sorry - wrong wiki link for the magazine, and re-phrase |
→Encyclopedia Britannica: removed original research and original synthesis. If you want the table - present the information the sources actually give, not your own synthesis and conclusions |
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==Encyclopedia Britannica== |
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According to the [[Encyclopedia Britannica]] ''Year in Review'' 1995<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia | title = Religion: Year In Review 1995 | encyclopedia = Encyclopedia Britannica | volume = Yearbook 1995 | pages = | publisher = Encyclopedia Britannica | date = | id = | url =http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497087/religion-Year-In-Review-1995# | accessdate = 2009-12-06}}</ref> and 2002<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia | title = Religion: Year In Review 2002| encyclopedia = Encyclopedia Britannica | volume = Yearbook 2002 | pages = | publisher = Encyclopedia Britannica | date = | id = | url = http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/869229/religion-Year-In-Review-2002 | accessdate = 2009-12-06}}</ref> the following was the change in religions that are widely recognized: |
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{| class="wikitable sortable" |
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! Organized Religion |
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! % growth<br> over 7 years |
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! # people added<br> over 7 years |
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|- |
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|Parsees/Zoroastrian |
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|1300% |
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|2,470,000 |
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|- |
|||
|Sikhs |
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|24% |
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|4,660,000 |
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|- |
|||
|Bahá'ís |
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|21% |
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|1,302,000 |
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|- |
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|Buddhists |
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|12% |
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|40,120,000 |
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|- |
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|Muslims |
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|12% |
|||
|126,769,000 |
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|- |
|||
|Hindus |
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|6% |
|||
|47,583,000 |
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|- |
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|Christians |
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|6% |
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|110,952,000 |
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|- |
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|Jews |
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|3% |
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|418,000 |
|||
|- |
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|World Total |
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|64% |
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|2,415,317,000 |
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|} |
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==See also== |
==See also== |
Revision as of 00:40, 2 January 2010
There are several different religions claiming to be the “fastest growing religion”. Such claims vary due to different definitions of “fastest growing”, and whether the claim is worldwide or regional. There are also many unreliable claims and rumors, especially for conversion rates, that often spread as urban legends.
Different definitions of “fastest growing”
Religions can grow in numbers due to conversion or due to higher birth rates in a religious group (assuming that children take on the religion of their parents). Religions in particular countries can grow due to immigration. So the fastest growing religion could refer to:
- The religion whose absolute number of adherents is growing the fastest (by whatever means).
- The religion that is growing fastest in terms of percentage growth per year (by whatever means).
- The religion that is gaining the greatest number of converts.
- The religion that is gaining the greatest number of associative members (those associating themselves via survey, effectively a popularity vote)
Measures counting absolute numbers tend to favour the larger religions; measures counting percentage growth the smaller ones. For example, if a religion had only 10 followers, a single addition would be a 10% increase, and would therefore dwarf the percentage growth rates of the larger religions.
The difficulty of gathering data
Statistics on religious adherence are difficult to gather and often contradictory; statistics for the change of religious adherence are even more so, requiring multiple surveys separated by many years using the same data gathering rules. This has only been achieved in rare cases, and then only for a particular country, such as the American Religious Identification Survey[1] in the USA, or census data from Australia[2] (which has included a voluntary religious question since 1911). Worldwide data are more difficult to gather than data on a particular country.
Statistics for rates of conversion are the most difficult to gather and the least reliable: they are often distorted by social taboos such as the ban on apostasy in Islam, sometimes amplified by governments and policies at social institutions like universities[3][4] or the reporting of commitments where the individual does not persist. This means that a lot of the data on growth of religions is derived from birth and immigration rates.
There are a large number of people who self-identify themselves as associated to a specific religion, but who are not religiously active. If, for example, asked to choose between Christianity and other religions they would say they were Christians; if asked to choose between Christianity, other religions and "Not religious", they would say "Not religious". This may make categorization difficult.
In countries with mandatory religions, official statistics will only reflect the official position of the government.
Claims to be the fastest growing religion
Note that it would be an argumentum ad populum to claim that being the “fastest growing religion” has any logical consequences about the truth of that religion.
Whilst it is possible to find claims that almost any religion is the fastest growing, it is much harder to find ones backed up by scientific data. A selection of the more credible claims are given below, but even these are often contradictory, and most of them only cover a limited period time or a single region of the world.
Buddhism
The Australian Bureau of Statistics through statistical analysis held Buddhism to be the fastest growing spiritual tradition/religion in Australia in terms of percentage gain with a growth of 79.1% for the period 1996 to 2001 (200,000→358,000).[5]
Christianity
- Christianity has been estimated to be growing rapidly in South America, Africa, and Asia. In Africa, for instance, in 1900, there were only 8.7 million adherents of Christianity; now there are 390 million, and it is expected by 2025 there will be 600 million Christians in Africa. The U.S. Center for World Mission claimed a growth rate of 2.3% for the period 1970 to 1996, (slightly higher than the world population growth rate at the time). This increased the claimed percentage of adherents of Christianity from 33.7% to 33.9%.[6]
- The US Department of State estimates that Protestant Christianity may have grown 600% over the last decade in Vietnam.[7]
- The World Christian Database as of 2007 estimated the growth rate of Christianity at 1.32%. High birth rates and conversions were cited as the main reason.[8]
- Many sources say that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China, South Korea and Indonesia.[citation needed]
- From the period between 2000 and 2005, Pentecostalism experienced a global growth rate of 488% expanding from 115 million to 588.5 million[9] global adherents. This classes Pentecostalism as the fastest growing religion world wide.[10]
- Using data from the period 2000-2005 the 2006 Christian World Database estimated that by number of new adherents, Christianity was the fastest growing religion in the world with 30,360,000 new adherents in 2006. This was followed by Islam with 23,920,000 and Hinduism with 13,224,000 estimated new adherents in the same period.[11]
Deism
The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) survey, which involved 50,000 participants, reported that the number of participants in the survey identifying themselves as deists grew at the rate of 717 percent between 1990 and 2001. If this were generalized to the US population as a whole, it would make deism the fastest-growing religious classification in the US for that period, with the reported total of 49,000 self-identified adherents representing about 0.02% of the US population at the time.[12] [13]
Falun Gong
No reliable data are available for the number of adherents of Falun Gong but as this religion was only established in 1992 most of the growth must have been by conversion. Estimates for the number of adherents for 1999 range from 2 million[14] to 100 million.[15]
Hinduism
Some 80% of the population of the Republic of India are Hindus, accounting for about 90% of Hindus worldwide. Their 10-year growth rate is estimated at 20% (based on the period 1991 to 2001), corresponding to a yearly growth close to 2% or a doubling time of about 38 years.[16]
Islam
- According to the "Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life"[17]
Islam is already the fastest-growing religion in Europe. Driven by immigration and high birthrates, the number of Muslims on the continent has tripled in the last 30 years. Most demographers forecast a similar or even higher rate of growth in the coming decades.
- According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the World Christian Database as of 2007 estimated that the fastest growing of the five largest religions in the world by percentage to be Islam (1.84%). High birth rates were cited as the reason for the growth.[8]
- Data for Islam reveal that the growing number of Muslims (in the West) is due primarily to immigration (which means less in the country of their origin) and higher birth rates (worldwide).[18]
- In 2007, Foreign policy magazine listed Islam as the fastest growing religion in from 2000-2005 by percentage of growth.[8]
Wicca
- The American Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143% / 11,454 for the period 1990 to 2001 (8,000→134,000 - U.S. data / similar for Canada & Australia).[1][19]
Non-Religious
- The American Religious Identification Survey gave Non-Religious groups the largest gain in terms of absolute numbers - 14,300,000 (8.4% of the population) to 29,400,000 (14.1% of the population) for the period 1990 to 2001 in the USA.[1][19]
- In Australia, census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics give "no religion" the largest gains in absolute numbers over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006. from 2,948,888 (18.2% of the population that answered the question) to 3,706,555 (21.0% of the population that answered the question).[20]
World Christian Database
The World Christian Database (WCD) and its predecessor the World Christian Encyclopedia contains large amounts of data on numbers and growths of religions. The following is a tabulation of their results: (Note: The annual growth in the world population over the same period is 1.41%.)
1970-1985[21] | 1990-2000[22][23] | 2000-2005[8] |
---|---|---|
3.65% - Bahá'í Faith | 2.65% - Zoroastrianism | 1.84% - Islam |
2.74% - Islam | 2.28% - Bahá'í Faith | 1.70% - Bahá'í Faith |
2.34% - Hinduism | 2.13% - Islam | 1.62% - Sikhism |
1.67% - Buddhism | 1.87% - Sikhism | 1.57% - Hinduism |
1.64% - Christianity | 1.69% - Hinduism | 1.32% - Christianity |
1.09% - Judaism | 1.36% - Christianity | |
1.09% - Buddhism |
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace using the 2000-2005 edition of the World Christian Database, concluded that high birth rates were the reason for the growth in all six; however, the growth of Christianity was also attributed to conversions.[8] Although the World Christian Database does not cite sources, a review examining the reliability and bias of the WCD found it "highly correlated with other sources of data" but "consistently gave a higher estimate for percent Christian." The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion said that "on the whole we find that the WCD is reliable.[24]
See also
References
- ^ a b c American Religious Identification Survey, Key Findings The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
- ^ "2006 Census Tables : Australia".
- ^ Affolter, Friedrich W. (2005). "The Specter of Ideological Genocide: The Bahá'ís of Iran" (PDF). War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. 1 (1): 59–89.
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ignored (help) - ^ Reuters (May 3, 2006). "State to appeal ruling that favours Egypt's Baha'is". Khaleej Times. Retrieved October 15, 2009.
{{cite news}}
:|author=
has generic name (help) - ^ Year Book Australia, 2003 Australian Bureau of Statistics
- ^ "GROWTH RATE OF CHRISTIANITY & ISLAM Which will be the dominant religion in the future?".
- ^ "Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2005 - Vietnam". U.S. Department of State. 2005-06-30. Retrieved 2007-03-11.
- ^ a b c d e "The List: The World's Fastest-Growing Religions". Foreign Policy. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. May 2007.
- ^ Pentecostals Celebrate World's Fastest-Growing Religion
- ^ Engendering Charismatic Economies: Pentecostalism, Global Political Economy, and the Crisis of Social Reproduction, Isabelle V. Barker
- ^ "What is the fastest growing religion in the world? A Secularist Evaluation". FastestGrowingReligion.tk. 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-12.
- ^ "ARIS key findings, 2001".
- ^ "Largest Religious Groups in the United States of America". Adherents.com.
- ^ Falun Gong Is a Cult Embassy of the People's Republic of China
- ^ Answers to Commonly Asked Questions about Falun Gong Falun Dafa Clearwisdom.net
- ^ "Census of India". Census of India. Census Data 2001: India at a glance >> Religious Composition. Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 2008-11-26. The data is "unadjusted" (without excluding Assam and Jammu and Kashmir); 1981 census was not conducted in Assam and 1991 census was not conducted in Jammu and Kashmir.
- ^ [1]The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
- ^ BBC news site
- ^ a b American Religious Identification Survey, Full PDF Document The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
- ^ census data
- ^ International Community, Bahá'í (1992), "How many Bahá'ís are there?", The Bahá'ís, p. 14.
- ^ Barrett, David A. (2001). World Christian Encyclopedia. p. 4.
- ^ Barrett, David (2001). "Global adherents of the World's 19 distinct major religions" (PDF). William Carey Library. Retrieved 2006-10-12.
{{cite web}}
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ignored (|author=
suggested) (help) - ^ Hsu, Becky; Reynolds, Amy; Hackett, Conrad; Gibbon, James (2008-07-09), "Estimating the Religious Composition of All Nations" (pdf), Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
External links
- Tables from David A. Barrett, World Christian Encyclopaedia, 2001
- FAQ from Adherents.com describing why it is difficult to measure the fastest growing religion
- Religious Projections for the Next 200 Years from World Network of Religious Futurists
- Estimate from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace using data from World Christian Database