{"id":16262,"date":"2013-03-22T00:01:12","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T05:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/number-of-christians-rises-but-their-share-of-world-population-stays-stable\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:42:15","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:42:15","slug":"number-of-christians-rises-but-their-share-of-world-population-stays-stable","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2013\/03\/22\/number-of-christians-rises-but-their-share-of-world-population-stays-stable\/","title":{"rendered":"Number of Christians Rises, But Their Share of World Population Stays Stable"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are 2.18 billion Christians around the world, up from about 600 million in 1910, according to a 2011 study by the Pew Research Center\u2019s Forum on Religion & Public Life. But the world\u2019s overall population also has risen rapidly, from an estimated 1.8 billion in 1910 to 6.9 billion in 2010. As a result, Christians make up about the same portion of the world\u2019s population today (32%) as they did a century ago (35%).<\/p>\n\n

Taken as a whole, Christians are still by far the world\u2019s largest religious group. Muslims, the second-largest group, make up a little less than a quarter of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n\n

This apparent stability in the percentage of the global population that is Christian masks a momentous shift. Although Europe and the Americas still are home to a majority of the world\u2019s Christians (63%), that share is much lower than it was in 1910 (93%). And the proportion of Europeans and Americans who are Christian has dropped from 95% in 1910 to 76% in 2010 in Europe as a whole, and from 96% to 86% in the Americas as a whole.<\/p>\n\n

At the same time, Christianity has grown enormously in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, where there were relatively few Christians at the beginning of the 20th century. The share of the population that is Christian in sub-Saharan Africa climbed from 9% in 1910 to 63% in 2010, while in the Asia-Pacific region it rose from 3% to 7%. Christianity today \u2013 unlike a century ago \u2013 is truly a global faith. Read more<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The number of Christians in the world has nearly quadrupled in the last 100 years, but they comprise about the same share (32%) of the population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":"","sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0},"categories":[],"bylines":[859],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-16262","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","bylines-bruce-drake","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states"],"label":"Short 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