|
Religion
|
Africa
|
Asia
|
Europe
|
Latin America
|
Northern America
|
Oceania
|
World
|
%
|
Number of countries
|
|
Christians
|
350.892.000
|
289.784.000
|
552.183.000
|
455.882.000
|
257.129.000
|
24.117.000
|
1.929.987.000
|
33.0
|
244
|
|
Unaffiliated Christians
|
30.689.000
|
10.381.000
|
21.443.000
|
2.041.000
|
35.748.000
|
4.637.000
|
104.939.000
|
1.8
|
201
|
|
Affiliated Christians
|
320.203.000
|
279.403.000
|
530.740.000
|
453.841.000
|
221.381.000
|
19.480.000
|
1.825.048.000
|
31.2
|
243
|
|
Roman Catholics
|
117.990.000
|
111.215.000
|
286.902.000
|
442.657.000
|
73.880.000
|
7.710.000
|
1.040.354.000
|
17.8
|
240
|
|
Protestants
|
87.190.000
|
44.654.000
|
85.924.000
|
41.829.000
|
95.063.000
|
6.253.000
|
360.913.000
|
6.2
|
237
|
|
Orthodox
|
32.880.000
|
15.403.000
|
166.908.000
|
620
|
6.698.000
|
695
|
223.204.000
|
3.8
|
137
|
|
Anglicans
|
20.551.000
|
641
|
24.338.000
|
874
|
3.145.000
|
5.236.000
|
54.785.000
|
0.9
|
167
|
|
Other Christians
|
68.357.000
|
125.213.000
|
5.645.000
|
40.231.000
|
47.585.000
|
826
|
287.857.000
|
4.9
|
213
|
|
Non-Christians
|
407.502.000
|
3.248.670.000
|
176.986.000
|
36.047.000
|
44.589.000
|
4.958.000
|
3.918.752.000
|
67.0
|
244
|
|
Atheists
|
423
|
117.789.000
|
24.038.000
|
2.612.000
|
1.385.000
|
368
|
146.615.000
|
2.5
|
163
|
|
Baha'is
|
2.263.000
|
3.606.000
|
104
|
880
|
740
|
73
|
7.666.000
|
0.1
|
213
|
|
Buddhists
|
136
|
348.559.000
|
1.478.000
|
645
|
2.132.000
|
191
|
353.141.000
|
6.0
|
123
|
|
Chinese folk religionists
|
28
|
362.013.000
|
216
|
184
|
832
|
61
|
363.334.000
|
6.2
|
88
|
|
Confucianists
|
0
|
6.078.000
|
10
|
0
|
0
|
24
|
6.112.000
|
0.1
|
14
|
|
Ethnic religionists
|
90.365.000
|
138.469.000
|
1.220.000
|
1.060.000
|
331
|
249
|
231.694.000
|
4.0
|
141
|
|
Hindus
|
2.378.000
|
740.633.000
|
1.520.000
|
776
|
1.129.000
|
361
|
746.797.000
|
12.8
|
109
|
|
Jains
|
65
|
3.946.000
|
0
|
0
|
5
|
0
|
4.016.000
|
0.1
|
10
|
|
Jews
|
290
|
4.497.000
|
2.932.000
|
1.173.000
|
5.904.000
|
94
|
14.890.000
|
0.3
|
137
|
|
Mandeans
|
0
|
40
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
40
|
0.0
|
2
|
|
Muslims
|
306.606.000
|
803.605.000
|
31.347.000
|
1.632.000
|
4.066.000
|
238
|
1.147.494.000
|
19.6
|
204
|
|
New-Religionists
|
27
|
97.263.000
|
122
|
611
|
649
|
27
|
98.699.000
|
1.7
|
57
|
|
Nonreligious
|
4.798.000
|
597.804.000
|
113.165.000
|
15.144.000
|
26.127.000
|
3.242.000
|
760.280.000
|
13.0
|
238
|
|
Shintoists
|
0
|
2.611.000
|
0
|
7
|
54
|
0
|
2.672.000
|
0.0
|
8
|
|
Sikhs
|
52
|
21.464.000
|
497
|
0
|
491
|
14
|
22.518.000
|
0.4
|
32
|
|
Spiritists
|
3
|
2
|
78
|
11.229.000
|
148
|
7
|
11.467.000
|
0.2
|
54
|
|
Zoroastrians
|
1
|
268
|
0
|
0
|
3
|
0
|
272
|
0.0
|
16
|
|
Other religionists
|
67
|
23
|
259
|
94
|
593
|
9
|
1.045.000
|
0.0
|
78
|
|
Total population
|
758.394.000
|
3.538.454.000
|
729.169.000
|
491.929.000
|
301.718.000
|
29.075.000
|
5.848.739.000
|
100
|
244
|
|
Continents. These follow current UN
demographic terminology. UN practice began in 1949
by dividing the world into 5 continents, then into
18 regions (1954), then into 8 major continental
areas (called macro regions in 1987) and 24 regions
(1963), then into 7 major areas and 22 regions
(1988), and most recently into the 6 major areas
shown above, and 21 regions (1994). See United
Nations, World Population Prospects: The 1996
Revision (New York: UN, 1997), with populations of
all continents, regions, and countries covering the
period 1950-2025. The table above therefore
combines its former columns "East Asia" and "South
Asia" into one single continental area, "Asia,"
which also now includes the former Soviet Central
Asian states. Note also that "Europe" now extends
eastward to Vladivostok, the Sea of Japan, and the
Bering Strait.
|
|
Countries. The last column enumerates
sovereign and nonsovereign countries in which each
religion or religious grouping has a numerically
significant following.
|
|
Adherents. As defined and enumerated for
each of the world's countries in World Christian
Encylcopedia (1982), projected to mid-1997,
adjusted for recent data.
|
|
Christians. Followers of Jesus Christ
affiliated with churches (church members, including
children: 1,782,809,000) plus persons professing in
censuses or polls to be Christians though not so
affiliated. The four major ecclesiastical blocs are
ranked by number of adherents at world level.
|
|
Other Christians. This term denotes
Catholics (non-Roman), marginal Protestants,
crypto-Christians, and adherents of African, Asian,
Black, and Latin-American indigenous churches.
|
|
Atheists. Persons professing atheism,
skepticism, disbelief, or irreligion, including
antireligious (opposed to all religion).
|
|
Buddhists. 56% Mahayana, 38% Theravada
(Hinayana), 6% Tantrayana (Lamaism).
|
|
Chinese folk religionists. Followers of
the traditional Chinese religion (local deities,
ancestor veneration, Confucian ethics, Taoism,
universism, divination, some Buddhist
elements).
|
|
Confucianists. Non-Chinese followers of
Confucius and Confucianism, mostly Koreans in
Korea.
|
|
Ethnic religionists. Followers of local,
tribal, animistic, or shamanistic religions.
|
|
Hindus. 70% Vaishnavites, 25% Shaivites,
2% neo-Hindus and reform Hindus.
|
|
Jews. Adherents of Judaism. For detailed
data on "core" Jewish population, see the annual
"World Jewish Populations" article in the American
Jewish Committee's American Jewish Year Book.
|
|
Muslims. 83% Sunnites, 16% Shi'ites, 1%
other schools. Up to 1990 the ethnic Muslims in the
former U.S.S.R. who had embraced communism were not
included as Muslims in this table. After the
collapse of communism in 1990-91, these ethnic
Muslims are once again enumerated as Muslims if
they had returned to Islamic profession and
practice.
|
|
New-Religionists. Followers of Asian
20th-century New Religions, New Religious
movements, radical new crisis religions, and
non-Christian syncretistic mass religions, all
founded since 1800 and most since 1945.
|
|
Nonreligious. Persons professing no
religion, nonbelievers, agnostics, freethinkers,
dereligionized secularists indifferent to all
religion.
|
|
Other religionists. Including 70 minor
world religions and over 5,000 national or local
religions, and a large number of spiritist
religions, New Age religions, quasi religions,
pseudo religions, parareligions, religious or
mystic systems, religious and semireligious
brotherhoods of numerous varieties.
|
|
Total Population. UN medium variant
figures for mid-1997, as given in World Population
Prospects: The 1996 Revision (New York: UN,
1997).
|
Sumber: EncyclopædiaBritannica,
Inc.
|