Singapore has been ranked essentially the most religiously diverse country on the earth, while the UK is certainly one of only a handful of countries where no single religious group forms a majority, in accordance with a serious latest study by the Pew Research Center.
The report, a part of Pew’s ongoing Global Religious Futures project, assessed 201 countries and territories using a Religious Diversity Index (RDI) that measures how evenly seven major religious categories are represented: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, other religions, and the unaffiliated.
On a scale of 0 to 10, Singapore recorded 9.3, placing it nearer than some other nation to an almost equal spread of religion groups.
About 31% of its residents discover as Buddhist, while 20% say they don’t have any religious affiliation. Christians account for 19% of the population, Muslims 16%, Hindus 5%, and an additional 9% belong to other faiths.
No country achieved an ideal rating of 10.
Suriname got here second globally, standing out as the only Latin American nation to feature in the highest 10.
Just over half of Suriname’s population are Christian (53%), while sizeable Hindu (22%) and Muslim (13%) communities sit alongside a smaller unaffiliated group (8%).
Elsewhere, the highest-scoring nations were concentrated within the Asia-Pacific region and sub-Saharan Africa, including Taiwan, South Korea, Mauritius and Benin.
France was the only European country to look in the worldwide top 10, with Christianity (46%) and other people with no religious link (43%) forming its two largest groups.
By contrast, countries similar to Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia were found to be among the many least religiously diverse, with Muslims accounting for 99.8% plus of their populations.
Although the UK didn’t feature amongst essentially the most religiously diverse countries overall, it was highlighted for a distinct reason: it’s certainly one of just seven nations worldwide where no single religious group holds a majority. The others are South Korea, France, Australia, Singapore, Mauritius, and Ivory Coast.
The most up-to-date UK Census data confirms that Christians now account for lower than half the population in England and Wales – 46.2% say they’re Christians, down from 72% in 2001.
Meanwhile, 37.2% reported having no religion, making the religiously unaffiliated the second-largest group.
The share of individuals describing themselves as Muslim increased from 4.9% in 2011 to six.5% a decade later in 2021.
Separate Pew research has suggested that around 40% of individuals in Britain who grew up as Christians not consider themselves a part of the religion.
Among those that went to church as children, 58% say they not consider themselves Christian.
The shift reflects a broader trend of spiritual disaffiliation across Western Europe.
However, while institutional affiliation has declined, researchers and church leaders argue that faith expression in Britain is becoming more complex quite than simply disappearing.
Some Christian traditions – including Pentecostal and Orthodox congregations – have recorded growth lately, often driven by younger worshippers and immigrant communities.
The US didn’t make the worldwide top 10 for overall diversity, rating thirty second. Yet when specializing in the ten largest countries by population – all home to not less than 120 million people – the US ranked as essentially the most religiously diverse.
In 2020, Christians made up 64% of the US population, while around 30% described themselves as not being a part of any faith.
Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and “other religions” collectively made up the remaining 6%, each group comprising roughly 1-2%.
Over the past 10 years, the US became more religiously diverse as its Christian majority declined and the variety of religiously unaffiliated Americans grew significantly.
In earlier findings, Pew researchers noted that for every adult who adopts a faith after growing up without one, greater than three leave religion altogether with Christianity facing the biggest net losses.
Globally, Christianity stays the world’s largest religious group at 2.3 billion people, but its share of the worldwide population has fallen to twenty-eight.8%.
Over the identical period, the variety of religiously unaffiliated people rose to 1.9 billion – nearly 1 / 4 of humanity – while Muslims, now numbering around 2 billion, are the fastest-growing major religious group.
Despite attention on diversity, Pew’s evaluation found that the majority countries are still religiously homogeneous.
In 194 of the 201 countries studied, not less than half the population belongs to a single religious category. In 43 places, 95% or more of residents share the identical religious identity. Just 49 countries have three or more religious groups that every account for not less than 5% of the population.
Regionally, the Asia-Pacific was identified as essentially the most religiously diverse area (8.7) overall, while the Middle East and North Africa ranked because the least diverse (3.1), with populations which are overwhelmingly Muslim.
Researchers found that the majority of the world’s population resides in countries with a moderate level of spiritual diversity. Only 1% live in places classified as having a “very high” level of diversity, similar to Singapore.
Worldwide, levels of spiritual diversity modified little between 2010 and 2020. However, roughly 24 countries experienced notable shifts, largely driven by religious disaffiliation – particularly amongst Christians in Europe, North America and Australasia.
In the Netherlands and New Zealand, growth within the religiously unaffiliated reshaped the balance between belief and non-belief.
In sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, Christianity continues to grow in absolute numbers, with the world now containing the best proportion of the world’s Christians, overtaking Europe.
The findings paint an image of a world during which religious identity stays powerful but increasingly fluid, especially in Western societies.
For the UK, the info confirms a historic transition: from a nation with a transparent Christian majority to 1 characterised by plurality.
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