The International Bulletin for Missionary Research has once again produced its global report on religious statistics. Krish Kandiah has noticed five trends of this year’s report that are quite interesting.
1. The Church is growing slowest in Europe and North America
The Church is still growing in Europe and North America, but the increase is small.
2. The Church is growing dramatically in the rest of the world.
Explosive growth has been seen in Asia, Africa, and South America. The growth of the African Church is particularly significant. In 1990 there were fewer than 9 million Christians in Africa. Now there are more than 541 million.
3. Christianity is easily the world’s largest religion.
There are more than 2.4 billion Christians worldwide which is just over a third of the world’s total population.
4. Christianity is ridiculously divided.
There are more than 45,000 different Christian denominations in the world today. In 1900 there were 1600 denominations.
5. How many atheists?
There are 136.4 million atheists in the world, which is about 1.8 percent of the population. Though info on atheists is hard to determine, atheists are the only grouping to see a downturn, though very small.
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