Christianity by the numbers
With 2.18 billion adherents, Christianity has become a truly global
religion over the past century as rapid church growth in developing
nations offset declines in Christianity's traditional strongholds,
according to a new comprehensive report.
Billed as the broadest
and most reliable study to date, the Pew Research Center's "Global
Christianity" report on self-identified Christian populations uses more
than 2,400 sources of information, especially census and survey data.
Findings
reveal major shifts since 1910, when two-thirds of the world's
Christians lived in Europe. Now only one in four Christians reside in
Europe. Most of the rest are distributed across the Americas (37
percent), sub-Saharan Africa (24 percent) and the Asia-Pacific region
(13 percent). The broad trends have been known for decades, but the new
report provides some unexpected perspectives.
