Claims to be the fastest growing religion

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There are several different religions claiming 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.

Contents 1 Different definitions of “fastest growing” 2 The difficulty of gathering data 3 Claims to be the fastest growing religion 3.1 Buddhism 3.2 Christianity 3.3 Falun Gong 3.4 Hinduism 3.5 Islam 3.6 Wicca 3.7 Non-Religious 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 higher birth rates in a religious group (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 been achieved in rare cases, and then only for a particular country, such as the American Religious Identification Survey^[1] in the USA, or census data from Australia^[2] (which has included a voluntary religious question since 1911). 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 categorization difficult.

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

[edit] Claims to be 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.

Whilst it is possible to find claims that almost any religion is the fastest growing, it is much harder to find ones backed up by scientific data. A selection of the more credible claims are given below, but even these are often contradictory, and most of them only cover a single region of the world.

[edit] Buddhism

The Australian Bureau of Statistics through statistical analysis held Buddhism to be the fastest growing spiritual tradition/religion in Australia in terms of percentage gain with a growth of 79.1% for the period 1996 to 2001 (200,000→358,000).^[3]

[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%.^[4]
• The US Department of State estimates that Protestant Christianity may have grown 600% over the last decade in Vietnam.^[5]

[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^[6] to 100 million.^[7]

[edit] Hinduism

The Australian claim for Buddhism above has now been superseded by the 2006 census data, which gives the highest percentage gain to Hinduism, with a 193% increase over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006. This is, however, from a small base.^[8] The increase may be due to immigration of Hindus from India.

[edit] Islam

Data for Islam reveal that the growing number of Muslims is due primarily to immigration (in the West) and higher birth rates (worldwide).^[9]

• 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).^[10] This compares with a world population growth rate of 1.12% per year.^[11]

• According to the "Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life"^[12]

“

Islam is already the fastest-growing religion in Europe. Driven by immigration and high birthrates, the number of Muslims on the continent has tripled in the last 30 years. Most demographers forecast a similar or even higher rate of growth in the coming decades.

”

• According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the World Christian Database as of 2007 estimated the six fastest growing religions of the world to be Islam (1.84%), the Bahá'í Faith (1.7%), Sikhism (1.62%), Jainism (1.57%), Hinduism (1.52%), and Christianity (1.32%). High birth rates were cited as the reason for the growth.^[13]

• Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiles the Vatican's yearbook, said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that "For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population -- a stable percentage -- while Muslims were at 19.2 percent. "It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer," the monsignor said.^[14]

[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][15]

[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][15]

• In Australia, census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics gives "no religion" the largest gains in absolute numbers over the 15 years from 1991 to 2006. from 2,948,888 (18.2% of the population that answered the question) to 3,706,555 (21.0% of the population that answered the question).^[16]

[edit] See also

• Argumentum ad populum
• Religious_demographics#Trends_in_adherence
• Major religious groups

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Tables from David A. Barrett, World Christian Encyclopaedia, 2001
• FAQ from Adherents.com describing why it is difficult to measure the fastest growing religion
• Religious Projections for the Next 200 Years from World Network of Religious Futurists
• Estimate from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace using data from World Christian Database