Page 44 - A Study of Traditional Chinese Religions in Malaysia: The Decline and the Path Towards Revitalization

There is a rather balanced distribution of genders, as 48.6 percent of the respondents
are female and 51.4 percent are males with more than half of the respondents aged from 21

to 40 years old. Most respondents are tertiary educated (68.2%) and three respondents are
primary educated. Out of these, 80.4 percent respondents are Chinese educated while the
remaining are not.

Respondents reside in all states and federal territories of Malaysia except for
Kelantan, Perlis and Labuan. Most responses are residents of Selangor (40.2%), Johor

(14.0%) and Kuala Lumpur (9.3%), and are mainly from the B40 household income group
(63.6%). Residents from the highest household income group, T20, account for 8.4 percent
of the respondents.

Before they converted, 49.5 percent of the respondents were Buddhists, 38.3 percent
were traditional Chinese folk-religion believers and 12.1 percent were Taoists (see Figure

3.1).

Buddhism

37.61%
49.54% Taoism

Chinese folk-religion

12.84%

Figure 3.1. Respondents’ previous religion.

After conversion (see Figure 3.2), 37.61 percent of the respondents have embraced
Protestantism (37.96%), Catholicism (10.19%), Islam (25%), Hinduism (0.93%), Seth
5
(0.93%). Meanwhile another 25 percent claimed they do not believe in any religion. For
respondents who claimed that they currently do not have a religion, 18.52 percent of them
are atheist since they have stated that they do not believe in religions at all (see Figure 3.3).

5 Seth was an ancient Egyptian god. However, the respondent who claimed Seth as his religion did not
elaborate his religion further. There is a possibility that he was also referring to Sethianism, a form
unorthodox Christianity.

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