January 29, 2001
Christianity still largest
___WASHINGTON (RNS)--Despite an upswing in the number of both Muslims and non-religious people worldwide, Christianity remains the world's largest religion, according to a new report on religious demographics.
___"Christianity has become massively accepted as the religion of developing countries in the so-called Third World," says the 1,700-page World Christian Encyclopedia, prepared by the Global Evangelization Movement research center in Virginia.
___The report pegs Christianity as the "most extensive and universal religion in history," pointing out that Christians constituted the largest religious group worldwide at both the start and end of the 20th century.
___In 1900, Christianity boasted 555 million adherents (32.2 percent of the world's population then). In the year 2000, the religion claimed 31 percent of the world's population with 1.9 billion followers.
___The report notes that 386 million Christians identify themselves as members of "independent" churches distinct from Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans and Orthodox Christians. In the United States, 192 million people say they are Christians.
___Islam follows Christianity as the world's second most-populous religion, with 1.2 billion followers, 19.6 percent of the world's population. At the dawn of the century, Islam claimed 200 million followers, about 12.3 percent of the world's population. In the past three decades alone, the number of Muslims in the United States quadrupled to 4.1 million.
___Also increasing is the number of people who identify themselves as non-religious. Though 3 million said they were non-religious in the year 1900, last year that number stood at 768 million--12.7 percent of the world's population.
___Behind Islam and Christianity comes Hinduism with 811 million followers worldwide. Buddhism has 360 million followers, while Sikhism and Judaism boast 23 million and 14 million followers, respectively.
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