How much religion in the world




















Some religions have much younger populations, on average, than others. In part, the age differences reflect the geographic distribution of religious groups. Those with a large share of adherents in fast-growing, developing countries tend to have younger populations.

Those concentrated in China and in advanced industrial countries, where population growth is slower, tend to be older. Christians have a median age of 30, followed by members of other religions 32 , adherents of folk or traditional religions 33 , the religiously unaffiliated 34 and Buddhists Jews have the highest median age 36 , more than a dozen years older than the youngest group, Muslims.

Therefore, new data are likely to emerge over the next few years. However, a datacollection cut-off had to be made at some point; this report is based on information available as of early For estimates of the religious composition of individual countries, see Religious Composition by Country table.

For details on the methodology used to produce estimates of religious populations in countries and territories, see Appendix A. For a list of data sources by country, see Appendix B. There are some minor differences between the estimates presented in this study and previous Pew Forum estimates of Christian and Muslim populations around the world. These differences reflect the availability of new data sources, such as recently released censuses in a few countries, and the use of population growth projections to update estimates in countries with older primary sources.

For more details, see the Methodology. This study is based on self-identification. It seeks to estimate the number of people around the world who view themselves as belonging to various religious groups.

It does not attempt to measure the degree to which members of these groups actively practice their faiths or how religious they are. In order to obtain statistics that are comparable across countries, the study attempts to count groups and individuals who self-identify as members of five widely recognized world religions — Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews — as well as people associated with three other religious categories that may be less familiar:.

Folk religions are closely tied to a particular people, ethnicity or tribe. In some cases, elements of other world religions are blended with local beliefs and customs. These faiths often have no formal creeds or sacred texts. Examples of folk religions include African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions.

The religiously unaffiliated population includes atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys. This circumcision is still performed today on every newborn Jewish male as a symbol of that covenant. Historians observe that while Abraham almost certainly lived more than 3, years ago, literary liberties taken with the scriptures make it impossible to ascertain exactly when he lived.

But his influence would loom large in the ancient world, with the rabbinic moral codes of Judaism and its model of ethical monotheism both significantly informing the formulation of law and religion in western civilization. With roughly Rastafarianism is a newer religious movement that follows in the Abrahamic tradition of monotheism, referring to the singular deity as Jah. Rastafari hold the Christian Bible as their primary scripture but offer an interpretation highly connected to their own political and geographical realities.

Centered around early 20th century Jamaica, Rastafarianism emerged as a ethnocultural reaction to British occupation and oppression. This oppression would play a major role in the Afrocentric interpretation of the Bible favored by Rastafari. In the early s, a movement of Rastafarians espoused that the faithful were living in an African diaspora, scattered from their homelands by colonization and slavery.

To be freed from oppression in Western society or Babylon , many Rastafari believe it necessary to resettle adherents in the African homelands. A figure of central importance in the Rastafarian faith, Haile Selassie rose to the rank of Emperor of Ethiopia in This was considered the germinal moment in the emergence of the modern religious tradition.

Selassie was viewed by Rastafari as the Second Coming, a direct descendant of Christ, and the Messiah foretold in the Book of Revelation. Selassie was seen as the man who would lead the people of Africa, and those living in the diaspora, to freedom and liberation. His visit to Jamaica would become the pivotal moment in the spread of Rastafari ideas and the resultant political movement for liberation within Jamaica.

Marley would help to spread the popular visibility of the faith, as well as its practices of communal gathering, musical expression, preservation of the natural world, and the use of cannabis as a spiritual sacrament. Today, between , and one million adherents practice Rastafarianism, the majority of them concentrated in Jamaica.

Shinto is religious tradition native to Japan. Initially an informal collection of beliefs and mythologies, Shinto was less a religion than a distinctly Japanese form of cultural observance. The first recorded use of the term Shinto can be traced to the sixth century CE and is essentially the connective tissue between ancient Japanese customs and modern Japanese life.

The primary focus of Shinto is the native belief in kami spirits and interaction with them through public shrines. These shrines are an essential artifact of — and channel for — Shinto observation. More than 80, Shinto shrines dot Japan. Traditional Japanese styles of dress, dance, and ritual are also rooted in Shinto customs. Shinto is unique among religions. As a reflection of Japanese identity, Shinto observance is not necessarily limited to those who view themselves as religious adherents.

Sikhism is a monotheistic faith emerging from and remaining concentrated in the Punjabi region that traverses Northern India and Eastern Pakistan. The Sikh religion came into focus during the late 15th century and draws its tenets of faith, meditation, social justice, and human equality from a scripture called the Guru Granth Sahib. The first spiritual leader of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, lived from to and taught that a good, spiritual life must be intertwined with a secular life well-lived.

He called for activity, creativity, fidelity, self-control, and purity. More important than the metaphysical, Guru Nanak argued, is a life in which one enacts the will of God. Guru Nanak was succeeded by a subsequent line of nine gurus, who served as spiritual leaders. The tenth in this line of successors, Guru Gobind Singh, named the scriptures as his successor. This was the end of human authority in the Sikh faith and the emergence of the scriptures as a singular spiritual guide.

Today, the more than 28 million estimated adherents of Sikhism are largely concentrated in India, making it the seventh largest religion in the world.

In fact, Zoroastrianism was soon adopted as the official state religion of the Persian Empire and remained so for nearly a thousand years. What followed was centuries of persecution and suppression by Muslim conquerors, to the point of almost entirely snuffing out Zoroastrian teachings and practices in the Arabic-speaking world.

These practices have seen a small resurgence in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with some Iranians and Iraqi Kurdish populations adopting Zoroastrianism as a mode of resistance to theocratic governance. Countless religious traditions inform the inhabitants of the African continent, each with its own distinct practices and beliefs based on region and ethnicity.

Many share common threads, including the belief in spirits, respect for the dead, and the importance of the intersection between humanity and nature. Also common: many of these religions rely on oral history and tradition, rather than scriptures. Though Christianity and Islam are today the dominant religious traditions in Africa, informal estimates place the number of adherents to Traditional African Religions at million. The following list — borrowed from Wikipedia — identifies some of the best known or most prominent of these religions:.

The European slave trade and the practices of colonization created what is known as the African diaspora. Here, individuals, families, and whole groups were displaced from the communities or tribes they called home on the African continent. The result was the proliferation of innumerable religious groups around the Caribbean, Latin America and the southern United States during the 16th through 18th centuries. Each had its own linguistic, spiritual, and ritualistic customs, generally rooted in their respective histories and their new geographic surroundings.

Often, like the traditional African religions they emerged from, these groups shared common threads regarding reverence for the spirits, veneration of the dead, and similar creation mythologies. Though too extensive to name, the following list — borrowed from Wikipedia — identifies the most notable African diaspora religions:.

Native American religions encompass the broad and diverse set of customs, beliefs, and practices observed by the indigenous populations that thrived in the Americas before the arrival of European colonists. The diversity of customs and beliefs represented here is as diverse as the major population centers, tribes, and small nomadic bands that inhabited the Americas for millennia.

Theologies vary widely, representing a range of monotheistic, polytheistic, and animistic beliefs. Also highly variant are the oral histories, principles, and internal hierarchical structures of these different indigenous groups.

Some religions emerged around established kingdoms and settlements — especially in the monarchical societies of pre-Latin America — whereas others emerged around tribes that moved within and between regions.

Some common threads include the belief in spirits and a sense of connectivity with nature. The median age of the global population is Two religions have a median age below that: Muslims 23 and Hindus Other main religions have an older median age: Christians, 30; Buddhists, 34 and Jews, The religiously unaffiliated come in at Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world — more than twice as fast as the overall global population. But proportionately, these religious groupings will be smaller than now because their growth is lower than the increase in the overall global population.

Muslim women have an average of 2. And while Christian women have an overall birth rate of 2. There are reckoned to be another million Catholics. In contrast, Christianity is in decline in Western Europe. In Ireland, traditionally a staunchly Catholic country, the proportion of people identifying with Catholicism fell from Those with no religious affiliation increased to 9.

Seven in 10 people under the age of 44 said they were non-religious; the only age group in which the majority are religiously affiliated is the overs. The Islamic Republic of Iran is probably the one that springs to mind first.

Until the revolution, the country was ruled by the Shah, or monarch. But the leader of the new state was the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who implemented a political system based on Islamic beliefs and appointed the heads of the judiciary, military and media.

He was succeeded in by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There is an elected president, currently Hassan Rouhani , who is considered a moderate, reformist figure. Iran is one of only two countries in the world that reserves seats in its legislature for religious clerics the other is the UK.

Twenty-seven countries enshrine Islam as their state religion. The only Christian theocracy is Vatican City, the tiny but powerful centre of Roman Catholicism , where the Pope is the supreme power and heads the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the Vatican government.



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