Georgia funds the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate directly from the state budget under the 2002 Constitutional Agreement between the state and the church. The Ministry of Finance's direct transfers alone totalled about 160.7 million lari between 2002 and 2013, with additional sums reaching the Patriarchate from local and municipal budgets and from the reserve funds of the president and prime minister; no other religious community in Georgia receives comparable state funding. 4
Apostasy or Blasphemy Law
Georgia's Criminal Code carries no offense titled blasphemy. Article 155 instead punishes unlawful interference with the performance of a religious rite, persecution of a person on account of their faith, or interference with founding a religious organization, with a fine, corrective labor or imprisonment; the same code treats a crime committed out of religious intolerance as an aggravating circumstance whenever the underlying offense does not already carry intolerance as an element. The provision protects the exercise of worship rather than restricting speech about religion. 3
Registration or Recognition Regime
Before 5 July 2011 only the Georgian Orthodox Church could register as a legal entity of public law; every other religious group could register only as an ordinary private-law nonprofit. On that date the Georgian parliament amended the Civil Code, in an expedited five-day process, to let religious groups with a documented historic tie to Georgia, or those already recognized as religions by other Council of Europe member states, register as public-law legal entities as well. The new status carries no tax exemption matching the Orthodox Church's own and registering under it remains optional. 3
Ban or Official Watchlist
Since 2012 Chokhatauri municipal authorities have denied the local Muslim community's requests to build a mosque in the village of Buknari after public opposition organized by the Orthodox community; unable to obtain a building permit, the community purchased a private house in 2020 and converted it into a prayer room instead. Jehovah's Witnesses were historically unable to register in Georgia in any legal form at all, a restriction later eased under constitutional pressure. 3
Concordat Basis
A constitutional agreement of 2002, often called the concordat, gives the Georgian Orthodox Church a legal status no other religious body in Georgia holds, including property rights over historic churches and tax exemptions. 3
Disputed
Legal Status
A constitutional agreement of 2002, often called the concordat, gives the Georgian Orthodox Church a legal status no other religious body holds, including property rights over historic churches and tax exemptions; other groups register as legal entities of public law. 3
Georgia's 2002 constitutional agreement with the Georgian Orthodox Church, often called the concordat, grants that church a legal status held by no other religious body in the country, including property rights over historic churches and monasteries and tax exemptions; other religious communities register instead as ordinary legal entities of public law, a lesser status introduced later to give minority communities some legal standing without matching the Orthodox Church's constitutional-level agreement. The State Department's report records this as the operative two-tier structure without resolving whether it constitutes impermissible discrimination against minority communities, who have raised the disparity, or a legitimate recognition of the Georgian Orthodox Church's distinct historical and constitutional role, the position the Georgian state and church take. Because the Church's status rests on a constitutional-level concordat rather than ordinary statute, changing the tiered structure would require a constitutional process rather than simple legislative amendment.
Demographics
Religious Composition
Around 83 per cent Georgian Orthodox, about 11 per cent Muslim including the Adjaran and Azeri communities, and roughly 3 per cent Armenian Apostolic (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020; Georgia National Statistics Office). 1
Government
Capital
Tbilisi 2
Government Type
semi-presidential republic 2
Sovereignty Status
Sovereign UN member state 2
Established Year
1991 2
9 April 1991 (from the Soviet Union); notable earlier date: A.D. 1008 (Georgia unified under King BAGRAT III)
Geography
Latitude
42.3 degrees north 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Longitude
43.4 degrees east 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Location
Location of Georgia Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe
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Religion and History in Georgia

Georgia converted in the fourth century through Nino, a woman from Cappadocia whose preaching and healing brought King Mirian and Queen Nana of Kartli to Christianity, and whose cross of grapevine bound with her own hair remains the emblem of the Georgian church. The country's golden age under David the Builder and Queen Tamar in the eleventh and twelfth centuries produced the monastic complexes at Gelati and the cave monasteries of David Gareja and Vardzia, and the church became the keeper of the Georgian language and script through the centuries of Persian, Ottoman and Russian domination that followed. That role is why Georgian identity and Orthodoxy are so tightly bound. The Russian empire abolished Georgian autocephaly in 1811 and placed the church under the Holy Synod, replacing Georgian liturgy with Slavonic in many parishes; autocephaly was declared again in 1917 and recognised by Moscow only in 1943.

Under Soviet rule the number of functioning churches fell to a few dozen. The recovery after 1989 was rapid and was led by Patriarch Ilia II, who has consistently polled as the most trusted figure in the country, and who from 2008 began personally baptising every third and subsequent child born to Orthodox families, a practice credited with a measurable rise in the birth rate.

The Concordat and the Church's Place in the State

The constitutional agreement signed between the Georgian state and the Orthodox Church in 2002 is the document that defines religion in Georgia. It recognises the church's special role in the country's history, exempts it from certain taxes, grants the Patriarch immunity, gives the church ownership of churches and monasteries not currently in use along with the land they stand on, requires state consultation on education, and provides state compensation for damage suffered under Soviet rule.

No other religious body has anything comparable. Until 2011 minority faiths could not register as legal entities at all, and a change that year allowing registration as legal entities of public law was itself contested by the church. The practical consequences fall on the same groups repeatedly. Armenian Apostolic and Catholic communities have unresolved claims to churches transferred to the Orthodox Church during the Soviet period; Muslim communities in Adjara have faced obstruction over mosque construction in Batumi and elsewhere; and a series of violent incidents against Jehovah's Witnesses in the late 1990s and early 2000s, led by a defrocked priest, went largely unpunished until the European Court of Human Rights found against Georgia in 2007. Georgia is at the same time one of the more genuinely tolerant societies in the region by long practice, with an ancient Jewish community that reports almost no history of persecution, which is the tension worth holding.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Georgia directly: "Awards Collection at the University of Georgia and by Rocky Mountain PBS, and made discoverable through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a joint initiative of the Library of Congress and..."

The Georgian Orthodox Church, about 83 per cent of the population, holds a legal status under the 2002 constitutional agreement that no other body has.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

This source names Georgia directly: "anthropology, and this University of Georgia Press book is their standard scholarly study of curanderismo, Mexican American folk healing practice, examining its practitioners, methods and place..."

Source Curanderismo: Mexican American Folk HealingRobert T. Trotter II and Juan Antonio Chavira

This source names Georgia directly: "compound, Tama-Re, in Putnam County, Georgia."

This source names Georgia directly: "report on Geostat's final 2024 Georgia population and agricultural census results (fielded November 14 to December 31, 2024), stating that 3,223,206 people, 82.0 percent of the population..."

This source names Georgia directly: "and Linda Fuller near Americus, Georgia, growing out of the interracial Koinonia Farm community founded by Clarence Jordan."

Source Habitat for Humanity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "Koinonia Farm community near Americus, Georgia founded by Clarence Jordan."

Source Habitat for Humanity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "After the war he was active in Georgia Reconstruction politics, elected to the Georgia legislature in 1868 before being expelled along with other Black legislators by white colleagues who argued the..."

Islam, Religions

About 11 per cent of the population, among the Georgian speaking community of Adjara and the Azeri community of Kvemo Kartli.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

This source names Georgia directly: "Andrew of Georgia, who had come to own enslaved people through marriage, and effectively suspended his episcopal duties."

Source Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "population figures for the movement's Georgia period: about 100 followers relocated there with Dwight York in 1993, growing to about 400 people living at the Tama-Re compound by 2002."

Source Nuwaubian Nation (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "at Apostolic Tabernacle in Jonesboro, Georgia, holding a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK."

Source Talmadge L. French Biography (Omega Publishing)Omega Publishing staff

This source names Georgia directly: "a much smaller group of some 300 to Georgia from 1734; the article itself carries an internal inconsistency between "over 20,000 expelled" and "over 30,000 emigrated", named here rather than..."

Source Salzburg Protestants (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: ""Thou Art a Vineyard," is a medieval Georgian hymn to the Theotokos traditionally attributed to King Demetrius I of Georgia, who reigned from 1125 to 1156 and is said to have composed it during a..."

Source Shen Khar Venakhi (Wikipedia and Georgian Chant)Wikipedia contributors and Georgian Chant project editors

This source names Georgia directly: "at First Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, when Baptists in the slaveholding South broke from the cooperative national mission societies after the American Baptist Home Mission Society refused to..."

This source names Georgia directly: "the World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia."

This source names Georgia directly: "French, stating he is pastor of Apostolic Tabernacle in Jonesboro, Georgia, holds degrees from Wheaton College and Wheaton College Graduate School and a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK..."

Source Talmadge L. French Biography (Omega Publishing)Omega Publishing staff

This source names Georgia directly: "King George II to settle in the Georgia colony, founding the town of Ebenezer from 1734, tying this expulsion directly to Lutheranism's establishment in North America."

Source Salzburg Protestants (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "and a Cherokee mission at Springplace, Georgia in 1801."

Source Moravian Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "the World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia, the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America united to form the Presbyterian Church..."

This source names Georgia directly: "Graham is a musicologist specializing in Georgian sacred music, and this is his 2015 Princeton University doctoral dissertation, described by its reading committee as the first extensive..."

This source names Georgia directly: "The paper moved from Alabama to Canon, Georgia in 1896, remaining there until 1991, and is still published today, quarterly, describing itself as "The Oldest Continuously Published Liberal Religious..."

Source The Universalist Herald (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "elected the Reverend Doctor Karen Georgia Thompson of the United Church of Christ as its president, the second woman to hold the office, and installed Philip Peacock of the Church of North India as..."

Source World Communion of Reformed ChurchesWikipedia contributors

This source names Georgia directly: "This Transparency International Georgia research post totals direct budget transfers from Georgia's Ministry of Finance to the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate since the 2002 Constitutional Agreement..."

This source names Georgia directly: "organizations across the UK, Canada, Georgia, India, the Netherlands, Pakistan and the United States, with objectives spanning poverty relief, education, sickness relief and the provision of burial..."

Source The World Zoroastrian Organisation Ltd: Charity Commission Filed Accounts, Year Ended 31 December 2024The World Zoroastrian Organisation Ltd (trustees' annual report and accounts, filed with the Charity Commission)

Contains

Sources
1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)
Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source
3. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
4. Transparency International Georgia: An Overview of Public Financing Provided to the Georgian Patriarchate
Transparency International GeorgiaView the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
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