Claims to be the fastest growing religion

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There are several different religions claimed to be the “fastest growing religion”. Such claims vary due to different definitions of “fastest growing”, and whether the claim is worldwide or regional. There are also many unreliable claims and rumours, especially for conversion rates, that often spread as urban legends. Hard data is difficult to come by.

1 Different definitions of “fastest growing”
2 The difficulty of gathering data
3 Claims to the fastest growing religion
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Different definitions of “fastest growing”

Religions can grow in numbers due to conversion or due to population growth (assuming that children take on the religion of their parents). Religions in particular countries can grow due to immigration. So the fastest growing religion could refer to:

The religion whose absolute number of adherents is growing the fastest (by whatever means).
The religion which is growing fastest in terms of percentage growth per year (by whatever means).
The religion which is gaining the greatest number of converts.

Measures counting absolute numbers tend to favour the larger religions, measures counting percentage growth the smaller ones. For example if a religion had only 10 followers, a single addition would be a 10% increase, and would therefore dwarf the percentage growth rates of the larger religions.

[edit] The difficulty of gathering data

Statistics on religious adherence are difficult to gather and often contradictory; statistics for the change of religious adherence are even more so, requiring multiple surveys separated by many years using the same data gathering rules. This has only be achieved in rare cases, and then only for a particular country (such as the American Religious Identification Survey^[1] in the USA). Worldwide data is more difficult to gather than data on a particular country.

Statistics for rates of conversion are the most difficult to gather and the least reliable: they are often distorted by social taboos such as the ban on apostasy in Islam, or the reporting of commitments where the individual does not persist. This means that a lot of the data on growth of religions is derived from birth and immigration rates.

There are a large number of people who self-identify themselves as associated to a specific religion, but who are not religiously active. If, for example, asked to choose between Christianity and other religions they would say they were Christians; if asked to choose between Christianity, other religions and "Not religious", they would say "Not religious". This may make categorisation difficult.

In countries with mandatory religions, official statistics will only reflect the official position of the government.

[edit] Claims to the fastest growing religion

Note that it would be an argumentum ad populum to claim that being the “fastest growing religion” has any logical consequences about the truth of that religion.

A selection of the more credible claims are given below, but even these are often contradictory.

[edit] Buddhism

The Australian Bureau of statistics claims Buddhism to be the fastest growing religion in Australia in terms of percentage gain with a growth of 79.1% for the period 1996 to 2001 (200,000→358,000).^[2]

[edit] Falun Gong

No reliable data is available for the number of adherents of Falun Gong but as this religion was only established in 1992 most of the growth must have been by conversion. Estimates for the number of adherents for 1999 range from 2 million^[3] to 100 million.^[4]

[edit] Christianity

The U.S. Center for World Mission claimed a growth rate of 2.3% for the period 1970 to 1996, (slightly higher than the world population growth rate at the time). This increased the percentage of Christians from 33.7% to 33.9%.
The US department of state estimates that Protestant Christianity may have grown 600% over the last decade in Vietnam.^[5]
The World Christian Encyclopaedia estimates that there were 2,883,011 converts to Christianity each year between 1990 and 2000.^[6]
In Asia, Christianity is spreading rapidly in China and South Korea.^[7]. In the case of South Korea, Christianity has grown so fast that South Korea is now the second largest exporter of Christian missionaries, after the U.S.
An interview on Aljazeera suggests that over 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity in Africa every year. ^[8]

[edit] Islam

Data for Islam reveal that the growing number of Muslims is due primarily to the higher than average birth-rates and consequent population growths of Muslim countries and communities.

In 2006, countries with a Muslim majority had an average population growth rate of 1.8% per year (when weighted by percentage Muslim and population size).^[9] This compares with a world population growth rate of 1.12% per year.^[10]
According to the World Christian Encyclopaedia, between 1990 and 2000, Islam received around 865,558 converts each year. This compares with an approximate 2,883,011 converts each year for Christianity during the same period.^[6]
The World Almanac Book of Facts 1935 estimated 209,020,000 Muslims in the World. The Readers Digest Almanac 1983, estimated 700,000,000, Comparing these two estimates gives an average annual growth of 5% or 10,228,750 for Islam over these 48 years.^[11] But note that this value is as unreliable as these rates are calculated from two separate sources, which may have used different counting rules.

[edit] Non-Religious

The American Religious Identification Survey gave Non-Religious groups the largest gain in terms of absolute numbers - 14,300,000 (8.4% of the population) to 29,400,000 (14.1% of the population) for the period 1990 to 2001 in the USA.^[1]^[12].

[edit] Wicca

The American Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143% / 11,454 for the period 1990 to 2001 (8,000→134,000 - U.S. data / similar for Canada & Australia).^[1]^[12] (And this figure does not include self-identified pagans and druids, many of whom are also Wiccan.)