A latest Pew Research Center report shows that although Christianity continues to be the world’s largest religious group, its share of the rising global population has fallen over the past decade, mainly on account of people walking away from the religion.
The report, based on an evaluation of two,700 censuses and surveys, shows that the worldwide population of Christians grew by 121.6 million people from 2010 to 2020, reaching some 2.3 billion people. As a share of the worldwide population, estimated to be about 7.8 billion in 2020, Christians fell by 1.8 percentage points to twenty-eight.8%.
The global population of Muslims, however, reached 2 billion, registering a rise of 347 million. Their share of the worldwide population increased by 1.8 percentage points to 25.6%. The study also recognized Muslims because the world’s fastest-growing religious group.
The biggest driver of the decline within the share of Christians in the worldwide population was religious disaffiliation, researchers noted. They found that although more people grew up with a spiritual affiliation than those that didn’t relating to Christianity, more individuals who grew up with the religion have begun identifying as religiously unaffiliated than unaffiliated individuals who now discover with the faith.
The religiously unaffiliated, in line with Pew Research, are individuals who discover as atheist, agnostic or “nothing particularly.”
“Religious disaffiliation is the primary driver of the decline within the Christian share of the worldwide population. Religious disaffiliation — primarily of individuals leaving Christianity — is also the primary driver of the expansion of religiously unaffiliated populations,” the researchers noted.
Individuals all over the world identifying as religiously unaffiliated grew by 270.1 million between 2010 and 2020 to achieve a complete of 1.9 billion. They represent nearly 1 / 4 of the world’s population or 24.2%.
To higher understand the difficulty of spiritual disaffiliation and non secular switching, the researchers examined surveys from 117 countries.
“To capture switching that has occurred in more moderen years, we use data from adults ages 18 to 54. Religious switching is more common earlier in life, though it might occur at any age,” they noted.
“We found that for each adult in that age group who says they joined a faith after having been raised with no religion, 3.2 moved in the opposite direction — they left religion altogether after having been raised in a single,” they explained.
“As a result, based on this set of measures, the religiously unaffiliated category has had the most important net gain on account of switching.”
And the inverse was true for Christianity.
“Christians have experienced the largest net losses from switching (3.1 have left for each 1.0 who has joined). Most former Christians not discover with any religion, but some now discover with a unique religion,” researchers noted.
As of 2020, China led the world with probably the most religiously unaffiliated people. Some 90% of that country’s population, or 1.3 billion people, identified as religiously unaffiliated.
America followed in second place with roughly 101 million people identifying as religiously unaffiliated in 2020, reflecting a 97% increase from a decade earlier.
It was also noted that sub-Saharan Africa is now home to the most important variety of Christians, surpassing Europe. In 2020, 30.7% of the world’s Christians lived in sub-Saharan Africa, while only 22.3% lived in Europe.
While most countries, some 120, still remained Christian-majority countries, the study showed that religious disaffiliation has been slowly changing the religious landscape.
The Christian population dropped below 50% within the United Kingdom (49%), Australia (47%), France (46%) and Uruguay (44%), the report noted.
“In each of those places, religiously unaffiliated people now account for 40% or more of the population, and smaller religious groups akin to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews or adherents of other religions (combined) account for 11% or less,” researchers said.
Over the period of the evaluation, religiously unaffiliated people became a majority within the Netherlands (54%), Uruguay (52%) and New Zealand (51%.) They joined China, North Korea, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Macao and Japan, which had religiously unaffiliated majorities in 2010, the report said.
In 2022, a Pew study found that barring any limiting event akin to war or economic depression, if the pace at which Christians abandon their faith before the age of 30 were to speed up beyond its current pace, America could not be a majority Christian nation by as early as 2045.
“Of course, it is feasible that events outside the study’s model — akin to war, economic depression, climate crisis, changing immigration patterns or religious innovations — could reverse current religious switching trends, resulting in a revival of Christianity within the United States,” the researchers noted. “But there are not any current switching patterns within the U.S. that may be factored into the mathematical models to project such a result.”
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