- Email: [email protected]
Quantifying alternate futures of religion and religions
Futures 36 (2004) 947–960 www.elsevier.com/locate/futures
Quantifying alternate futures of religion and religions Todd M. Johnson a,, David B. Barrett b a
b
130 Essex St., South Hamilton, MA 01982, USA Department of Missiometrics, Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA
Abstract Writers on the future of religion are usually drawn to extreme portrayals of decline or revival of religion. However, the world’s religious situation is replete with detailed information, drawn from enormous data collections on religious affiliation and questions about religion in government censuses. Quantitative tools, utilizing this information in the context of demography—births, deaths, conversions, defections, immigration, and emigration, provide a more nuanced view of mankind’s religious future. Alternate futures of religious affiliation can be produced by extrapolating explicit assumptions related to these six areas. Demographic trends coupled with conservative estimates of conversions and defections envision over 80% of the world’s population will continue to be affiliated to religions 200 years into the future. # 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction At a superficial glance, it may seem as though very little information is available to the researcher who is interested in religious affiliation in the future. Indeed, writings about the future of religion often have the appearance of sheer guesswork. Those brave enough to venture into this realm gravitate inexorably to two extreme visions of the religious future of mankind—from fanciful predictions of religious utopia on the one side to decline and collapse on the other. Perhaps this is due to the strong bias of those who write about the future of religion—mainly devout religionists or ultra-secularists. The apparent absence of quantitative data for
Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.M. Johnson).
0016-3287/$ - see front matter # 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2004.02.009
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mapping the future of religion may not be attributed to a lack of data. In fact, the tools for a preliminary study have been available for some time. However, a bias against religion from leading futurists [5] and a dismissal of any need for quantitative analysis by theologians have obscured the call for such a study. If there is little or no data to examine, readers will have no quantitative recourse for testing hypotheses when faced with a broad range of scenarios— collapse, religious utopia, or any scenario between these two extremes. Thus, the only way to rectify this situation is to provide both data and a methodology for the quantitative analysis of the future of religion. Students of the future of religion will then possess a tool for evaluating subjective opinions of both futurists, theologians and religionists—or anyone else brave enough to venture an opinion. Fortunately, vast efforts are put into the collection of statistics relating to the 10,000 or so distinct and separate religions in today’s world (cf. [6]). This provides a wealth of data on which to base quantitative projections for the future of religion. The most detailed data collection and analysis is undertaken each year by some 36,000 Christian denominations and their 3.6 million constituent churches and congregations of believers. The latter invest over US$ 1.1 billion annually for a massive, decentralized and largely uncoordinated global census of Christians. In sum, they send out around 10 million printed questionnaires in 3000 different languages, covering 180 major religious subjects reporting on 2000 socioreligious variables. This collection of data provides a year-by-year snapshot of the progress or decline of Christianity’s diverse movements, offering an enormous world of data for the researcher to track trends and make projections.1 The most extensive of these inquiries is that done by the Roman Catholic Church. Parallel to the obligation of many other church leaders, all Roman Catholic bishops are required to answer, by a fixed date every year, a 21-page schedule in Latin and one other language asking 140 precise statistical questions concerning their work in the previous 12 months. Results are then published every January [1,10]. The entire operation, performed in varying degrees by all religious bodies, is best termed the annual religion megacensus. 1.1. Government censuses of religion At the same time, the world’s governments have—since the 12th century—also collected information on religious populations and practice. A question related to religion is thus asked in over 120 of the world’s countries in their official national decennial population censuses. Until 1990, this number was slowly declining each decade as developing countries began dropping the question as too expensive (in many countries, each census costs over a half a million US dollars per question) and, apparently, uninteresting. This trend appears by 2001 to have reversed. Thus Britain, which produced the world’s first national census of religious affiliation 1
One attempt to put a variety of source material in front of researchers is the website www.adherents.com which offers thousands of figures for religious adherents of hundreds of religions. There is no attempt by its organizers to reconcile the numerous contradictions in the source material. Nonetheless, it offers an invaluable look at the amount of data researchers have at their disposal.
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(the Compton Census in 1676), and later a religion question in the national census of 1851 though none thereafter, reintroduced the question in Britain’s 2000 census as the best way to get firm data on each and every non-Christian minority.2 Census data provide a detailed look at 5 and 10 year trends which often extends back over 100 years. Future projections can be based on both short- and long-term trends revealed in censuses. 1.2. Analyzing and defining The starting point in any analysis of religious affiliation is the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.’ Since its promulgation, this group of phrases has been incorporated into the state constitutions of a large number of countries across the world with many countries instructing their census personnel to observe this principle. If a person states that he or she is a Christian (or Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jew, etc.) then no one has a right to say he or she is not. Such public declaration or profession must be taken seriously. The result is a clearcut assessment of the extent of religious profession in the world. In the same way, further definitions in use among the religions have evolved permitting clear and precise categories at the global level. 1.3. Resolving apparent contradictory data Meanwhile, a formidable amount of new material for each year is being collected by the religious bodies themselves. In a particular country, the results from these two methods (government censuses, and religion megacensus) can be strikingly different. For example, in Egypt, where the vast majority of the population is Muslim, elaborate government censuses every 10 years for the last 100 years reveal that some 6% of the population declare themselves as or profess to be Christians. However, church censuses reveal the number of Christians affiliated to churches to be 15% of the population. Why this discrepancy? The reason appears to be that due to Muslim pressure on the Christian minority, many Christians are recorded in censuses by enumerators, or record themselves, as Muslims.3 Future projections of 2
Politicians in Russia recently drew the opposite conclusion and decided that a religion question would be too sensitive in the new census. Nonetheless, they are retaining equally sensitive questions related to language and ethnicity. 3 An opposite example is Indonesia where the government census claims that 87% of its population is Muslim. But included in this is the widely documented phenomenon of new religions, usually syncretizing Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and animism. These make up at least 22% of the population. In this view, Indonesia is 55% Muslim, 22% New-Religionist, 13% Christian and so on (World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE), Vol. 1, p. 372).
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religious affiliation have therefore to take into account the precise definitions arising from these two approaches.4 1.4. A threefold dynamic of change in religious affiliation Both of these sources—religions and governments—must be employed to understand the total context of religious affiliation.5 With this in mind, the dynamics of change in religious affiliation over time can be limited to three sets of empirical population data which together enables us to enumerate the increase or decrease of adherents over time. The first of each of these three sets measures increases, and the second measures (hence described here as ‘minus’ factors). In order to measure overall increase, these three sets can be written as follows: (1) births minus deaths, (2) converts minus defectors, and (3) immigrants minus emigrants. All future projections of religious affiliation within any subset of the global population (normally a country or region) will be dependent on this dynamic. 1.5. Births minus deaths The primary mechanism of religious change globally is births minus deaths. Children are almost always counted to have the religion of their parents (this is the law in Norway and many other countries). This means that a religious population has a close statistical relationship to demography. The change over time in any given community is most simply expressed as the number of births into the community minus the number of deaths out of it. Many religious communities around the world experience little else in the dynamics of their growth or decline. This can be viewed for any of 18 religious communities in Table 1, column ‘Natural’ under ‘Annual change 1990–2000’.6 (Note also that the column ‘Natural’, though predominantly dealing with births minus deaths, as defined here actually includes the immigrants minus emigrants data since they are in practice very small and usually negligible by comparison.) 4
A more interesting development in a postmodern context is the need to introduce the category ‘doubly counted’ or ‘doubly professing’. For example, a Hindu in India determined to follow Christ may decide, instead of openly converting to Christianity, to retain his or her cultural and religious identification. This might be as simple as not taking on a Christian name. This person will properly be counted both as a ‘Hindu’ and as a ‘Christian’. This phenomenon will likely increase in the future with more people living happily with multiple religious identities. 5 In practice, another major source of data is the scholarly literature including surveys conducted by polling organizations, anthropological studies, and studies on a particular religion within a country. 6 The impact of births and deaths on religious affiliation can change over time. For example, the recent Northern Ireland census revealed a closing of the gap between Protestants and Catholics over the past three decades. Protestants used to make up 65% of the population but by 2001 this had dropped to 53%. Catholics, in the meantime, had grown from 35% to 44% of the population. This shift is due primarily to the higher birth rate among Catholic women. One would expect that, given time, Catholics would eventually claim over 50% of the population. But the census also revealed two counter-trends: (1) the death rate among Protestants is falling and (2) the birth rate among Catholics is falling. Given these trends, forecasters believe that, barring any other factors, Protestants will remain in the majority in the coming decades.
0.0 0.4
0.2 0.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.0
0.0
226,000 5,910,000
2,962,000 12,292,000 269,000 10,000 640,000 1,323,000 6,720,000 375,000 108,000 49,000
0
100.0
7.9 7.3
127,077,000 117,558,000
1,619,626,000
34.5 12.3 12.5 0.2 23.5
3,696,148,000
4,000,000
10,618,000 14,763,000 4,603,000 2,657,000 4,759,000 2,618,000 4,175,000 1,734,000 122,000 784,000
165,400,000 77,762,000
233,424,000 160,278,000
1,236,374,000 553,528,000 462,598,000 532,096,000 231,865,000
Adherents
%
Adherents
558,131,000 199,941,000 203,003,000 3,024,000 380,006,000
1970
1900
Year
Source: Ref. [3].
Christians Muslims Hindus Nonreligious Chinese folkreligionists Buddhists Ethnoreligionists Atheists New-Religionists (neoreligionists) Sikhs Jews Spiritists Baha’is Confucianists Jains Shintoists Taoists Zoroastrians Other religionists (in 3000 religions) Doubly counted religionists Global population
Religion
100.0
0.1
0.3 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0
4.5 2.1
6.3 4.3
33.5 15.0 12.5 14.4 6.3
%
78,860,735
214,782
363,675 194,903 137,160 117,163 55,738 74,540 8,533 25,396 45,393 10,013
1,315,332 1,032,413
3,530,805 4,098,103
22,708,740 21,723,206 13,194,156 6,639,214 3,801,092
Natural 25,210,187 22,588,555 12,533,732 6,104,100 3,715,548
0
50,352
28,958 70,394 80,747 26,310 11,432 39,589 40,528 154 13,076 380
878,242 36,419
78,860,735
265,134
392,633 124,508 217,907 143,473 44,306 34,951 31,995 25,242 58,469 10,393
437,090 995,994
156,715 3,687,521 1,264,992 2,833,111
2,501,447 865,349 660,424 535,115 85,544
Conversion Total
Annual change 1990–2000
Table 1 Global adherents of the world’s 18 major distinct religions, AD 1900–2025
1.41
2.04
1.87 0.91 1.96 2.28 0.73 0.87 1.09 1.00 2.65 1.03
0.30 1.03
1.09 1.33
1.36 2.13 1.69 0.83 1.02
Rate
6,055,049,000
14,531,000
23,258,000 14,434,000 12,334,000 7,106,000 6,299,000 4,218,000 2,762,000 2,655,000 2,544,000 1,067,000
150,090,000 102,356,000
359,982,000 228,367,000
1,999,564,000 1,188,243,000 811,336,000 768,159,000 384,807,000
Adherents
Mid-2000 Adherents 2,616,670,000 1,784,876,000 1,049,231,000 875,121,000 448,843,000
20,665,000
31,378,000 16,053,000 16,212,000 12,062,000 6,818,000 6,116,000 2,123,000 3,066,000 4,440,000 1,500,000
0.3
0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0
2.0 1.5
5.4 3.5
33.5 22.8 13.4 11.2 5.7
%
100.0 7,823,703,000 100.0
0.2
0.4 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0
2.5 159,544,000 1.7 114,720,000
6.0 418,345,000 3.8 277,247,000
33.0 19.6 13.4 12.7 6.4
%
Mid-2025
238
24
34 134 55 218 15 10 8 5 22 78
161 60
126 140
238 204 114 236 89
Countries in 2000
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This means that any attempt to project religious affiliation into the future must be firmly based on demographic projections.7 While this may seem obvious, a careful review of the literature on the future of religion shows that theology, philosophy, sociology, and science fiction have all drawn very little on demographic trends.8 1.6. Converts minus defectors Nonetheless, it is common observation that individuals (or even whole villages or communities) change allegiance from one religion to another (or to no religion at all). In the 20th century, this change has been most pronounced in two general areas, as shown in the pluses and minuses of Table 1, column ‘Conversion’: (1) tribal religionists, more precisely termed ethnoreligionists, have converted in large numbers to Christianity [8], Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and (2) Christians in the Western world have defected to become nonreligious (agnostics) or atheists in large numbers. Both these trends however have slowed considerably by the dawn of the 21st century. In fact, the main 21st century trends will likely involve religious resurgence with noticeable decreases in the percentage of atheists and nonreligious. Another factor will likely be the effects of the interaction between major religious traditions.9 And leadership for that interaction is increasingly in the hands of religious communities located in the Southern hemisphere.10 1.7. Immigrants minus emigrants At the national level, it is equally important to consider the movement of people across national borders. From the standpoint of religious affiliation, this can have a profound impact. In the colonial era in the 19th century, small groups of Europeans settled in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In the late 20th century, people from these regions emigrated back to the Western world. Thus, in the USA, religions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, grew faster there than either Christianity or the nonreligious and atheists. This growth is almost entirely due to the immigration of non-Christian Asians. In Europe, massive immigration of Muslims has not only been transforming the spiritual landscape but has now become a major political issue, notably in France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, but also in plans for European Union expansion.11 In the Central Asian countries 7
In simple terms if countries that are predominantly Muslim have, on average, more children than those that are predominantly Christian or Hindu, then over time—given no counterbalancing trends, such as conversion—Muslims will take an increasingly larger percentage of the world’s population. 8 See review of the literature in Part 29 ‘Futurescan’ in World Christian Trends (WCT). 9 Many involved in interreligious dialogue are advocating for a ban on conversion. Though it is not likely to be followed, it would have the interesting effect of making demographic factors the sole determiner of future religious affiliation (at the global level). 10 Jenkins [8] observes that the well-documented numerical shift of Christians to Africa, Asia, and Latin America will change the fundamental character of Christianity. This includes hot spots in religious conflict such as Algeria, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Sudan. 11 Turkey’s desire for European Union membership has brought out the interesting contrast of an EU that is mainly ‘Christian’ with one that could extend to countries not predominantly Christian.
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of the former Soviet Union, Christianity has declined significantly every year since 1990 due to the emigration of Russians, Germans, and Ukrainians. In the 21st century, this trend could be the most significant in relation to the religious composition of individual countries. By 2100, it may be difficult to find a country in which 90% or more of its population belong to any one single world religion. 1.8. Methodology employed In a recent survey volume, the World Christian Encyclopedia [3], tables have been prepared for religions and Christian denominations for each of the world’s 238 countries (see Volume 1 of WCE). A further analysis of the world’s 12,600 ethnic peoples and their 10,000 distinct religions has provided much additional context for these tables (Volume 2 in WCE). The detailed descriptions of methodology explaining how the formidable technical difficulties were resolved and the data tables mentioned above are found in the two books WCE and World Christian Trends [2].12 The databases incorporate the updates every two years since 1950 of the United Nations’ population database for all countries from 1950 to 2050 and for some 100 variables each. A summary global report on the religion megacensus has been published annually in Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Book of the Year [7] since 1987. The opportunity to project the future of religious affiliation has been greatly simplified with the recent availability of large data sets on demography and religious affiliation [9]. Foundational demographic data for every country in the world are available for the years 1950–2050 through the United Nations Demographic Database (see United Nations, 1999). Data on religions and Christianity for every country are available through the World Christian Database (WCD, developed for the World Christian Encyclopedia, 1st ed., 1982 and continuously updated each year up to the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., 2001). Data beyond 2050 for the world’s major continental areas are available in the United Nations’ publication Long-range world population projections: two centuries of population growth, 1950–2150 [11,12]. 1.9. Analyzing Christian data Christian data are more complete globally than data on other religions. These data are presented in Country Tables 2 in WCE Part 4 ‘Countries’ for each of the world’s 238 countries. Statistics on the world’s 33,800 denominations are given for 1970 and 1995 and projected to AD 2025 on WCD. 12
See especially Part 15 ‘Missiometrics’ in World Christian Trends. Of special note is the method employed for reconciling inconsistencies in the way that differing Christian traditions count their members (i.e. Roman Catholics counting baptized infants while some Protestant traditions count only from the age of accountability or ages 6–12).
2100
%
34.3 25.0 10.0 13.2 5.1 4.8 3.4 1.9 1.3
3,800,099,000 2,874,540,000 959,818,000 1,153,978,000 475,183,000 397,100,000 323,995,000 190,527,000 106,911,000
36.5 27.6 9.2 11.1 4.6 3.8 3.1 1.8 1.0
%
Scenario 2: Demographic growth with adjustments for conversions minus defections Christians 2,616,670,000 33.4 3,051,564,000 Muslims 1,784,876,000 22.8 2,229,282,000 Nonreligious 875,121,000 11.2 887,995,000 Hindus 1,049,231,000 13.4 1,175,298,000 Chinese folk-religionists 448,843,000 5.7 454,333,000 Buddhists 418,345,000 5.3 424,607,000 Ethnoreligionists 277,247,000 3.5 303,599,000 Atheists 159,544,000 2.0 169,150,000 New-Religionists 114,720,000 1.5 118,845,000
2050 32.4 25.4 9.2 12.6 4.7 5.9 5.0 1.8 1.9 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 100.0
%
Scenario 1: Demographic growth related to births minus deaths within religious communities Christians 2,535,806,000 32.4 2,894,874,000 32.5 3,379,108,000 Muslims 1,768,059,000 22.6 2,211,838,000 24.8 2,649,967,000 Nonreligious 878,359,000 11.2 881,809,000 9.9 960,518,000 Hindus 1,071,613,000 13.7 1,237,325,000 13.9 1,313,176,000 Chinese folk-religionists 447,832,000 5.7 449,872,000 5.1 484,685,000 Buddhists 425,502,000 5.4 444,091,000 5.0 610,625,000 Ethnoreligionists 327,782,000 4.2 404,707,000 4.5 527,625,000 Atheists 170,982,000 2.2 171,199,000 1.9 188,692,000 New-Religionists 119,929,000 1.5 126,686,000 1.4 195,395,000 Sikhs 30,450,000 0.4 34,948,000 0.4 36,924,000 Jews 17,484,000 0.2 19,057,000 0.2 21,141,000 Spiritists 15,474,000 0.2 17,126,000 0.2 20,939,000 Baha’is 9,911,000 0.1 12,062,000 0.1 14,747,000 Confucians 7,152,000 0.1 7,104,000 0.1 12,069,000 Jains 5,561,000 0.1 6,400,000 0.1 6,846,000 Shintoists 2,654,000 0.0 2,315,000 0.0 5,264,000 Other religionists 7,900,000 0.1 9,500,000 0.1 1,401,000 Total population 7,823,703,000 100.0 8,909,095,000 100.0 10,414,000,000
2025
Year
Table 2 Two scenarios for adherents of world religions, AD 2025–2200
4,347,378,000 3,065,179,000 1,212,302,000 952,234,000 442,190,000 344,080,000 369,920,000 206,000,000 67,336,000
3,611,370,000 2,876,182,000 1,030,937,000 1,398,740,000 522,974,000 659,806,000 573,836,000 202,668,000 211,315,000 39,273,000 22,456,000 21,997,000 15,892,000 13,056,000 7,290,000 5,692,000 1,478,000 11,200,000,000
2200
38.8 27.4 10.8 8.5 4.0 3.1 3.3 1.8 0.6
32.2 25.7 9.2 12.5 4.7 5.9 5.1 1.8 1.9 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 100.0
%
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Source: Ref. [2].
Sikhs Jews Spiritists Baha’is Confucians Jains Shintoists Other religionists Total population
31,378,000 16,053,000 16,212,000 12,062,000 6,818,000 6,116,000 3,066,000 7,900,000 7,823,703,000
0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 100.0
37,059,000 16,695,000 20,709,000 18,001,000 6,953,000 6,733,000 1,655,000 9,500,000 8,909,095,000
0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
40,414,000 15,828,000 27,435,000 33,091,000 6,039,000 6,658,000 890,000 2,809,000 10,414,000,000
0.4 0.2 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 100.0
42,496,000 11,673,000 40,059,000 81,538,000 3,495,000 8,345,000 388,000 5,481,000 11,200,000,000
0.4 0.1 0.4 0.7 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
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1.10. Adding other religions Next, Christian data can be presented in the total context of other religions and demographic data.13 This is done in Country Tables 1 for each country in WCE Part 4 ‘Countries’. Here, one finds a breakdown of the population into all of its constituent pieces—religious and nonreligious for the years 1900, 1970, 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2025 (2050 is added on WCD). The growth rates from 1990 to 2000 of all categories are presented here as well. This gives one the basis for future projections. Thus, if evidence exists that the Christian church is in decline in a particular country, then the percentage to be matched to that country at a future date will be lowered to an appropriate level. With adjustments made to religious and nonreligious populations in each country, a second stage of analysis is added. Now one can view the effects of demographic change and change in religious adherence. The global results of this method are shown in Table 1. Note that contrary to the prevailing expectation and wisdom among social scientists in the latter part of the 20th century, the nonreligious and atheists of the world actually declined as a raw percentage of the world from 1970 to AD 2000 (from nearly 19% to 15%). 1.11. Creating Scenario 1: births minus deaths only Our summary table includes all religions by country and is thus suited perfectly for demographic manipulation. Analysis of the country tables begins by using the AD 2000 figures as a base from which to project all future tables (to 2200) using only demographic tools. Thus, the country and regional totals reflect United Nations projections while all religious percentages within a country region remain unchanged. This allows the observer to examine how natural growth or decline alone within a particular country or region affects the global total. This yields remarkable insights into what one can expect from the most consistent source of growth and decline of religious and nonreligious adherence—births minus deaths. The results are shown below in the upper half of Table 2 for Scenario 1 for the years 2025, 2050, 2100, and 2200. One is immediately struck by the fact that Muslims have the strongest demographic growth, naturally increasing from less than 20% of the world’s population to nearly 26% by AD 2200. Hindus, on the other hand, will naturally decline if they are dependent only on raising their own children in their religion. 1.12. Creating Scenario 2: conversions minus defections The fourth stage allows observers to use results from the country-by-country analysis to update the trends to 2200. From this base, more reasonable future 13
The first adjustment to the totals of Christians generated in Country Table 2 is to note the overlap within the different traditions, that is, baptized church members of one tradition who were baptized in another church tradition at an earlier stage. This is termed ‘double affiliation’. Those church members who decided at a later point to leave Christianity altogether without notifying their churches are termed ‘disaffiliated’. Both these are negative numbers and reduce the overall percentage of Christians within a particular country.
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projections for religions can be made. There are three major areas beyond natural growth that can be utilized to improve the future projections. First is differing birth and death rates for religious communities within a particular country. The earlier ‘natural growth’ scenario assumed that birth/death rates were applied evenly to a country’s population. But as was observed in the Northern Ireland census, the birth/death rates are not the same among different religious communities. The projection process should take into account differing birth/death rates in religious communities within each country, although in practice such data are hardly ever available. Second, conversion and defection will likely continue to play a role in changing religious affiliation in the future. Numerous studies are available on the impact of secularization on the world’s religious communities.14 On the other hand, the resurgence of religions, the founding of new religions, and the continued rise of fundamentalism all seem to work in favor of a more religious future for mankind. In each country, these trends have been observed over time. Assumptions about the future of conversion or defection should be built into future projections.15 Third, one can try to anticipate the way in which expected immigration and emigration trends will impact a country’s population over time. It has already been stated that one profound change to be expected is the increase of religious pluralism in most every country of the world.16 Obviously, the further one gets into the future, the less reliable these expectations will be. Nonetheless, immigration and emigration continue to play an important role in changing religious affiliation in a country. The results of incorporating all three of these dynamics are presented in the lower half of Table 2 under Scenario 2. The conversion adjustments (including differing birth/death rates, conversion/defection and immigration/emigration) yield what could be considered as this analysis’ most likely scenario.17 14 Of course, many of these are now infamous for overestimating the numerical impact of secularization, some foreseeing (or even encouraging) the imminent collapse of religion altogether. A few have now changed their minds and are more cautious in their predictions (especially Berger [4]). 15 In the African Sahel, most countries are still experiencing a race between Islam and Christianity for individuals and communities still adhering to tribal religions. Early in the 20th century, it was assumed that within a generation, all tribal religionists in Africa would become either Muslims or Christians. Although many conversions took place, a very large number had not converted by AD 2000. In the 21st century, one could project continued conversions to Christianity and Islam but be more modest about overall loses among tribal religionists. 16 Increasing religious pluralism is not always welcomed and may be seen as a political, cultural, national, or religious threat. Recent debates in Israel have been examining the difference between religious and secular Jews as it relates to immigration, especially the decade-long return of over 1 million Russians (and citizens of the former Soviet Union). The ultra-orthodox want to limit the ‘right of return’ to religious Jews whereas moderates want to welcome secular Jews in order to counter the rising numbers of Arabs (with their much higher birth rate). 17 Still assuming that demographic factors are the single greatest predictor of religious affiliation but taking into account anticipated trends in conversion and defection, immigration and emigration.
Source: Ref. [2].
Christians Muslims Nonreligious Hindus Chinese folkreligionists Buddhists Ethnoreligionists Atheists New-Religionists Sikhs Jews Spiritists Baha’is Confucians Jains Shintoists Other religionists Total population
32.2 25.7 9.2 12.5 4.7 5.9 5.1 1.8 1.9 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 100.0
3,611,370,000 2,876,182,000 1,030,937,000 1,398,740,000 522,974,000
659,806,000 573,836,000 202,668,000 211,315,000 39,273,000 22,456,000 21,997,000 15,892,000 13,056,000 7,290,000 5,692,000 1,478,000 11,200,000,000
2200
%
344,080,000 369,920,000 206,000,000 67,336,000 42,496,000 11,673,000 40,059,000 81,538,000 3,495,000 8,345,000 388,000 5,481,000 11,200,000,000
4,347,378,000 3,065,179,000 1,212,302,000 952,234,000 442,190,000
2200
3.1 3.3 1.8 0.6 0.4 0.1 0.4 0.7 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
38.8 27.4 10.8 8.5 4.0
%
Incorporating conversions
Purely demographic
Year
Scenario 2
Scenario 1
Table 3 Four scenarios for adherents of world religions, AD 2200
294,080,000 369,920,000 206,000,000 67,336,000 42,496,000 11,673,000 40,059,000 81,538,000 3,495,000 8,345,000 388,000 5,481,000 11,200,000,000
3,456,912,000 4,241,533,000 1,154,091,000 776,437,000 442,190,000
2200
2.6 3.3 1.8 0.6 0.4 0.1 0.4 0.7 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
30.9 37.9 10.3 6.9 4.0
%
Muslim renaissance
Scenario 3
344,080,000 369,920,000 206,000,000 67,336,000 42,496,000 11,673,000 40,059,000 81,538,000 3,495,000 8,345,000 388,000 5,481,000 11,200,000,000
2,852,314,000 2,011,064,000 3,761,050,000 952,234,000 442,190,000
2200
3.1 3.3 1.8 0.6 0.4 0.1 0.4 0.7 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
25.5 18.0 33.6 8.5 4.0
%
Nonreligious resurgence
Scenario 4
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1.13. Creating Scenarios 3 and 4: Muslim renaissance or nonreligious resurgence Using either the natural growth projections or the conversion trends scenarios, one can now introduce explicit assumptions to produce alternative scenarios. Two such scenarios are presented in Table 3, along with Scenarios 1 and 2 for comparison. Scenario 3, labeled ‘Muslim renaissance’, assumes that in the six regions of the world Muslims gain 10% of the population by 2100 and 10% more by 2200. The losers in each case are the majority religions (or nonreligious) in each of these regions (Christians in Europe, Hindus in India, and so on). Under this scenario, Muslims would grow to over 4.2 billion or 38% of the world’s population by AD 2200. This scenario also implies that Muslims would begin to outnumber Christians in the early 22nd century (for the first time in human history). Scenario 4, labeled ‘nonreligious resurgence’ assumes that secularization hits the world’s two largest religions, Christianity and Islam, very hard. By 2100, 10% of Christians and 10% of Muslims have defected. Another 10% defect by AD 2200. From a high of 60% in AD 2050, these two religions together plummet to only 43% of the world’s population by 2200. Table 3 illustrates how a quantitative methodology for projecting the future of religion can produce four scenarios for a single year in the distant future (AD 2200). One of many surprising observations is that ethnoreligionists (tribal religionists) could number over 350 million nearly 200 years into the future (and over 570 million if one only considers births minus deaths). This is in sharp contrast with confident predictions in the early part of the 20th century that all ethnoreligionists would convert to the first major world religion they came in contact with. This methodology makes explicit the assumptions that are used to generate projections at the level of 238 countries (1900–2050) or six major regions (2050–2200). Furthermore, United Nation demographic projections are updated every two years and numerous studies on religious affiliation are published elsewhere every year. The method described here is flexible enough to utilize new demographic and religious information. Projections generated five years from now could look quite different.
2. Summary A secondary side effect of this study is the evidence it provides for the quantitative resiliency of religion over the next 200 years. Purely demographic changes do not show a precipitous decline in religious adherence. In fact, as Scenario 1 shows, the nonreligious would decline from 12.7% of the world’s population only to 9.2% by AD 2200. Scenarios 2–3 modify this figure only slightly. Our current understanding of the impact of secularization does not seem to indicate widespread losses to the world’s religions in the years to come (cf. [4]). The burden of proof would be on observers stating that massive defections from religious adherence are expected or likely (Scenario 4). At present, the best quantitative tools for projecting the religious future of mankind do not reflect a ‘pessimistic’ view.
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References [1] Annuario Pontificio, Citta del Vaticano: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, Annual. [2] D.B. Barrett, T.M. Johnson, World Christian Trends, AD 30–2200: Interpreting the Annual Christian Megacensus, William Carey Library, Pasadena, CA, 2001, pp. 952. [3] D.B. Barrett, G.T. Kurian, T.M. Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, (2 vols.). [4] P. Berger, The Desecularization of the World, Harper & Row, New York, 1999. [5] J. Coates, J. Jarrett (Eds.), What Futurists Believe, World Future Society, Bethesda, MD, 1989, pp. 83. [6] M. Eliade, et al. (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, Macmillan, New York, 1986, (16 vols. later, 8 vols.). [7] Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the Year: Religious Adherents Table, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Annual since 1987. [8] P. Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002. [9] T.M. Johnson, Quantitative futures for Christianity and world religions, AD 1900–2200: development and application of a projection methodology, Doctoral Dissertation, William Carey International University (1993). [10] Statistical Yearbook of the Church, Citta del Vaticano: Secretaria Status, Annual. [11] United Nations, Long-range World Population Projections: Two Centuries of Population Growth, 1950–2150, New York, 1998. [12] United Nations, World Population Prospects, New York, 2001.
Quantifying alternate futures of religion and religions Todd M. Johnson a,, David B. Barrett b a
b
130 Essex St., South Hamilton, MA 01982, USA Department of Missiometrics, Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA
Abstract Writers on the future of religion are usually drawn to extreme portrayals of decline or revival of religion. However, the world’s religious situation is replete with detailed information, drawn from enormous data collections on religious affiliation and questions about religion in government censuses. Quantitative tools, utilizing this information in the context of demography—births, deaths, conversions, defections, immigration, and emigration, provide a more nuanced view of mankind’s religious future. Alternate futures of religious affiliation can be produced by extrapolating explicit assumptions related to these six areas. Demographic trends coupled with conservative estimates of conversions and defections envision over 80% of the world’s population will continue to be affiliated to religions 200 years into the future. # 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction At a superficial glance, it may seem as though very little information is available to the researcher who is interested in religious affiliation in the future. Indeed, writings about the future of religion often have the appearance of sheer guesswork. Those brave enough to venture into this realm gravitate inexorably to two extreme visions of the religious future of mankind—from fanciful predictions of religious utopia on the one side to decline and collapse on the other. Perhaps this is due to the strong bias of those who write about the future of religion—mainly devout religionists or ultra-secularists. The apparent absence of quantitative data for
Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.M. Johnson).
0016-3287/$ - see front matter # 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2004.02.009
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mapping the future of religion may not be attributed to a lack of data. In fact, the tools for a preliminary study have been available for some time. However, a bias against religion from leading futurists [5] and a dismissal of any need for quantitative analysis by theologians have obscured the call for such a study. If there is little or no data to examine, readers will have no quantitative recourse for testing hypotheses when faced with a broad range of scenarios— collapse, religious utopia, or any scenario between these two extremes. Thus, the only way to rectify this situation is to provide both data and a methodology for the quantitative analysis of the future of religion. Students of the future of religion will then possess a tool for evaluating subjective opinions of both futurists, theologians and religionists—or anyone else brave enough to venture an opinion. Fortunately, vast efforts are put into the collection of statistics relating to the 10,000 or so distinct and separate religions in today’s world (cf. [6]). This provides a wealth of data on which to base quantitative projections for the future of religion. The most detailed data collection and analysis is undertaken each year by some 36,000 Christian denominations and their 3.6 million constituent churches and congregations of believers. The latter invest over US$ 1.1 billion annually for a massive, decentralized and largely uncoordinated global census of Christians. In sum, they send out around 10 million printed questionnaires in 3000 different languages, covering 180 major religious subjects reporting on 2000 socioreligious variables. This collection of data provides a year-by-year snapshot of the progress or decline of Christianity’s diverse movements, offering an enormous world of data for the researcher to track trends and make projections.1 The most extensive of these inquiries is that done by the Roman Catholic Church. Parallel to the obligation of many other church leaders, all Roman Catholic bishops are required to answer, by a fixed date every year, a 21-page schedule in Latin and one other language asking 140 precise statistical questions concerning their work in the previous 12 months. Results are then published every January [1,10]. The entire operation, performed in varying degrees by all religious bodies, is best termed the annual religion megacensus. 1.1. Government censuses of religion At the same time, the world’s governments have—since the 12th century—also collected information on religious populations and practice. A question related to religion is thus asked in over 120 of the world’s countries in their official national decennial population censuses. Until 1990, this number was slowly declining each decade as developing countries began dropping the question as too expensive (in many countries, each census costs over a half a million US dollars per question) and, apparently, uninteresting. This trend appears by 2001 to have reversed. Thus Britain, which produced the world’s first national census of religious affiliation 1
One attempt to put a variety of source material in front of researchers is the website www.adherents.com which offers thousands of figures for religious adherents of hundreds of religions. There is no attempt by its organizers to reconcile the numerous contradictions in the source material. Nonetheless, it offers an invaluable look at the amount of data researchers have at their disposal.
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(the Compton Census in 1676), and later a religion question in the national census of 1851 though none thereafter, reintroduced the question in Britain’s 2000 census as the best way to get firm data on each and every non-Christian minority.2 Census data provide a detailed look at 5 and 10 year trends which often extends back over 100 years. Future projections can be based on both short- and long-term trends revealed in censuses. 1.2. Analyzing and defining The starting point in any analysis of religious affiliation is the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.’ Since its promulgation, this group of phrases has been incorporated into the state constitutions of a large number of countries across the world with many countries instructing their census personnel to observe this principle. If a person states that he or she is a Christian (or Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jew, etc.) then no one has a right to say he or she is not. Such public declaration or profession must be taken seriously. The result is a clearcut assessment of the extent of religious profession in the world. In the same way, further definitions in use among the religions have evolved permitting clear and precise categories at the global level. 1.3. Resolving apparent contradictory data Meanwhile, a formidable amount of new material for each year is being collected by the religious bodies themselves. In a particular country, the results from these two methods (government censuses, and religion megacensus) can be strikingly different. For example, in Egypt, where the vast majority of the population is Muslim, elaborate government censuses every 10 years for the last 100 years reveal that some 6% of the population declare themselves as or profess to be Christians. However, church censuses reveal the number of Christians affiliated to churches to be 15% of the population. Why this discrepancy? The reason appears to be that due to Muslim pressure on the Christian minority, many Christians are recorded in censuses by enumerators, or record themselves, as Muslims.3 Future projections of 2
Politicians in Russia recently drew the opposite conclusion and decided that a religion question would be too sensitive in the new census. Nonetheless, they are retaining equally sensitive questions related to language and ethnicity. 3 An opposite example is Indonesia where the government census claims that 87% of its population is Muslim. But included in this is the widely documented phenomenon of new religions, usually syncretizing Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and animism. These make up at least 22% of the population. In this view, Indonesia is 55% Muslim, 22% New-Religionist, 13% Christian and so on (World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE), Vol. 1, p. 372).
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religious affiliation have therefore to take into account the precise definitions arising from these two approaches.4 1.4. A threefold dynamic of change in religious affiliation Both of these sources—religions and governments—must be employed to understand the total context of religious affiliation.5 With this in mind, the dynamics of change in religious affiliation over time can be limited to three sets of empirical population data which together enables us to enumerate the increase or decrease of adherents over time. The first of each of these three sets measures increases, and the second measures (hence described here as ‘minus’ factors). In order to measure overall increase, these three sets can be written as follows: (1) births minus deaths, (2) converts minus defectors, and (3) immigrants minus emigrants. All future projections of religious affiliation within any subset of the global population (normally a country or region) will be dependent on this dynamic. 1.5. Births minus deaths The primary mechanism of religious change globally is births minus deaths. Children are almost always counted to have the religion of their parents (this is the law in Norway and many other countries). This means that a religious population has a close statistical relationship to demography. The change over time in any given community is most simply expressed as the number of births into the community minus the number of deaths out of it. Many religious communities around the world experience little else in the dynamics of their growth or decline. This can be viewed for any of 18 religious communities in Table 1, column ‘Natural’ under ‘Annual change 1990–2000’.6 (Note also that the column ‘Natural’, though predominantly dealing with births minus deaths, as defined here actually includes the immigrants minus emigrants data since they are in practice very small and usually negligible by comparison.) 4
A more interesting development in a postmodern context is the need to introduce the category ‘doubly counted’ or ‘doubly professing’. For example, a Hindu in India determined to follow Christ may decide, instead of openly converting to Christianity, to retain his or her cultural and religious identification. This might be as simple as not taking on a Christian name. This person will properly be counted both as a ‘Hindu’ and as a ‘Christian’. This phenomenon will likely increase in the future with more people living happily with multiple religious identities. 5 In practice, another major source of data is the scholarly literature including surveys conducted by polling organizations, anthropological studies, and studies on a particular religion within a country. 6 The impact of births and deaths on religious affiliation can change over time. For example, the recent Northern Ireland census revealed a closing of the gap between Protestants and Catholics over the past three decades. Protestants used to make up 65% of the population but by 2001 this had dropped to 53%. Catholics, in the meantime, had grown from 35% to 44% of the population. This shift is due primarily to the higher birth rate among Catholic women. One would expect that, given time, Catholics would eventually claim over 50% of the population. But the census also revealed two counter-trends: (1) the death rate among Protestants is falling and (2) the birth rate among Catholics is falling. Given these trends, forecasters believe that, barring any other factors, Protestants will remain in the majority in the coming decades.
0.0 0.4
0.2 0.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.4 0.0 0.0 0.0
0.0
226,000 5,910,000
2,962,000 12,292,000 269,000 10,000 640,000 1,323,000 6,720,000 375,000 108,000 49,000
0
100.0
7.9 7.3
127,077,000 117,558,000
1,619,626,000
34.5 12.3 12.5 0.2 23.5
3,696,148,000
4,000,000
10,618,000 14,763,000 4,603,000 2,657,000 4,759,000 2,618,000 4,175,000 1,734,000 122,000 784,000
165,400,000 77,762,000
233,424,000 160,278,000
1,236,374,000 553,528,000 462,598,000 532,096,000 231,865,000
Adherents
%
Adherents
558,131,000 199,941,000 203,003,000 3,024,000 380,006,000
1970
1900
Year
Source: Ref. [3].
Christians Muslims Hindus Nonreligious Chinese folkreligionists Buddhists Ethnoreligionists Atheists New-Religionists (neoreligionists) Sikhs Jews Spiritists Baha’is Confucianists Jains Shintoists Taoists Zoroastrians Other religionists (in 3000 religions) Doubly counted religionists Global population
Religion
100.0
0.1
0.3 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0
4.5 2.1
6.3 4.3
33.5 15.0 12.5 14.4 6.3
%
78,860,735
214,782
363,675 194,903 137,160 117,163 55,738 74,540 8,533 25,396 45,393 10,013
1,315,332 1,032,413
3,530,805 4,098,103
22,708,740 21,723,206 13,194,156 6,639,214 3,801,092
Natural 25,210,187 22,588,555 12,533,732 6,104,100 3,715,548
0
50,352
28,958 70,394 80,747 26,310 11,432 39,589 40,528 154 13,076 380
878,242 36,419
78,860,735
265,134
392,633 124,508 217,907 143,473 44,306 34,951 31,995 25,242 58,469 10,393
437,090 995,994
156,715 3,687,521 1,264,992 2,833,111
2,501,447 865,349 660,424 535,115 85,544
Conversion Total
Annual change 1990–2000
Table 1 Global adherents of the world’s 18 major distinct religions, AD 1900–2025
1.41
2.04
1.87 0.91 1.96 2.28 0.73 0.87 1.09 1.00 2.65 1.03
0.30 1.03
1.09 1.33
1.36 2.13 1.69 0.83 1.02
Rate
6,055,049,000
14,531,000
23,258,000 14,434,000 12,334,000 7,106,000 6,299,000 4,218,000 2,762,000 2,655,000 2,544,000 1,067,000
150,090,000 102,356,000
359,982,000 228,367,000
1,999,564,000 1,188,243,000 811,336,000 768,159,000 384,807,000
Adherents
Mid-2000 Adherents 2,616,670,000 1,784,876,000 1,049,231,000 875,121,000 448,843,000
20,665,000
31,378,000 16,053,000 16,212,000 12,062,000 6,818,000 6,116,000 2,123,000 3,066,000 4,440,000 1,500,000
0.3
0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0
2.0 1.5
5.4 3.5
33.5 22.8 13.4 11.2 5.7
%
100.0 7,823,703,000 100.0
0.2
0.4 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0
2.5 159,544,000 1.7 114,720,000
6.0 418,345,000 3.8 277,247,000
33.0 19.6 13.4 12.7 6.4
%
Mid-2025
238
24
34 134 55 218 15 10 8 5 22 78
161 60
126 140
238 204 114 236 89
Countries in 2000
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This means that any attempt to project religious affiliation into the future must be firmly based on demographic projections.7 While this may seem obvious, a careful review of the literature on the future of religion shows that theology, philosophy, sociology, and science fiction have all drawn very little on demographic trends.8 1.6. Converts minus defectors Nonetheless, it is common observation that individuals (or even whole villages or communities) change allegiance from one religion to another (or to no religion at all). In the 20th century, this change has been most pronounced in two general areas, as shown in the pluses and minuses of Table 1, column ‘Conversion’: (1) tribal religionists, more precisely termed ethnoreligionists, have converted in large numbers to Christianity [8], Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and (2) Christians in the Western world have defected to become nonreligious (agnostics) or atheists in large numbers. Both these trends however have slowed considerably by the dawn of the 21st century. In fact, the main 21st century trends will likely involve religious resurgence with noticeable decreases in the percentage of atheists and nonreligious. Another factor will likely be the effects of the interaction between major religious traditions.9 And leadership for that interaction is increasingly in the hands of religious communities located in the Southern hemisphere.10 1.7. Immigrants minus emigrants At the national level, it is equally important to consider the movement of people across national borders. From the standpoint of religious affiliation, this can have a profound impact. In the colonial era in the 19th century, small groups of Europeans settled in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In the late 20th century, people from these regions emigrated back to the Western world. Thus, in the USA, religions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, grew faster there than either Christianity or the nonreligious and atheists. This growth is almost entirely due to the immigration of non-Christian Asians. In Europe, massive immigration of Muslims has not only been transforming the spiritual landscape but has now become a major political issue, notably in France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, but also in plans for European Union expansion.11 In the Central Asian countries 7
In simple terms if countries that are predominantly Muslim have, on average, more children than those that are predominantly Christian or Hindu, then over time—given no counterbalancing trends, such as conversion—Muslims will take an increasingly larger percentage of the world’s population. 8 See review of the literature in Part 29 ‘Futurescan’ in World Christian Trends (WCT). 9 Many involved in interreligious dialogue are advocating for a ban on conversion. Though it is not likely to be followed, it would have the interesting effect of making demographic factors the sole determiner of future religious affiliation (at the global level). 10 Jenkins [8] observes that the well-documented numerical shift of Christians to Africa, Asia, and Latin America will change the fundamental character of Christianity. This includes hot spots in religious conflict such as Algeria, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Sudan. 11 Turkey’s desire for European Union membership has brought out the interesting contrast of an EU that is mainly ‘Christian’ with one that could extend to countries not predominantly Christian.
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of the former Soviet Union, Christianity has declined significantly every year since 1990 due to the emigration of Russians, Germans, and Ukrainians. In the 21st century, this trend could be the most significant in relation to the religious composition of individual countries. By 2100, it may be difficult to find a country in which 90% or more of its population belong to any one single world religion. 1.8. Methodology employed In a recent survey volume, the World Christian Encyclopedia [3], tables have been prepared for religions and Christian denominations for each of the world’s 238 countries (see Volume 1 of WCE). A further analysis of the world’s 12,600 ethnic peoples and their 10,000 distinct religions has provided much additional context for these tables (Volume 2 in WCE). The detailed descriptions of methodology explaining how the formidable technical difficulties were resolved and the data tables mentioned above are found in the two books WCE and World Christian Trends [2].12 The databases incorporate the updates every two years since 1950 of the United Nations’ population database for all countries from 1950 to 2050 and for some 100 variables each. A summary global report on the religion megacensus has been published annually in Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Book of the Year [7] since 1987. The opportunity to project the future of religious affiliation has been greatly simplified with the recent availability of large data sets on demography and religious affiliation [9]. Foundational demographic data for every country in the world are available for the years 1950–2050 through the United Nations Demographic Database (see United Nations, 1999). Data on religions and Christianity for every country are available through the World Christian Database (WCD, developed for the World Christian Encyclopedia, 1st ed., 1982 and continuously updated each year up to the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., 2001). Data beyond 2050 for the world’s major continental areas are available in the United Nations’ publication Long-range world population projections: two centuries of population growth, 1950–2150 [11,12]. 1.9. Analyzing Christian data Christian data are more complete globally than data on other religions. These data are presented in Country Tables 2 in WCE Part 4 ‘Countries’ for each of the world’s 238 countries. Statistics on the world’s 33,800 denominations are given for 1970 and 1995 and projected to AD 2025 on WCD. 12
See especially Part 15 ‘Missiometrics’ in World Christian Trends. Of special note is the method employed for reconciling inconsistencies in the way that differing Christian traditions count their members (i.e. Roman Catholics counting baptized infants while some Protestant traditions count only from the age of accountability or ages 6–12).
2100
%
34.3 25.0 10.0 13.2 5.1 4.8 3.4 1.9 1.3
3,800,099,000 2,874,540,000 959,818,000 1,153,978,000 475,183,000 397,100,000 323,995,000 190,527,000 106,911,000
36.5 27.6 9.2 11.1 4.6 3.8 3.1 1.8 1.0
%
Scenario 2: Demographic growth with adjustments for conversions minus defections Christians 2,616,670,000 33.4 3,051,564,000 Muslims 1,784,876,000 22.8 2,229,282,000 Nonreligious 875,121,000 11.2 887,995,000 Hindus 1,049,231,000 13.4 1,175,298,000 Chinese folk-religionists 448,843,000 5.7 454,333,000 Buddhists 418,345,000 5.3 424,607,000 Ethnoreligionists 277,247,000 3.5 303,599,000 Atheists 159,544,000 2.0 169,150,000 New-Religionists 114,720,000 1.5 118,845,000
2050 32.4 25.4 9.2 12.6 4.7 5.9 5.0 1.8 1.9 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 100.0
%
Scenario 1: Demographic growth related to births minus deaths within religious communities Christians 2,535,806,000 32.4 2,894,874,000 32.5 3,379,108,000 Muslims 1,768,059,000 22.6 2,211,838,000 24.8 2,649,967,000 Nonreligious 878,359,000 11.2 881,809,000 9.9 960,518,000 Hindus 1,071,613,000 13.7 1,237,325,000 13.9 1,313,176,000 Chinese folk-religionists 447,832,000 5.7 449,872,000 5.1 484,685,000 Buddhists 425,502,000 5.4 444,091,000 5.0 610,625,000 Ethnoreligionists 327,782,000 4.2 404,707,000 4.5 527,625,000 Atheists 170,982,000 2.2 171,199,000 1.9 188,692,000 New-Religionists 119,929,000 1.5 126,686,000 1.4 195,395,000 Sikhs 30,450,000 0.4 34,948,000 0.4 36,924,000 Jews 17,484,000 0.2 19,057,000 0.2 21,141,000 Spiritists 15,474,000 0.2 17,126,000 0.2 20,939,000 Baha’is 9,911,000 0.1 12,062,000 0.1 14,747,000 Confucians 7,152,000 0.1 7,104,000 0.1 12,069,000 Jains 5,561,000 0.1 6,400,000 0.1 6,846,000 Shintoists 2,654,000 0.0 2,315,000 0.0 5,264,000 Other religionists 7,900,000 0.1 9,500,000 0.1 1,401,000 Total population 7,823,703,000 100.0 8,909,095,000 100.0 10,414,000,000
2025
Year
Table 2 Two scenarios for adherents of world religions, AD 2025–2200
4,347,378,000 3,065,179,000 1,212,302,000 952,234,000 442,190,000 344,080,000 369,920,000 206,000,000 67,336,000
3,611,370,000 2,876,182,000 1,030,937,000 1,398,740,000 522,974,000 659,806,000 573,836,000 202,668,000 211,315,000 39,273,000 22,456,000 21,997,000 15,892,000 13,056,000 7,290,000 5,692,000 1,478,000 11,200,000,000
2200
38.8 27.4 10.8 8.5 4.0 3.1 3.3 1.8 0.6
32.2 25.7 9.2 12.5 4.7 5.9 5.1 1.8 1.9 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 100.0
%
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Source: Ref. [2].
Sikhs Jews Spiritists Baha’is Confucians Jains Shintoists Other religionists Total population
31,378,000 16,053,000 16,212,000 12,062,000 6,818,000 6,116,000 3,066,000 7,900,000 7,823,703,000
0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 100.0
37,059,000 16,695,000 20,709,000 18,001,000 6,953,000 6,733,000 1,655,000 9,500,000 8,909,095,000
0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
40,414,000 15,828,000 27,435,000 33,091,000 6,039,000 6,658,000 890,000 2,809,000 10,414,000,000
0.4 0.2 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0 100.0
42,496,000 11,673,000 40,059,000 81,538,000 3,495,000 8,345,000 388,000 5,481,000 11,200,000,000
0.4 0.1 0.4 0.7 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
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1.10. Adding other religions Next, Christian data can be presented in the total context of other religions and demographic data.13 This is done in Country Tables 1 for each country in WCE Part 4 ‘Countries’. Here, one finds a breakdown of the population into all of its constituent pieces—religious and nonreligious for the years 1900, 1970, 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2025 (2050 is added on WCD). The growth rates from 1990 to 2000 of all categories are presented here as well. This gives one the basis for future projections. Thus, if evidence exists that the Christian church is in decline in a particular country, then the percentage to be matched to that country at a future date will be lowered to an appropriate level. With adjustments made to religious and nonreligious populations in each country, a second stage of analysis is added. Now one can view the effects of demographic change and change in religious adherence. The global results of this method are shown in Table 1. Note that contrary to the prevailing expectation and wisdom among social scientists in the latter part of the 20th century, the nonreligious and atheists of the world actually declined as a raw percentage of the world from 1970 to AD 2000 (from nearly 19% to 15%). 1.11. Creating Scenario 1: births minus deaths only Our summary table includes all religions by country and is thus suited perfectly for demographic manipulation. Analysis of the country tables begins by using the AD 2000 figures as a base from which to project all future tables (to 2200) using only demographic tools. Thus, the country and regional totals reflect United Nations projections while all religious percentages within a country region remain unchanged. This allows the observer to examine how natural growth or decline alone within a particular country or region affects the global total. This yields remarkable insights into what one can expect from the most consistent source of growth and decline of religious and nonreligious adherence—births minus deaths. The results are shown below in the upper half of Table 2 for Scenario 1 for the years 2025, 2050, 2100, and 2200. One is immediately struck by the fact that Muslims have the strongest demographic growth, naturally increasing from less than 20% of the world’s population to nearly 26% by AD 2200. Hindus, on the other hand, will naturally decline if they are dependent only on raising their own children in their religion. 1.12. Creating Scenario 2: conversions minus defections The fourth stage allows observers to use results from the country-by-country analysis to update the trends to 2200. From this base, more reasonable future 13
The first adjustment to the totals of Christians generated in Country Table 2 is to note the overlap within the different traditions, that is, baptized church members of one tradition who were baptized in another church tradition at an earlier stage. This is termed ‘double affiliation’. Those church members who decided at a later point to leave Christianity altogether without notifying their churches are termed ‘disaffiliated’. Both these are negative numbers and reduce the overall percentage of Christians within a particular country.
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projections for religions can be made. There are three major areas beyond natural growth that can be utilized to improve the future projections. First is differing birth and death rates for religious communities within a particular country. The earlier ‘natural growth’ scenario assumed that birth/death rates were applied evenly to a country’s population. But as was observed in the Northern Ireland census, the birth/death rates are not the same among different religious communities. The projection process should take into account differing birth/death rates in religious communities within each country, although in practice such data are hardly ever available. Second, conversion and defection will likely continue to play a role in changing religious affiliation in the future. Numerous studies are available on the impact of secularization on the world’s religious communities.14 On the other hand, the resurgence of religions, the founding of new religions, and the continued rise of fundamentalism all seem to work in favor of a more religious future for mankind. In each country, these trends have been observed over time. Assumptions about the future of conversion or defection should be built into future projections.15 Third, one can try to anticipate the way in which expected immigration and emigration trends will impact a country’s population over time. It has already been stated that one profound change to be expected is the increase of religious pluralism in most every country of the world.16 Obviously, the further one gets into the future, the less reliable these expectations will be. Nonetheless, immigration and emigration continue to play an important role in changing religious affiliation in a country. The results of incorporating all three of these dynamics are presented in the lower half of Table 2 under Scenario 2. The conversion adjustments (including differing birth/death rates, conversion/defection and immigration/emigration) yield what could be considered as this analysis’ most likely scenario.17 14 Of course, many of these are now infamous for overestimating the numerical impact of secularization, some foreseeing (or even encouraging) the imminent collapse of religion altogether. A few have now changed their minds and are more cautious in their predictions (especially Berger [4]). 15 In the African Sahel, most countries are still experiencing a race between Islam and Christianity for individuals and communities still adhering to tribal religions. Early in the 20th century, it was assumed that within a generation, all tribal religionists in Africa would become either Muslims or Christians. Although many conversions took place, a very large number had not converted by AD 2000. In the 21st century, one could project continued conversions to Christianity and Islam but be more modest about overall loses among tribal religionists. 16 Increasing religious pluralism is not always welcomed and may be seen as a political, cultural, national, or religious threat. Recent debates in Israel have been examining the difference between religious and secular Jews as it relates to immigration, especially the decade-long return of over 1 million Russians (and citizens of the former Soviet Union). The ultra-orthodox want to limit the ‘right of return’ to religious Jews whereas moderates want to welcome secular Jews in order to counter the rising numbers of Arabs (with their much higher birth rate). 17 Still assuming that demographic factors are the single greatest predictor of religious affiliation but taking into account anticipated trends in conversion and defection, immigration and emigration.
Source: Ref. [2].
Christians Muslims Nonreligious Hindus Chinese folkreligionists Buddhists Ethnoreligionists Atheists New-Religionists Sikhs Jews Spiritists Baha’is Confucians Jains Shintoists Other religionists Total population
32.2 25.7 9.2 12.5 4.7 5.9 5.1 1.8 1.9 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0 100.0
3,611,370,000 2,876,182,000 1,030,937,000 1,398,740,000 522,974,000
659,806,000 573,836,000 202,668,000 211,315,000 39,273,000 22,456,000 21,997,000 15,892,000 13,056,000 7,290,000 5,692,000 1,478,000 11,200,000,000
2200
%
344,080,000 369,920,000 206,000,000 67,336,000 42,496,000 11,673,000 40,059,000 81,538,000 3,495,000 8,345,000 388,000 5,481,000 11,200,000,000
4,347,378,000 3,065,179,000 1,212,302,000 952,234,000 442,190,000
2200
3.1 3.3 1.8 0.6 0.4 0.1 0.4 0.7 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
38.8 27.4 10.8 8.5 4.0
%
Incorporating conversions
Purely demographic
Year
Scenario 2
Scenario 1
Table 3 Four scenarios for adherents of world religions, AD 2200
294,080,000 369,920,000 206,000,000 67,336,000 42,496,000 11,673,000 40,059,000 81,538,000 3,495,000 8,345,000 388,000 5,481,000 11,200,000,000
3,456,912,000 4,241,533,000 1,154,091,000 776,437,000 442,190,000
2200
2.6 3.3 1.8 0.6 0.4 0.1 0.4 0.7 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
30.9 37.9 10.3 6.9 4.0
%
Muslim renaissance
Scenario 3
344,080,000 369,920,000 206,000,000 67,336,000 42,496,000 11,673,000 40,059,000 81,538,000 3,495,000 8,345,000 388,000 5,481,000 11,200,000,000
2,852,314,000 2,011,064,000 3,761,050,000 952,234,000 442,190,000
2200
3.1 3.3 1.8 0.6 0.4 0.1 0.4 0.7 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 100.0
25.5 18.0 33.6 8.5 4.0
%
Nonreligious resurgence
Scenario 4
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1.13. Creating Scenarios 3 and 4: Muslim renaissance or nonreligious resurgence Using either the natural growth projections or the conversion trends scenarios, one can now introduce explicit assumptions to produce alternative scenarios. Two such scenarios are presented in Table 3, along with Scenarios 1 and 2 for comparison. Scenario 3, labeled ‘Muslim renaissance’, assumes that in the six regions of the world Muslims gain 10% of the population by 2100 and 10% more by 2200. The losers in each case are the majority religions (or nonreligious) in each of these regions (Christians in Europe, Hindus in India, and so on). Under this scenario, Muslims would grow to over 4.2 billion or 38% of the world’s population by AD 2200. This scenario also implies that Muslims would begin to outnumber Christians in the early 22nd century (for the first time in human history). Scenario 4, labeled ‘nonreligious resurgence’ assumes that secularization hits the world’s two largest religions, Christianity and Islam, very hard. By 2100, 10% of Christians and 10% of Muslims have defected. Another 10% defect by AD 2200. From a high of 60% in AD 2050, these two religions together plummet to only 43% of the world’s population by 2200. Table 3 illustrates how a quantitative methodology for projecting the future of religion can produce four scenarios for a single year in the distant future (AD 2200). One of many surprising observations is that ethnoreligionists (tribal religionists) could number over 350 million nearly 200 years into the future (and over 570 million if one only considers births minus deaths). This is in sharp contrast with confident predictions in the early part of the 20th century that all ethnoreligionists would convert to the first major world religion they came in contact with. This methodology makes explicit the assumptions that are used to generate projections at the level of 238 countries (1900–2050) or six major regions (2050–2200). Furthermore, United Nation demographic projections are updated every two years and numerous studies on religious affiliation are published elsewhere every year. The method described here is flexible enough to utilize new demographic and religious information. Projections generated five years from now could look quite different.
2. Summary A secondary side effect of this study is the evidence it provides for the quantitative resiliency of religion over the next 200 years. Purely demographic changes do not show a precipitous decline in religious adherence. In fact, as Scenario 1 shows, the nonreligious would decline from 12.7% of the world’s population only to 9.2% by AD 2200. Scenarios 2–3 modify this figure only slightly. Our current understanding of the impact of secularization does not seem to indicate widespread losses to the world’s religions in the years to come (cf. [4]). The burden of proof would be on observers stating that massive defections from religious adherence are expected or likely (Scenario 4). At present, the best quantitative tools for projecting the religious future of mankind do not reflect a ‘pessimistic’ view.
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References [1] Annuario Pontificio, Citta del Vaticano: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, Annual. [2] D.B. Barrett, T.M. Johnson, World Christian Trends, AD 30–2200: Interpreting the Annual Christian Megacensus, William Carey Library, Pasadena, CA, 2001, pp. 952. [3] D.B. Barrett, G.T. Kurian, T.M. Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, (2 vols.). [4] P. Berger, The Desecularization of the World, Harper & Row, New York, 1999. [5] J. Coates, J. Jarrett (Eds.), What Futurists Believe, World Future Society, Bethesda, MD, 1989, pp. 83. [6] M. Eliade, et al. (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, Macmillan, New York, 1986, (16 vols. later, 8 vols.). [7] Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the Year: Religious Adherents Table, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, Annual since 1987. [8] P. Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002. [9] T.M. Johnson, Quantitative futures for Christianity and world religions, AD 1900–2200: development and application of a projection methodology, Doctoral Dissertation, William Carey International University (1993). [10] Statistical Yearbook of the Church, Citta del Vaticano: Secretaria Status, Annual. [11] United Nations, Long-range World Population Projections: Two Centuries of Population Growth, 1950–2150, New York, 1998. [12] United Nations, World Population Prospects, New York, 2001.