3/26/2018 This is a breakdown of world religions by
region and population.
These are estimates. Comprehensive information
is improving, thanks to more comprehensive studies. The numbers have changed significantly
over the last ten years. A five percent increase in the number of people with no religious affiliation, a five percent
decrease in Christians, and a significant increase in Muslims can be seen in
the pie charts below. This is the most accurate information available today,
3/26/2018.
Christians form the largest group
at; 31.5 percent
The study estimated
Christianity was the largest faith at 2.2 billion adherents or 31.5
percent of the world's population. The Roman Catholic Church makes up
50 percent of that total, with Protestants — including Anglicans and
non-denominational churches — at 37 percent and Orthodox at
12 percent.Dec 18, 2012
'No Religion' Is
World's Third-Largest Religious Group After Christians ...
REUTERS - People with no religious affiliation make up the
third-largest global group in a new study of the size of the world’s faiths,
placing after Christians and Muslims and just before Hindus.
The study, based on extensive data for the year 2010, also showed
Islam and Hinduism are the faiths mostly likely to expand in the future while
Jews have the weakest growth prospects.
It showed Christianity is the most evenly spread religion, present
in all regions of the world, while Hinduism is the least global with 94 percent
of its population in one country, India.
Overall, 84 percent of the world’s inhabitants, which it estimated
at 6.9 billion, identify with a religion, according to the study entitled “The Global Religious Landscape” issued by the Pew Forum
on Religion and Public Life on Tuesday.
The “unaffiliated” category covers all those who profess no
religion, from atheists and agnostics to people with spiritual beliefs but no
link to any established faith.
“Many of the religiously unaffiliated do hold religious or
spiritual beliefs,” the study stressed.
“Belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of
unaffiliated Chinese adults, 30 percent of unaffiliated French adults and 68
percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults,” it said.
ISLAM EXPANDS
Exact numbers for religious populations are impossible to obtain
and estimates for the size of the larger faiths can vary by hundreds of millions.
This study by the Washington-based Pew Forum appears to be one of the most
extensive to date.
Pew Forum demographer Conrad Hackett said the 2,500 censuses,
surveys and population registers used to compile the
report did not allow a further breakdown to estimate the world population of
atheists and agnostics.
“It’s not the kind of data that’s available for every country,” he
said. “A census will typically ask what your religion is and you can identify a
number of particular affiliations or no religion.
An age breakdown showed Muslims had the lowest median age at 23
years, compared to 28 for the whole world population. The median age highlights
the population bulge at the point where half the population is above and half
below that number.
“Muslims are going to grow as a share of the world’s population
and an important part of that is this young age structure,” Hackett said.
By contrast, Judaism, which has 14 million adherents or 0.2
percent of the world population, has the highest median age at 36, meaning its
growth prospects are weakest.
Hackett noted that Israel, which has 40.5 percent of the world
Jewish population, had a younger age structure than the United States, where
41.1 percent of the world’s Jews live.
Global Christianity’s median age is 30 and Hinduism’s 26. With a
median age of 34, the growth prospects for religiously unaffiliated people are
weak, the study showed.
WORLDWIDE BREAKDOWN
The study estimated Christianity was the largest faith at 2.2
billion adherents or 31.5 percent of the world’s population.
The Roman Catholic Church makes up 50 percent of that total, with
Protestants — including Anglicans and non-denominational churches — at 37
percent and Orthodox at 12 percent.
There are about 1.6 billion Muslims around the world, or 23 percent
of the global population. “The overwhelming majority (87-90
percent) are Sunnis, about 10-13 percent are Shia Muslims,” the study
said.
Among the 1.1 billion unaffiliated people around the world, over 700
million, or 62 percent of them, live in China alone, where they make up 52.2
percent of the Chinese population.
Japan comes next with the second largest unaffiliated population
in the world with 72 million, or 57 percent of the national population. After
that comes the United States, 51 million people — 16.4 percent of all Americans
— said they have no link to an established faith.
The world’s Hindu population is concentrated mostly in India,
Nepal and Bangladesh. Half of the world’s Buddhists live in China, followed far
behind by Thailand at 13.2 percent of the world Buddhist population and Japan
with 9.4 percent.
The study found that about 405 million people, or about 6 percent
of the world population, followed folk religions such as those found in Africa
and China or among Native American and Australian aboriginal peoples.
Another 58 million, or nearly 1 percent of the world population,
belonged to “other religions” including Baha’i, Taoism, Jainism, Shintoism,
Sikhism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism. Most were in the Asia-Pacific
region.
The study said that 97 percent of the world’s Hindus, 87 percent
of its Christians and 73 percent of its Muslims lived in countries where they
were a large to overwhelming majority.
Christians make up the majority in 157 countries and Muslims in
49, including 19 of the 20 states in the Middle East and North Africa, with the
exception of Israel.
By contrast, Hindus are in the majority only in India, Nepal and
Mauritius. (Reporting By Tom Heneghan,
editing by Paul Casciato)
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/mysticism/world_religions_populations.htm
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Major World Religions This pie chart is based on statistics listing peoples self-admitted adherence to one of the major world
religions, or to other faiths, or to people stating that they are of no
religion. Christians:
2,100,000,000 - tending to decline in terms of global percentage This listing of
figures hopefully gives a good approximation of the world's populations self-professed adherence to major world
religions, other religions, or their self-professed state of not being
religious.
Trends in adherence to
the major World Religions are probably linked to differing rates by which
populations are changing in the World's various regions of "prevailing
historical religious beliefs" or of the "marked onset of
secularism". |
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Population statistics
show relatively rapid increases of overall population in Africa and Asia and
relative population decline in Europe. Likewise with secularism which seems to have
had a particular onset in Europe.
Interestingly, many
people have tried to assess whatever "common ground" there might be
between the major world religions - not so much in terms of their founding
prophetic figures or their revered Holy Books but moreso
in terms of an identifiable commonality of their respective spiritual
teachings:-
Start of
Major World Religions
populations pie chart statistics list page
The following panel displays " Key Spiritual
Insights " from Christian Sources!!!
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Christian
A Disdain for Materialism Some have Me in their mouths, but little in their hearts. A Distrust of Intellect Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not
after Christ. A Yearning for Divine Edification It is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have
entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them
that love him. But God has revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the
Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of
God. Charity Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of
God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not
knoweth not God; for God is love. Purity of Heart Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in
my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh
in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Do all things without
murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless
and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke ... Humility Neither be ye called masters: for one
is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your
servant. And whomsoever shall exalt himself shall be
abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. Meekness Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to
hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
Gathered by:- |
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And this panel displays "
Key Spiritual Insights " from Inter-Faith Sources!!!
Inter-Faith
Spiritual Insights
A Disdain for
Materialism
Chuang Tzu put on cotton
clothes with patches in them, and arranging his girdle and tying on his shoes,
(i.e. to keep them from falling off), went to see the prince of Wei.
"How miserable you look, Sir!" Cried the prince.
"It is poverty, not misery", replied Chuang Tzu. "A man who has
TAO cannot be miserable. Ragged clothes and old boots make poverty, not
misery".
Chuang Tzu - (Taoism)
A Distrust of Intellect
Sell your cleverness and
buy bewilderment; Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.
Rumi - (Islam)
A Yearning for Divine
Edification
The intelligence of the
mean man does not rise beyond bribes and letters of recommendation. His mind is
beclouded with trivialities. Yet he would penetrate the mystery of TAO and of
creation, and rise to participation in the ONE. The result is that he is
confounded by time and space; and that trammelled by
objective existences, that he fails apprehension of that age before anything
was. But the perfect man, - he carries his mind back to the period before the
beginning. Content to rest in the oblivion of nowhere, passing away like
flowing water, he is merged in the clear depths of the infinite.
Chuang Tzu - (Taoism)
Charity
He that does
everything for Me, whose supreme object I am, who worships Me, being free from
attachment and without hatred to any creature, this man, Arjuna!,
comes to Me.
Bhagavad Gita - (Hinduism)
Purity of Heart
The path of the
just is as the shining light, that shineth more and
more unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not
at what they stumble.
Solomon - (Judaism)
Humility
Would you become a
pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself
humble as dust and ashes.
Ansari of Herat - (Islam)
Meekness
Let a man overcome
anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by
liberality, the liar by truth! Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if
thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the
gods.
Dhammapada - (Buddhism)
Gathered by:-
age-of-the-sage.org
A more detailed ~ Faith by Faith ~
consideration of " Key Spiritual Insights " from Buddhist, Christian,
Judaic, Islamic, Sikh, Taoist and Vedic-Hindu sources is available here
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Start of
Major World Religions
populations pie chart statistics list page