Most increase in the population of any religious denomination is simply due to births. Still, the world's largest religions that are showing increases that outrun birth-rate include Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. There is often little coverage of the "No religious denomination" category (which includes deists, agnostics, atheists, and theists) although some evidence suggests they are growing rapidly. In the United States[1] the so-called "Nones" are the fastest growing religious status; Australia, Canada and much of Europe have also seen dramatic increases in the numbers of non-religious people.
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Religions can grow in numbers because of conversion or because of higher birth rates in a religious group or both. Measures counting absolute numbers tend to favour the larger religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism for example which have at least 800 million followers and more). Measures counting percentage growth tend to favour the smaller ones such as Wicca, Falun Dong and other minority religions.
The fastest growing religion could refer to:
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[2] in the USA, or census data from Australia[3] (which has included a voluntary religious question since 1911). Worldwide data are 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 as religious statistics in general are unreliable: they are often distorted by social taboos (for example in Iran where Bahai's hide their religious belief).[4] 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
While 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 limited period time or a single region of the world.
Lewis M. Hopfe in his "Religions of the World" suggested that "Buddhism is perhaps on the verge of another great missionary outreach".(1987:170)
Buddhism is being recognized as the fastest growing religion in Western societies both in terms of new converts and more so in terms of friends of Buddhism, who seek to study and practice various aspects of Buddhism.[5][6] As in the United States, Buddhism is ranked among the fastest growing religions in many Western European countries.[7]
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).[8] However, because Australia is statistically small, no inferences can be drawn from that for the whole world.
Buddhism is the fastest-growing religion in England's jails, with the number of followers rising eightfold over the past decade.[9]
According to a recent report in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Japanese Buddhist sect Nichiren Shoshu of America (NSA) is the fastest growing religion in the United States. Since coming to America in 1960 NSA has launched an aggressive proselytizing program. In 1967 it built a national headquarters and World Culture Center in Santa Monica, California, and has since established offices in most major U.S. cities. According to NSA’s figures the sect, which is part of the Japan based umbrella organization Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Society), now claims a half million members in the U.S. - up 100,000 from a year ago.[10]
Pentecostalism, described by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life as a group of charismatic movements,[11] has grown, according to researchers, from 72 million in the 1960s to 525 million in 2000, though some have criticized these numbers as defining Pentecostalism too broadly.[12] According to a 2005 paper submitted to a meeting of the American Political Science Association, most of this growth has occurred in non-Western countries, such as Latin America and Africa, and concludes the movement is the fastest growing religion worldwide.[12]
In Vietnam, the US Department of State estimates that Protestants in Vietnam may have grown 600% over the last decade.[13] In Nigeria, the numbers of Christians has grown from 21.4% in 1953 to 48.2% in 2003. In South Africa, Pentecostalism has grown from 0.2% in 1951 to 7.6% in 2001. In South Korea, Christianity has grown from 20.7% in 1985 to 29.2% in 2005 according to the Pew Forum.[14][15]
The records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints show membership growth every decade since its beginning in the 1830s. Following initial growth rates that averaged 10% to 25% per year in the 1830s through 1850s, it grew at about 4% per year through the last four decades of the 19th century. After a steady slowing of growth in the first four decades of the 20th century to a rate of about 2% per year in the 1930s (the Great Depression years), growth boomed to an average of 6% per year for the decade around 1960, staying around 4% to 5% through 1990. After 1990, average annual growth again slowed steadily to a rate around 2.5% for the first decade of the 21st century, still double the world population growth rate of 1.2% for the same period.
The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) survey, which involved 50,000 participants, reported that the number of participants in the survey identifying themselves as deists grew at the rate of 717% between 1990 and 2001. If this were generalized to the US population as a whole, it would make deism the fastest-growing religious classification in the US for that period, with the reported total of 49,000 self-identified adherents representing about 0.02% of the US population at the time.[2]
Falun Gong is a relatively new religion that has emerged from China. No reliable data are 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 and estimates for the number of adherents from 1999 range from 2 million[16] to 100 million.[17] This is primarily claimed by the Chinese government.
Some 80% of the population of the Republic of India are Hindus, accounting for about 90% of Hindus worldwide. Their 10-year growth rate is estimated at 20% (based on the period 1991 to 2001), corresponding to a yearly growth close to 2% or a doubling time of about 38 years.[18] However, the percentage of Hindus in the population of India has decreased by 3 percentage points since 1961, dropping from 83.5% in 1961 to 80.5% in 2001[19] In addition to 80.5% of the population,that identify themselves as Hindus, there are approximately 40 million people (3%) that practice Jainism and Buddhism which evolved from Hinduism. The tradition, practices and goals of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism are very similar. Ancient India had two philosophical streams of religious thoughts: the Shramana and the Vedic. These religions have shared paralleled beliefs and have existed side by side for thousands of years.[20]
In a 2009 Newsweek article entitled, "We Are All Hindus Now," Lisa Miller notes that although the vast majority of Americans continue to identify with Christianity, at the same time we "are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity." [21] These are pivotal issues, and more and more westerners are coming to view the Hindu understanding of them as both rational and appealing. This does not mean there will be a large number of western converts to Hinduism anytime soon, but it does show the significant effect that Hindu thinking is having on the west. The growing Indian Hindu community in America is also helping to bring about a more realistic view of the tradition. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. The article also pointed out that this is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll.[21]
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion by number of conversions each year: Although the religion began in Arabia, by 2002 80% of all believers in Islam lived outside the Arab world. In the period 1990-2000, approximately 12.5 million more people converted to Islam than to Christianity.[22] Part of the books quote can be seen online from this extract from Google Books.[22] This was again shown in the 2005, 50th anniversary of Guinness Book of World Records, although the number of conversions was not mentioned this time.[23]
In 1990, 935 million people were Muslims and this figure had risen to around 1.2 billion by the year 2000, meaning that around this time one in five people were followers of Islam. According to the BBC, a comprehensive American study concluded in 2009]] the number stood at 1 in 4 with 60% of Muslims spread all over the Asian continent: A report from an American think-tank has estimated 1.57 billion Muslims populate the world - with 60% in Asia.[24][25] The report was done by the Pew Forum Research Centre.[25] The forum also projected that in 2010 out of the total number of Muslims in the world 62.1% will live in Asia.[24]
However the report also included a statement saying While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%, compared with the projected rate of 1.5% for the period from 2010 to 2030.[24] The report also made reference to the fact that Muslims are estimated to make up 23.4% of the total global population in 2010 (out of a total of 6.9 billion people) and that by 2030 Muslims will represent about 26.4% of the global population (out of a total of 7.9 billion people).[24]
The American Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143% for the period 1990 to 2001 (8,000→134,000 - U.S. data / similar for Canada & Australia).[2][26] According to The Statesman Anne Elizabeth Wynn claims "The two most recent American Religious Identification Surveys declare Wicca, one form of paganism, as the fastest growing spiritual identification in America".[27] The "Free Press Release Distribution Service" claims Wicca is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States as well.[28]Wicca which is largely a Pagan religion is primarily attracting the followers of nature based religions in the Southern United States which is contributing towards its growth.[29]