Global Christianity

marty1985

The Pew Forum have just released a new report on the state of Christianity, and I just thought I'd share some of the details.

One third of the global population are Christian - that's 2.18 billion people, and around half of those are Catholics. (Muslims make up just under a quarter of the world's population.)

Although Christians make up a third of the global population, they form a majority in about two-thirds of all the countries.

100 years ago, there were 600 million Christians, this figure has quadrupled - but in accordance with rising global population. About one-third of the world's population was Christian in 1910, and this hasn't changed.

In keeping with the themes of books such as The Next Christendom and God Is Back, the major developments are in the geographical spread of Christianity. No continent can now claim to be the center of global Christianity (in 1910 two-thirds of them were in Europe, in 2010 the figure is closer to one-quarter). The proportion of Europeans and Americans who are Christian has dropped from 95% in 1910 to 76% (it doesn't indicate how much of this is due to a rise in non-religiously affiliated or a rise in Muslims), but the proportion for Sub-Saharan Africans has risen from 9% to 63%.

The report also estimates that China has over 67 million Christians, but the actual figure is bound to be higher. It's a politically sensitive issue and most scholars would say there is a lot of underreporting by individuals, churches and state organisations (the underground Catholic Church is bigger than the official one). In the book God Is Back, it is estimated the number is over 100 million. Incidentally, it appears part of the government's reason for underreporting is that there are seemingly more Catholics than members of the Communist Party.

Ireland is listed as having 4.2 million Christians (just under 4 million Catholics, 230,000 Protestants) out of a population of 4,470,000.

For the UK, it's 45 million Christians (10 million Catholics, 34 million Protestants) out of a population of 62 million.

Nigeria now has twice as many Protestants than Germany, birthplace of the Protestant Reformation.

http://pewforum.org/Christian/Global-Christianity-exec.aspx

Peregrinus

marty1985 wrote: »

. . . The proportion of Europeans and Americans who are Christian has dropped from 95% in 1910 to 76% (it doesn't indicate how much of this is due to a rise in non-religiously affiliated or a rise in Muslims) . . .

Comparatively little of it is due to a rise in Islam. Excluding Turkey, about 7.2% of the population of Europe is Muslim. But most of this population lives in the Balkans, in the Caucasus or in Russia, all places which have long-established Muslim populations. In most of those countries, the proportion of the population which is Muslim is not growing.

In the EU members states, the Muslim population is growing, but it’s still only 3.2%. Consequently it can’t account for a near-20% drop in the proportion of Christians.

The story is similar in the US. Estimates of the Muslim population of the US vary widely, but they range between 0.6% (the CIA World Factbook) and 2.2% (the Council on American-Islamic Relations).

goose2005

marty1985 wrote: »

Ireland is listed as having 4.2 million Christians (just under 4 million Catholics, 230,000 Protestants) out of a population of 4,470,000.

For the UK, it's 45 million Christians (10 million Catholics, 34 million Protestants) out of a population of 62 million.

Surely these two sentences alone make it clear that the report is nonsense. A lot of people would tick the census box for Catholic/Protestant, but that's it. In Dublin only 14% of nominal Catholics attend weekly Mass, and even those who do regularly ignore Church teachings. There are probably a million Christians in Ireland, no more.

PDN

goose2005 wrote: »

Surely these two sentences alone make it clear that the report is nonsense. A lot of people would tick the census box for Catholic/Protestant, but that's it. In Dublin only 14% of nominal Catholics attend weekly Mass, and even those who do regularly ignore Church teachings. There are probably a million Christians in Ireland, no more.

That all depends on how you define and count Christians.

Generally, Christians ourselves use a very narrow definition when we are discussing historical atrocities etc, and then a very broad definition when we want to point out how many hundreds of millions, or billions, of Christians there are in the world.

Those who want to argue against Christianity do the exact opposite. They use a narrow definition to argue that Christianity is declining or to deny that someone admirable is a Christian, but then use an incredibly broad definition to argue that a horrible person is a Christian.

My own guess is that there would be less than 500,000 genuine Christians in Ireland - and over 4,000,000 cultural Christians.

Doctor DooM

PDN wrote: »

That all depends on how you define and count Christians.

Generally, Christians ourselves use a very narrow definition when we are discussing historical atrocities etc, and then a very broad definition when we want to point out how many hundreds of millions, or billions, of Christians there are in the world.

Those who want to argue against Christianity do the exact opposite. They use a narrow definition to argue that Christianity is declining or to deny that someone admirable is a Christian, but then use an incredibly broad definition to argue that a horrible person is a Christian.

My own guess is that there would be less than 500,000 genuine Christians in Ireland - and over 4,000,000 cultural Christians.

Yeah but PDN that article is saying there's approximately 200,000 people in Ireland who don't identify as Christian. Do you not think there's at least 200,000 Muslims alone? Even the mammy factor doesn't make those figures add up for me.


EDIT:

According to the Irish census 2002 the number of Muslims was 19147. I stand corrected

Cato Maior

PDN wrote: »

That all depends on how you define and count Christians.

Generally, Christians ourselves use a very narrow definition when we are discussing historical atrocities etc, and then a very broad definition when we want to point out how many hundreds of millions, or billions, of Christians there are in the world.

Those who want to argue against Christianity do the exact opposite. They use a narrow definition to argue that Christianity is declining or to deny that someone admirable is a Christian, but then use an incredibly broad definition to argue that a horrible person is a Christian.

My own guess is that there would be less than 500,000 genuine Christians in Ireland - and over 4,000,000 cultural Christians.

How do you define a genuine Christian?

ISAW

goose2005 wrote: »

Surely these two sentences alone make it clear that the report is nonsense. A lot of people would tick the census box for Catholic/Protestant, but that's it. In Dublin only 14% of nominal Catholics attend weekly Mass, and even those who do regularly ignore Church teachings.

And your evidence is?

There are probably a million Christians in Ireland, no more.

And your evidence is?
So if people don't follow 100% a Church teaching they stop being Christian?

PDN

Cato Maior wrote: »

How do you define a genuine Christian?

My own personal definition (not that as adopted by this Forum) is that a genuine Christian is someone who has made a free and unforced decision to trust in Jesus Christ as their Saviour who died on the Cross for their sins and was raised again from the dead, and have asked Him to become the Lord of their life, and, having repented of their old manner of life, are making a sincere attempt to follow His teachings.

That would be the narrowest definition.

At its broadest, being a 'Christian' is a cultural designation which includes the likes of Richard Dawkins (who has described himself as a 'cultural Christian').

ISAW

Cato Maior wrote: »

How do you define a genuine Christian?

Maybe not the ones that are not genuine atheists?

ISAW

PDN wrote: »

My own personal definition (not that as adopted by this Forum) is that a genuine Christian is someone who has made a free and unforced decision to trust in Jesus Christ as their Saviour who died on the Cross for their sins and was raised again from the dead, and have asked Him to become the Lord of their life, and, having repented of their old manner of life, are making a sincere attempt to follow His teachings.

That would be the narrowest definition.

funny I would have thought way more than half a million Anglicans Orthodox and Catholics do this in their creed every week?

PDN

ISAW wrote: »

funny I would have thought way more than half a million Anglicans Orthodox and Catholics do this in their creed every week?

I wouldn't dream of commenting on the funniness or otherwise of your thoughts.

Manach

My initial though on hearing those numbers of Christians, is that the world should be a better place if we even in part followed the tenants of our faith. On reflection, if any of the creeds/theorical political credos were followed this Earth might be better. Though never a utopia, in the Thomas Moore sense.

marty1985

Both sides play a numbers game.

I think arguing over whether those surveyed are genuine Christians misses the point. Of course they are not all "genuine Christians", but people are free to identify themselves in any way they wish or to affiliate with any denomination. Similarly, I would say not everyone who ticks No Religion is an atheist.

These surveys are interesting, but I wouldn't claim them to be definitive, but reliable based on their own methodology. The scope is vast, so there will be problems. At census time there are often issues with the religion question. There are sometimes politically motivated campaigns to disrupt the count, which has happened in Northern Ireland in the past. There are sometimes differences between non-response to the religion question, and a response of "No Religion". In one Northern Ireland census in the 80s, 18% of people didn't respond to the question.

Most of us would now normally see a positive incentive to be either religiously enumerated or not, as both sides (and all the communities within) want recognition in society, and probably want a fair allocation of resources, and an impact on policy making etc.

Secularisation will lead to a decline in the church attendance figures - if that's how you're defining a Christian (but religion has different impacts on attitudes and behaviour), and a decline in major denominations. But it's still important not to exaggerate the degree to which the society is secular. The impact of religion on attitudes is best indicated by a question on belief in God or other such approaches. While a huge proportion of people might not go through the public ritual of attending mass, it doesn't mean they have a truly secular approach to life.

There are also some people who feel religion is of no significance, and hence ignore the question. For some, stating No Religion can seem quite forceful. But then, some not stating their religion can still have a religious affiliation. It's a complicated business.

But I posted this in the Christianity forum as it's a survey of Christians, and so it's hard to take information on other groups from it.

marty1985

Manach wrote: »

My initial though on hearing those numbers of Christians, is that the world should be a better place if we even in part followed the tenants of our faith. On reflection, if any of the creeds/theorical political credos were followed this Earth might be better. Though never a utopia, in the Thomas Moore sense.

One important take home point is that no single continent or region can claim to be the center of global Christianity. Since there is a huge geographical shift, we need to look into the differences between the global North and the global South, because a geographical spread of Christianity does not necessarily mean any kind of harmonisation. Northern and Southern churches have huge differences in their views on many issues, such as gender and sexuality etc. Not to mention that rises in Christianity in certain regions is increasing tensions with other ethnic groups.

28064212

Well, straight away, the Irish figure is nonsense. 4,210,000 Christians? 94.1% of the population? Even discarding the "cultural Catholic" phenomenon, in the 2006 census there were 3,842,737 Christians, 90% of the total, and most people expect that to have dropped a few percentage points when the 2011 results come out.

Actually, checking the report itself, it claims to have used the 2006 census as its source, but "adjusted for missing data", whatever that means.

Cato Maior

The Iona Institute published the results of a survey recently where 69% of respondents identified themselves as Catholics, of which only 44% (30% of total surveyed) had attended mass in at least the last month.

They collected figures for other religious membership categories and no religion, but did not publish them.

Peregrinus

28064212 wrote: »

Well, straight away, the Irish figure is nonsense. 4,210,000 Christians? 94.1% of the population? Even discarding the "cultural Catholic" phenomenon, in the 2006 census there were 3,842,737 Christians, 90% of the total, and most people expect that to have dropped a few percentage points when the 2011 results come out.

Actually, checking the report itself, it claims to have used the 2006 census as its source, but "adjusted for missing data", whatever that means.

My guess is that it's an attempt to adjust the 2006 figure for self-identified Christians in light of population movements between 2006 and 2010. They estimate total population in 2010 at 4.47 million, which is about 260,000 more than in 2006. The growth is the sum of (births plus immigration) less (deaths plus emigration) since 2006, and they must have made some assumptions about the religious identification of those four groups.

I don't know what assumptions they made or what data they worked from, but I doubt very much if 94.1% of the population self-identify as Christian, and I expect the 2011 census result to return a figure below 85%.

robindch

marty1985 wrote: »

Ireland is listed as having 4.2 million Christians (just under 4 million Catholics, 230,000 Protestants) out of a population of 4,470,000.

The Catechism Of The Catholic Church lists a very great number of beliefs which the Vatican requires its believers to believe:

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

However, I'd imagine that the number of people who actually believe all of these things, or even the number of people who are aware of and understand all of them, would probably fit together without too much trouble into the National Concert Hall.

That said, the number of people who genuinely believe they're eating human flesh following transubstantiation is, so far as I'm aware, zero. So perhaps there are no real catholics in Ireland after all.

Manach

Perhaps we might compare and contrast what it means to be truly Irish. Should it be a case of needing to have and read the constitution to a minimum level. I suspect the government would not be in favour of such, given they wish to broaden the tax base as much as possible (OT - a future tax on boards posting w'd bankrupt me )

The Quadratic Equation

PDN wrote: »

I wouldn't dream of commenting on the funniness or otherwise of your thoughts.

He made a very good point, this is not a good response.

Very disappointing in fact PDN.

I did not think you were like that, and I hope you are not.