Information about World Religions

"World Religions" redirects here. For the TV show see World Religions (TV series).

The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups or world religions: the vast majority of religious and spiritual adherents follow one of Christianity (33% of world population), Islam (20%), Hinduism (13%), Chinese folk religion (6%) or Buddhism (5%).

These spiritual traditions may be either combined into larger super-groups, or into smaller sub-denominations. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are sometimes summarized as Abrahamic religions. Hinduism, Buddhism (including Vajrayana, East Asian Buddhism and Zen), Sikhism and Jainism are classified as Dharmic traditions. Chinese folk religion, Taoism, Shintoism, are classified as Far Eastern religions.

Conversely, the major spiritual traditions may be parsed into sub-denominations:

• Christianity into Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism and Restorationism (see Christian denominations)
• Islam into Sunni and Shi'a Islam (see divisions of Islam)
• Hinduism into Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Shaktism, Tantrism and others (see Hindu denominations)
• Buddhism into Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana and Tibetan Buddhism (see Schools of Buddhism)

About 4% of world population follow indigenous tribal religions. About 12% of world population are irreligious.

For a more comprehensive list of religions and an outline of some of their basic relationships, please see the article list of religions.

World religions

Historical notions

The concept of "world religion" is historically based on a subjective perception of temporal or theological importance, usually from a Western, Christian or at least "Abrahamic" perspective.

Early Christian scholars, the earliest known classifiers of major religions, recognized two "proper" religions, Christianity and Judaism, besides heretical deviations from Christanity, and idolatrous relapse or paganism. Islamic theology recognizes Christians and Jews as "People of the Book" besides idolaters. The Christian view long classified Islam as one heresy among others

Views evolved during the Enlightenment, however, and, by the 19th century, Western scholars considered the five "world religions" to be Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. These remain the classic "world religions"

Modern listings

Modern classifications typically list major religious groups by number of adherents, not by historical or theological notability. Most dramatically, this affects Judaism, which holds the position of "world religion" as the foundational tradition of the "Abrahamic" group, but which in terms of adherents ranks below 0.25% of world population, behind Sikhism.

The remaining four classic world religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are also the largest contemporary religions by far. They all have more than 300 million adherents, more than ten times the number of the next largest organized religion (Sikhism, ca. 23 million).

An example of a modern listing of "world" religions is that of the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, listing twelve "long established, major world religions, each with over three million followers", alphabetically:

Baha'i Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism, Vodun.

The adherents.com list of "classical twelve world religion" is nearly identical, but replaces Vodun with Zoroastrianism.

The "World's Major Religions" list published in the New York Public Library Student's Desk Reference^[1] omits both Vodun and Zoroastrianism, as well as Jainism and Sikhism, but lists the Eastern Orthodox Church, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism as separate religions.

The Christian Science Monitor newspaper in a 1998 article "Top 10 Organized Religions in the World" provides a further example, listing the largest "organized religions":

#	Religion	Number of Adherents	Remarks[2]
1	Christianity	1900 million	Has the most followers and most widespread presence of all well-recognized religions. Predominant religion in Europe, the Americas, Southern Africa, Oceania, and the Philippines.
2	Islam	1100 million	A widespread religion with many countries majority Muslim, particularly in the Middle East, South Asia, Maritime Southeast Asia, Central Asia, North Africa and West Africa.
3	Hinduism	781 million	Umbrella term for various Hindu denominations forming the majority in India, Nepal, North Eastern province of Sri Lanka, and the Bali sub-province of Indonesia.
4	Buddhism	324 million	Largely in East Asia and the Mainland Southeast Asia, and small parts of South Asia and Russia; originated in India.
5	Sikhism	19 million	Mostly in the Indian Punjab; also large numbers in other parts of India and the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Malaysia and Southeast Asia, Germany and East Africa.
6	Judaism	14 million	A widespread religion with Israel majority Jewish, but with the USA having the largest Jewish population worldwide.
7	Bahá'í Faith	6.1 million	Youngest of the group of 10, second most widely dispersed religion after Christianity; fastest growing (percentage) of top 10.
8	Confucianism	5.3 million	Mostly in China proper; and in Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam.
9	Jainism	4.9 million	Mostly in India.
10	Shinto	2.8 million	Mostly in (and formerly the state religion of) Japan.

In comparison with the Ontario Consultants list above, The Christian Science Monitor omits Taoism and Vodun as "non-organized".

Other "major religions" listed by adherents.com (2007), not found on the above lists, are:

• tribal religions (Shamanism, Animism): roughly 300 million
• African traditional and diasporic (including Vodun): roughly 100 million^[3]
• Chinese traditional (including Taoism and Confucianism): 394 million
• Juche (North Korean state ideology): 19 million
• Spiritism (new religious movements such as Umbanda): roughly 15 million
• Cao Dai: 4 million
• Tenrikyo: 2 million
• Neopaganism: 1 million
• Unitarian-Universalism: 800,000
• Rastafarianism: 600,000
• Scientology: 500,000

Classification

Main articles: Comparative religion and Sociological classifications of religious movements

Religious traditions fall into super-groups in comparative religion, arranged by historical origin and mutual influence. Abrahamic religions originate in the Middle East, Indian religions in India and Far Eastern religions in East Asia. Another group with supra-regional influence are African diasporic religions, which have their origins in Central and West Africa.

• Abrahamic religions are by far the largest group, and these consist primarily of Christianity, Islam and Judaism (sometimes Bahá'í is also included). They are named for the patriarch Abraham, and are unified by their strict monotheism. Today, around 3.4 billion people are followers of Abrahamic religions and are spread widely around the world apart from the regions around South-East Asia and China.
• Indian religions originated in Greater India and tend to share a number of key concepts, such as dharma and karma. They are of the most influence across the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, South East Asia, as well as isolated parts of Russia. The main Indian religions are Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. Indian religions mutually influenced each other.
• Far Eastern religions consist of several East Asian religions which make use of the concept of Tao (in Chinese) or Do (in Japanese or Korean). They include Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Chondogyo, Caodaism, and Yiguandao as well as Far Eastern Buddhism (in which the group overlaps with the "Indian" group).
• Iranian religions include Zoroastrianism, Yazdanism and historical traditions of Gnosticism (Mandaeanism, Manichaeism). It has significant overlaps with Abrahamic traditions, e.g. in Sufism and in recent syncretic movements such as Bábísm and Bahá'í.
• African diasporic religions practiced in the Americas, imported as a result of the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 18th centuries, building of traditional religions of Central and West Africa.
• Indigenous tribal religions, formerly found on every continent, now marginalized by the major organized faiths, but persisting as undercurrents of folk religion. Includes African traditional religions, Asian Shamanism, Native American religions, Austronesian and Australian Aboriginal traditions and arguably Chinese folk religion (overlaps with Far Eastern religions).
• New religious movements, a heterogenous group of religious faiths emerging since the 19th century, often syncretizing, re-interpreting or reviving aspects of older traditions (Bahá'í, Hindu revivalism, Ayyavazhi, Pentecostalism, polytheistic reconstructionism), some inspired by science-fiction (UFO religions, Scientology). See List of new religious movements, list of groups referred to as cults.

Demographic distribution of the major super-groupings mentioned is shown in the table below:

Name of Group	Name of Religion	Number of followers	Date of Origin	Main regions covered
Abrahamic religions 3.4 billion	Christianity	2.1 billion	1st c.	Worldwide except Northwest Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and parts of Central, East, and Southeast Asia and China
	Islam	1.3 billion	7th c.	Middle East, Northern Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, Western Africa, Eastern Africa, Indian Subcontinent, Russia, China, Balkan Peninsula, Malay Archipelago
	Judaism	14 million	Iron Age	Israel, USA, Europe
	Bahá'í Faith	7 million	19th c.	Dispersed worldwide with no major population centers
Indian religions 1.4 billion	Hinduism	900 million	no founder	Indian subcontinent, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius and Sri Lanka
	Buddhism	376 million	Iron Age	Indian subcontinent, East Asia, Indochina, regions of Russia.
	Sikhism	23 million	16th c.	India, Pakistan, Africa, Canada, USA, United Kingdom
	Jainism	4.2 million	Iron Age	India, and East Africa
Far Eastern religions 500 million	Taoism	unknown	Spring and Autumn Period	China and the Chinese diaspora
	Confucianism	unknown	Spring and Autumn Period	China, Korea, Vietnam and the Chinese and Vietnamese diasporas
	Shinto	4 million	no founder	Japan
	Caodaism	1-2 million	1925	Vietnam
	Chondogyo	1.13 million	1812	Korea
	Yiguandao	1-2 million	c. 1900	Taiwan
	Chinese folk religion	394 million	no founder	China
Ethnic/tribal 400 million
	Primal indigenous	300 million	no founder	India, Asia
	African traditional and diasporic	100 million	no founder	Africa, Americas

Religious demographics

One way to define a major religion is by the number of current adherents. The population numbers by religion are computed by combination of census reports and population surveys (in countries where religion data is not collected in census, for example USA or France), but results can vary widely depending on the way questions are phrased, the definitions of religion used, and the bias of the agencies or organizations conducting the survey. Informal or unorganized religions are especially difficult to count.

There is no consensus among researchers as to the best methodology for determining the religiosity profile of the world's population. A number of fundamental aspects are unresolved:

• Whether to count "historically predominant religious culture[s]"^[4]
• Whether to count only those who actively "practice" a particular religion^[5]
• Whether to count based on a concept of "adherence"^[6]
• Whether to count only those who expressly self-identify with a particular denomination^[7]
• Whether to count only adults, or to include children as well.
• Whether to rely only on official government-provided statistics ^[8]
• Whether to use multiple sources and ranges or single "best source(s)"

Largest religions or belief systems by number of adherents

This listing includes both organized religions, which have unified belief codes and religious hierarchies, and informal religions, such as Chinese folk religions. For completeness, it also contains a category for the non-religious, although their views would not ordinarily be considered a religion.

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion (Began: ca. 27 AD/CE), with major branches as follows:
2. *See also the List of Christian denominations by number of members and List of Christian denominations pages (Non-denominational statistics are not shown.)
3. *Roman Catholic Church: 1.05 billion
4. *Eastern Orthodox Church: 240 million
5. *African Initiated Church: 110 million
6. *Pentecostalism: 105 million
7. *Reformed/Presbyterian/Congregational/United: 75 million
8. *Anglicanism/Episcopal Church: 73 million
9. *Baptist: 70 million
10. *Methodism: 70 million
11. *Lutheran: 64 million
12. *Jehovah's Witnesses: 14.8 million
13. *Latter-day Saints: 13.5 million
14. *Adventists: 12 million
15. *Apostolic/New Apostolic: 10 million
16. *Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement: 5.4 million
17. *New Thought (Unity, Christian Science, etc.): 1.5 million
18. *Brethren (incl. Plymouth): 1.5 million
19. *Mennonite: 1.25 million
20. *Friends/Quakers: 300,000
21. Islam: 1.5 billion (Began: ca. 610 AD/CE), with major branches as follows: ***
22. *Sunni: 940 million
23. *Shia: 120 million
24. *Ahmadi: 10 million
25. *Druze: 450,000
26. Secular/irreligious/agnostic/atheist/antitheistic/antireligious: 1.1 billion (Began: Prehistory)
27. *Category includes a wide range of beliefs, without specifically adhering to a religion or sometimes specifically against dogmatic religions. The category includes humanism, deism, pantheism, rationalism, freethought, agnosticism, and atheism. Broadly labeled humanism, this group of non religious people are third largest in the world. For more information, see the Adherents.com discussion of this category and the note below. **
28. Hinduism: 900 million (Began: approximately 1500 BC/BCE or 15th century BC/BCE however some aspects of it trace its history to 2600 BC/BCE or 26th century BC/BCE), with major branches as follows:
29. *Vaishnavism: 580 million
30. *Shaivism: 220 million
31. *Neo-Hindus and Reform Hindus: 22 million
32. *Veerashaivas/Lingayats: 10 million
33. Chinese folk religion: 394 million
34. *Not a single organized religion, includes elements of Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and traditional nonscriptural religious observance (also called "Chinese traditional religion").
35. Buddhism: 376 million (Began: 6th century BC/BCE), with major branches as follows:
36. *Mahayana: 185 million
37. *Theravada: 124 million
38. *Vajrayana/Tibetan: 20 million
39. Primal indigenous (tribal religions): 300 million
40. *Not a single organized religion, includes a wide range of traditional or tribal religions, including animism, shamanism and paganism. Since African traditional and diasporic religions are counted separately in this list, most of the remaining people counted in this group are in Asia.
41. African traditional and diasporic: 100 million
42. *Not a single organized religion, this includes several traditional African beliefs and philosophies such as those of the Yoruba, Ewe (vodun) and the Bakongo. These three religious traditions (especially that of the Yoruba) have been very influential to the diasporic beliefs of the Americas such as condomble, santeria and voodoo. The religious capital of the Yoruba religion is at Ile Ife.
43. Sikhism: 23 million (Began: 1500s AD/CE)
44. Spiritism: 15 million (Began: mid-19th century AD/CE)
45. *Not a single organized religion, includes a variety of beliefs including some forms of Umbanda.
46. Judaism: 14 million (Began: 13th century BC/BCE), with major branches as follows:
47. *Conservative: 4.5 million
48. *Unaffiliated and Secular: 4.5 million
49. *Reform: 3.75 million
50. *Orthodox: 2 million
51. *Reconstructionist: 150,000
52. Bahá'í Faith: 7 million (Began: 19th century AD/CE)
53. Jainism: 4.2 million (Began: 6th century BC/BCE), with major branches as follows:
54. *Svetambara: 4 million
55. *Sthanakvasi: 750,000
56. *Digambar: 155,000
57. Shinto: 4 million (Began: 300 BC/BCE)
58. * This number states the number of actual self-identifying practising primary followers of Shinto; if everyone were included who is considered Shinto by some people due to ethnic or historical categorizations, the number would be considerably higher — as high as 100 million (according to the adherents.com source used for the statistics in this section).
59. Cao Dai: 4 million (Began: 1926 AD/CE)
60. Falun Gong: official post-crackdown figure as stated by Chinese Communist Party: 2.1 million; Chinese government pre-crackdown figure as reported by New York Times: 70-100 million; practitioners and founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, often refer to 100 million* (Founded: 1992 AD/CE)
61. *Not necessarily considered a religion by adherents or outside observers. No membership or rosters, thus the actual figure of practitioners is impossible to confirm.
62. Tenrikyo: 2 million (Began: 1838 AD/CE)
63. Neopaganism: 1 million (Began: 20th century AD/CE)
64. *A blanket term for several religions like Wicca, Asatru, Neo-druidism, and polytheistic reconstructionist religions
65. Unitarian Universalism: 800,000 (Began: 1961 AD/CE, however, prior to the merger the separate doctrines of Unitarianism and Universalism trace their roots to the 16th and 1st centuries AD/CE respectively)
66. Rastafari: 600,000 (Began: early 1930s AD/CE)
67. Scientology: 500,000 (Began: 1952 AD/CE)
68. Zoroastrianism: "less than 200,000" (Began: Sometime between 16th and 6th century BC/BCE) ****, with major communities as follows:
69. *Parsis: 110,000
70. *Gabars: 20,000

Source of statistics for all religions but Falun Gong: Adherents.com, updated 2007. These statistics are reportedly based on analysis of a range of sources on religious populations, for more on the methodology, please see Adherents.com's explanation.

* Falun Gong itself reportedly claimed 100 million followers worldwide, including 70 million in China; while the number "over 70 million" was reported by the New York Times (both estimates from 1999). [1]

** Unlike the source site adherents.com, this list classifies Juche under the secular/non-religious category, since it does not fit most definitions of religion and is considered secular by its followers.

***Ahmadiyya consider themselves Muslim, but are not considered Muslim by the mainstream. Adherents.com includes Druze as Muslim, but they are usually considered a distinct religious community based mostly in the Middle East who are an offshoot of Islam.

****The main list in the referenced source site estimates 2.6 million adherents of Zoroastrianism, but its detailed section refers to "less than 200,000", an estimate that agrees with a January 2007 estimate published in the Boston Globe newspaper. Because of this reduced estimated adherent count, this religion has been moved from its original position in the population-ranked listing on adherents.com.

By region

Further information: Religion in present-day nations and states National church

• Religion in Africa
• Religion in Asia
• Religion in India
• Religion in China
• Muslim world (SW Asia and N Africa)
• Religion in North America
• Religion in the United States
• Religion in South America
• Religion in Australia
• Religion in Europe
• Religion in the European Union

Trends in adherence

Since the late 19th century, the demographics of religion have changed a great deal. Some countries with a historically large Christian population have experienced a significant decline in the numbers of professed active Christians. Symptoms of the decline in active participation in Christian religious life include declining recruitment for the priesthood and monastic life, as well as diminishing attendance at church. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of people who identify themselves as secular humanists. In many countries, such as the People's Republic of China, communist governments have discouraged religion, making it difficult to count the actual number of believers. However, after the collapse of communism in numerous countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Eastern Orthodox Christianity has been experiencing considerable resurgence there.

Within the world's four largest religions Christianity currently has the greatest growth by numbers and Islam has the fastest growth by percentage.^[9] Christianity is spreading rapidly in northern Africa and the Far East, in particular China and South Korea. Hinduism is undergoing a revival, and many temples are being built, both in India and in other countries. Analyzing percentage growth is a difficult matter - see this article for a discussion. However, the World Christian Encyclopedia and World Christian Trends reported these numbers from growth from 1990-2000<ref name="worldchristianencyclopedia" />^[10]:

1990-2000

• 2.65% - Zoroastrianism
• 2.28% - Bahá'í Faith
• 2.13% - Islam
• 1.87% - Sikhism
• 1.69% - Hinduism
• 1.36% - Christianity
• 1.09% - Buddhism

(the annual growth in the world population over the same period is 1.41%)

A 2002 Pew Research Center study found that, generally, poorer nations had a larger proportion of citizens who found religion to be very important than richer nations, with the exception of the United States.^[11]

References

• Adherents.com, Religions By Adherents
• Tomoko Masuzawa, The invention of world religions, or, How European universalism was preserved in the language of pluralism, Chicago University Press 2005

See also

• List of religions
• Claims to be the fastest growing religion
• Religious text

External links

• Animated history of World Religions - from the "Religion & Ethics" part of the BBC website, interactve animated view of the spread of world religions (requires Flash plug-in).
• BBC A-Z of Religions and Beliefs