Gina A. Zurlo

Yearbook of international religious demography

Contributors are: Ariela Keysar, Brian Grim, Todd Johnson, Marcin Wodzinski, Raya Muttarak, Maria Rita Testa, Gina Zurlo, Yaghoob Foroutan, Marcin Stonawski, Vegard Skirbekk, Conrad Hackett, Michaela Potancokova, Phillip Connor, Peter Crossing, Juan Carlos Esparza Ochoa, Maria Concepcion Servin Nieto

Christianity 2017: Five Hundred Years of Protestant Christianity:

Throughout 2017, Protestants around the world will celebrate five hundred years of history. Although for several centuries the Protestant movement was based in Europe, then North America, from its Western homelands it eventually spread all over the world. In 2017 there are 560 million Protestants found in nearly all the world’s 234 countries. Of these 560 million, only 16 percent are in Europe, with 41 percent in Africa, a figure projected to reach 53 percent by 2050. The article also presents the latest statistics related to global Christianity and its mission.

Christianity 2018: More African Christians and Counting Martyrs:

This article features five statistical tables with 2018 figures for many aspects of global Christianity, from membership to finance to martyrdom. Over the last 1,000 years, Europe had more Christians than any other continent. By 2018 Africa had the most Christians: 599 million, vs. 597 million in Latin America and 550 million in Europe. At the same time, Christianity continues to decline in the Middle East, falling from 13.6 percent of the population in 1900 to less than 4 percent today. In 1800 Christians and Muslims together represented only 33 percent of the world’s population; by 2018 they represented 57 percent, increasing to 64 percent by 2050.

The Legacy of David B. Barrett

Missiologists today speak routinely of the shift of Christianity to the Global South, but it was David B. Barrett who first described this trend. Many of the religious statistics cited by sociologists, demographers, scholars of world Christianity, the media, and others today can be traced to the work of Barrett and the 1982 World Christian Encyclopedia. Barrett strove to meld his scientific background with a missionary conviction to reach the unevangelized. In the process, he inadvertently laid the foundation for the contemporary academic field of international religious demography, a vital part of his mission research legacy.

Unaffiliated, Yet Religious: A Methodological and Demographic Analysis

The mid-twentieth-century secularization theory – that an increase in modernity means a decrease in religion – has been largely debunked (see Berger 2014). Despite increased modernity the world has in fact become more religious; 80.8% of the global population self-identified with a religion in 1970, rising to 88.1% in 2010 and with a projected increase to 91.5% by 2050 (see table 2; Johnson and Grim 2015). At the same time, the boundaries between religion and non-religion (atheism and agnosticism) are becoming increasingly blurred. As this chapter discusses, many surveys have reported that individuals are leaving institutionalized religion and becoming part of what is known as the “unaffiliated”. But who exactly are the unaffiliated (also called the “nones”)? The category of the unaffiliated has become ubiquitous in both social scientific and popular language, yet the term suffers from a lack of clarity and nuance. In many studies, the term is conflated with the non-religious, leaving a serious gap in understanding of the religious leanings of the majority of the “nones”.1 In addition, the issue of international perspective is important – what “increased secularism” means is different in the United States than in, for example, Indonesia or Kenya. It can refer to, among other variables, a decrease in attendance at religious services, changes on particular ethical issues, or selfidentifying as non-religious. The purpose of this chapter is to nuance the category of the unaffiliated to interpret the whole in its various parts: atheists, agnostics, and – counterintuitively – religionists. Doing so requires looking beyond survey measures and engaging with other types of source material that reveal a different, more complicated, picture. Ethnographic studies, data from religious communities, and on-the-ground reports provide a more complex picture of who the unaffiliated are and, perhaps more importantly, are not. Inaccurate measurement of the “religious nones” also affects data reporting on the size and structure of

Tracking the Emigration of Christians from the Middle East

The proportional decline of historic Christian communities in the Middle East is continuing. Christians were 13.6 percent of the region’s population in 1910 but only 4.2 percent in 2010; by 2025, they will likely constitute 3.6 percent. While Christians in the Middle East continue to suffer from war and conflict, the expansion of Christianity to the Global South and the postcolonial break between notions of “Western” and “Christian” are positive developments for communities under siege in the region. Christians from the Middle East are now present all over the world, and Christians from the Global South are increasingly drawn to the Middle East. Some of the region’s most pressing concerns can be addressed by advocating for freedom for all religious minorities in countries experiencing high restrictions on religion. Additionally, promoting interfaith dialogue where Middle Eastern Christians are in diaspora can serve to strengthen their ties with fellow religionists in their host countries and abroad. Introduction In recent history, one of the most profound changes in the global religious landscape has been the unrelenting proportional decline of historic Christian communities in the Middle East. An impassioned appeal for Christians in the region recently came from Patriarch Louis Sako of the Chaldean Catholic community in Babylon (Iraq). After lamenting the decline of Christians in Iraq and surrounding countries, Patriarch Sako pleaded with Christians around the world not to forget the Christians of the Middle East. He wrote, “The entire international community should insist that Christians remain in the Middle East, not simply as minorities, but as citizens enjoying full equality