Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!sun-barr!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: RELIGIOUS STATS (was Re: Christians a dying breed?) Message-ID: Date: 13 May 91 05:40:08 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Harvey Mudd College Lines: 46 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , JMK5@ns.cc.lehigh.edu (J. Michael Kafes) writes: > 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 I believe, however, that the figures that are cited giving Islam the #1 spot tend not to split groups up the way you do: the Baha'is, for this purpose would be considered part of Islam in much the same way that Catholics and Protestants are lumped together as Christians. > Christians 1,711,897,000 251 > Roman Catholics 971,702,000 242 > Protestants 351,220,000 230 > Anglicans 71,209,300 148 Huh? If your category of Christians does not include RC, Protestant or Anglican, that leaves Orthodox and some of the other "Catholic" (for want of a better word) churches, e.g., the Ethiopian Catholic church. That runs counter to my understanding that RC is the largest portion of the Christian faith. Nor do the numbers add up right to make Christians the total of the three listed (and seems a bit high still if it's supposed to include the other numbers). Perhaps another look at your sources would be in order? -dh Don Hosek | To retrieve files from ymir via the mailserver, dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu | send a message to mailserv@ymir.claremont.edu Quixote Digital Typography | with a line saying send [DIRECTORY]FILENAME 714-625-0147 | where DIRECTORY is the FTP directory (sans ---------------------------+ "anonymous") and FILENAME is the filename, e.g. "send [tex]00readme.txt". There is a list of files in each directory under the name 00files.txt. Binary files are not available by this technique. [I noticed that. It's pretty clear that the list was including both overall totals and some of the more important constituent parts. Thus the conclusion I would draw from those numbers is that the RCC is 972M out of 1712M total Christians, which is consistent with what I know. --clh]