Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!njin!paul.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: JMK5@ns.cc.lehigh.edu (J. Michael Kafes) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: RELIGIOUS STATS (was Re: Christians a dying breed?) Message-ID: Date: 8 May 91 08:24:07 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 57 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes: >In article >jloucks@uts.amdahl.com (Jim Loucks) writes: >>An atheist once told me that as a Christian, I was a dying breed. This >>seems to be the general belief in a lot of newsgroups. The Center for >>World Missions reports a different story: >> >>Worldwide Christianity is growing at a rate of 70,000 persons every >>day; 3500 new churches are opening every week. >In 1989, if I recall correctly, Islam was the fastest-growing religion >in the United States. I doubt it would have slacked off. Religion in >general is booming as a result of maturation of the spirituality of >the 1960s. Using the 1990 and 1989 Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbooks, which publish world-wide religious statistics each year, I had synthesized the data into graphs and growth rates of each religion in every continent around the world. The fastest growing religion in terms of total new believers world-wide was Islam. However, the religion with the greatest percentage gain world-wide was the Baha'i Faith, which as of mid-1989 stands at 5 million believers. Although 5 million does not seem like a lot, a curious statistic I came across that the Encyclopedia Britannica measures is the number of countries and major territories that each religion has a significant following in. Christianity is the leader with 251. In second place is the Baha'i Faith, with 205. Here is a table listing the religions, how many followers each one has, and how many countries they have significant followings in: Christians 1,711,897,000 251 Roman Catholics 971,702,000 242 Protestants 351,220,000 230 Baha'is 5,072,000 205 Muslims 924,611,500 172 Anglicans 71,209,300 148 Jews 17,357,000 125 Hindus 689,205,100 88 Buddhists 311,438,000 86 Chinese Folk religionists 170,236,200 56 Sikhs 17,835,100 20 Jains 3,581,500 10 Confucians 5,821,400 3 Shintoists 3,205,300 3 What makes this even more interesting is that the Baha'i Faith is less than 150 years old. It took Christianity 2,000 years to spread around the world. The central and pivotal teaching of the Baha'i Faith sheds some light on why it has such universal appeal: the unity of all humankind on earth. It is the first religion to lay out a Divinely revealed framework for the establishment and maintenance of a true and world peace. Michael Kafes JMK5@NS.CC.LEHIGH.EDU