Countries
Lithuania
Also Known As Lithuanian
Europe
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Lithuania was the last pagan state in Europe, formally Christianizing only in 1387 under Grand Duke Jogaila, centuries after its neighbours, and the country retains an unusually well documented pre-Christian Baltic religious tradition centered on deities such as the sky god Dievas and the earth goddess Zemyna, sources for which the atlas treats with appropriate caution given their late and partly reconstructed transmission. Lithuania remains predominantly Roman Catholic today, with the Hill of Crosses near Siauliai standing as a distinctive folk devotional site accumulated over centuries despite periodic Soviet attempts to clear it. Vilnius was historically a major center of Jewish learning known as the Jerusalem of the North, home to the eighteenth century scholar known as the Vilna Gaon, before the Holocaust destroyed the great majority of Lithuania's Jewish population. Small modern revivalist movements seeking to reconstruct Baltic pagan practice, most notably Romuva, are active in the country today.
Facts
Law and State
Establishment StatusCatholic practice, once suppressed under Soviet rule from 1940 to 1990, operates freely since independence with no established church. State Funding MechanismLithuania runs a tax exemption regime rather than a church tax or direct subvention: its 1995 Law on Religious Communities and Associations exempts a religious community's income, meaning contributions and income from the sale of property acquired through charitable means, from taxation, provided it is used for building, repairing or restoring a house of prayer, for charity, or for the support of religious rites and service staff. The state does not itself appropriate or collect funds on a church's behalf. 4 Apostasy or Blasphemy LawLithuania's Criminal Code addresses religious insult under Article 170, incitement of hatred, which punishes ridiculing, expressing contempt for, or urging hatred or discrimination against a person on account of religion with restriction of liberty or imprisonment of up to one year, rising to three years when committed publicly. Religion was formally added to the article's list of protected grounds by amendment in November 2024, alongside the pre-existing categories of belief, conviction and view. 5 Registration or Recognition RegimeThe 1995 Law on Religious Communities and Associations names nine religious communities as "traditional," those able to show at least 300 years' presence in the country: Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, Evangelical Reformed, Russian Orthodox, Old Believer, Jewish, Sunni Muslim and Karaite. Traditional status carries state recognized marriages, joint public and private schooling, religious instruction inside public schools and annual government subsidies. Any other religious group may still register with the Ministry of Justice as a "nontraditional" community and receive more limited benefits; the Ministry lists well over a thousand traditional and roughly two hundred nontraditional registered communities, associations and centers. 3 Concordat BasisThree agreements between the Holy See and the Republic of Lithuania, signed in Vilnius on 5 May 2000: on cooperation in education and culture, on the legal aspects of relations between the Catholic Church and the state, and on the pastoral care of Catholics serving in the armed forces. The legal aspects agreement grants the Catholic Church juridical personality, protects its property, and gives canonical marriages civil recognition, following the 1990 Act for the Restitution of the Status of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. 6 Demographics
Religious CompositionAbout 75-80% Catholic; small Orthodox Christian, Protestant and religiously unaffiliated minorities (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1 Government
Government Typesemi-presidential republic 2 Sovereignty StatusSovereign UN member state 2 Established Year16 February 1918 (from Soviet Russia and Germany); 11 March 1990 (declared from the Soviet Union); 6 September 1991 (recognized by the Soviet Union); notable earlier dates: 6 July 1253 (coronation of MINDAUGAS, traditional founding date); 1 July 1569 (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth created) Geography
LatitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement. LongitudeApproximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement. Status
Legal StatusThe state recognizes traditional religious communities including the Romuva Baltic pagan revival movement; Catholic practice, once suppressed under Soviet rule (1940-1990), operates freely since independence with no established church. 3 Location
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Religion and History in Lithuania
Lithuania is majority Catholic, around 75 to 80 percent per most estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, with small Orthodox Christian, Protestant and religiously unaffiliated minorities. Lithuania holds the distinction of being the last pagan state in Europe, resisting Christianization far longer than its neighbors and only formally converting in 1387 under Grand Duke Jogaila as part of a dynastic union with Poland, centuries after most of the continent had already Christianized, which allowed elements of the pre-Christian Baltic pagan religion, centered on deities such as the thunder god Perkunas, to persist informally in folk custom and modern revivalist movements longer than in most of Europe.
Lithuania was once home to one of Europe's most significant Jewish communities, centered on Vilnius, revered in Jewish tradition as the Jerusalem of Lithuania and a preeminent center of rabbinic scholarship associated with the eighteenth-century Vilna Gaon, a community almost entirely destroyed in the Holocaust, when the Nazi occupation and local collaborators killed the great majority of Lithuania's roughly two hundred thousand Jews, one of the highest destruction rates of any Jewish community in Europe.
Soviet Suppression and Catholic Resistance in Lithuania
Lithuania's Catholic Church became a significant locus of resistance to Soviet rule following the country's forced 1940 annexation, most visibly through the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, an underground samizdat publication documenting religious persecution and human rights abuses that circulated from 1972 until Lithuania regained independence in 1990, becoming one of the longest-running underground publications anywhere in the Soviet bloc.
The Hill of Crosses near Siauliai, where Lithuanians planted crosses as a form of peaceful religious and national defiance despite repeated Soviet bulldozing of the site across the 1960s to 1980s, became an internationally recognized symbol of this resistance and remains a major pilgrimage destination today, visited by Pope John Paul II in 1993. Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare independence, in 1990, a move closely tied to a broader national and religious reassertion against decades of state atheism, and the country's return to full religious practice afterward has coincided with a modest revival of interest in pre-Christian Baltic pagan tradition through the Romuva movement, formally registered as a traditional religious community in recent decades.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Lithuania directly: "its 2000 legal aspects agreement with Lithuania, one of three agreements signed the same day settling church and state relations after Lithuanian independence."
About 75 to 80% Catholic; Lithuania was the last pagan state in Europe, Christianizing only in 1387.
This source names Lithuania directly: "Rabbi Israel Salanter founded the formal movement in Lithuania in the 1840s, establishing houses of mussar where students combined the communal study of these texts with a disciplined, almost..."
This source names Lithuania directly: "Prussians and continued against pagan Lithuania into the early fifteenth century."
Contains
Originated Here
Sources
1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source 4. Law on Religious Communities and Associations, Lithuania, 4 October 1995, No. I-1057 (ICNL)
5. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source 6. Agreement between the Holy See and the Republic of Lithuania Concerning Juridical Aspects of the Relations between the Catholic Church and the State (5 May 2000)
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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