» 12/21/2011 12:37 ASIA Christianity is the world’s largest religion About one-third of the world’s people—2.18 billion—are classified as Christians, according to a Pew Forum survey. About 50.1 per cent of them are Catholics. In 100 years, the followers of Christ have increased four-fold but growth has left their proportion of the overall population almost unchanged. Significant increases have been recorded in Asia, which has the largest minorities, in China and India.
Rome (AsiaNews) – Christianity remains the world’s largest religion. About one-third of the world’s people—2.18 billion—are classified as Christians, this according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, a major US-based think tank. Muslims number 1.6 billion or 23.4 per cent of the world’s population. Roughly half of those are Catholics, with Protestants accounting for 37 per cent, Orthodox for 12 per cent , and the remainder scattered among small Christian denominations.
Overall, Christians represent the same percentage of the world’s population as they did 100 years ago. Although they number has nearly quadrupled, from about 600 million in 1910 to more than 2 billion in 2010, the world’s overall population also has risen rapidly, from an estimated 1.8 billion in 1910 to 6.9 billion in 2010. As a result, Christians make up almost the same portion of the world’s population today (32 per cent ) as they did a century ago (35 per cent ).
If the proportion of Christians has not changed much, their distribution has, with growth in Africa and Asia. In 1910, 66.3 per cent of Christians lived in Europe, 27.1 in the Americas, 4.5 per cent in Asia-Pacific, 1.4 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and 0.7 per cent in the Middle East and North Africa. Today, the situation is radically different. Europe is second with 25.9 per cent against 36.8 per cent in the Americas. Sub-Saharan Africa has 23.6 per cent of Christians, whilst Asia-Pacific has 13.1 per cent. Practically, there has been no change in the Middle East and North Africa, from 0.7 to 0.6 per cent.
Christians’ distribution is significiantly different in another respect. A century ago, the Global North (commonly defined as North America, Europe, Australia, Japan and New Zealand) contained more than four times as many Christians as the Global South (the rest of the world). Now 61 per cent of all Christians are in the South and 39 per cent in the North.
In sub-Saharan Africa, Christians were 9 per cent of the population in 1910; now they are 63 per cent. In the Asia-Pacific region, they were 3 per cent; now thye re 7 per cent.
Of the 232 countries and territories included in this study, 158 have Christian majorities. However, most of the Christian-majority countries are relatively small. Conversely, there are important Christian minorities in some of the most populous countries in the world.
China and India for example have the biggest Christian minorities, 67 and 32 million (5 and 2.6 per cent) respectively. Indonesia follows with 21 million (8,8 per cent). South Korea’s Christians number 14.1 million (44.8 per cent), Vietnam’s 7 milioni (8.0 per cent). Kazakhstan is in ninth place with 4.1 million (26,2 per cent).
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