Meanwhile, rapid population growth in Africa – along with much slower growth or even declines in Europe and North America – will shift the geographic center of Christianity. In coming decades, Muslims are expected to grow faster than any other major religious group, rivaling or surpassing Christians as the world’s largest religious group before the end of this century. Its high birth rates are a major contributor to the increasing size of the world’s Christian and Muslim populations. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the fastest population growth. Just 13% are projected to have no religion. The projections anticipate that the vast majority of the world’s people will continue to identify with a religion, including about six-in-ten who will be either Christian (31%) or Muslim (30%) in 2050. Vast majority of world’s population is projected to have a religionĭiffering fertility rates and other demographic data are factored into our population growth projections for the world’s major religious groups, which forecast that the percentage of the global population that is religiously unaffiliated will shrink in the decades ahead – in contrast with the trend seen in the U.S. In Africa and the Middle East, for example, the average woman has more children than in Europe, North America or East Asia – and much larger shares of the population, both young and old, in these parts of the world say religion is very important to them. Meanwhile, some highly religious regions are experiencing rapid population growth. This includes not only Western Europe and North America, but also China, where a majority of the world’s religiously unaffiliated population lives (and where the government imposed a “one-child policy” from 1980 until 2016). Population growth is faster in highly religious countriesĪt the same time, large parts of the world now have low birth rates. And the same secularizing trends are found in other economically advanced countries, as indicated by recent census data from Australia and New Zealand. Western Europeans are generally less religious than Americans, having started along a similar path a few decades earlier. The United States is far from alone in this way. adults how often they attend religious services, how frequently they pray, and how important they consider religion to be in their lives. Religious observance also has fallen in surveys asking U.S. Moreover, affiliation – whether people say they belong to a religion – is not the only indicator that is dropping. This pattern began a few decades ago, and it is projected to continue into the foreseeable future. (Members of non-Christian religions, such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, to name just a few, make up a smaller share of Americans.) The percentage of American adults who identify as Christian has been declining each year, while the share who do not identify with any religion has been rising rapidly. public seems to be growing less religious, at least by conventional measures. People are becoming less religious in the U.S. Here are some big-picture findings from the GRF, together with context from other Pew Research Center studies. The Global Religious Futures (GRF) project is jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The John Templeton Foundation. The Center does not promote any religious or spiritual beliefs (or nonbelief). Pew Research Center – a nonprofit, nonpartisan fact tank – conducts these studies and makes them freely available to the public.
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