Worldwide Adherents of All Religions by Six Continental Areas, Mid-1996

▪ Table

Worldwide Adherents of All Religions by Six Continental Areas, Mid-1996

  Africa Asia Europe Latin 

America  Northern 

America Oceania World % 

Number of

 countries 

Christians 360,874,000 303,127,000 555,614,000 455,819,000 255,542,000 24,253,000 1,955,229,000 33.7 260 

  Roman Catholics 125,376,000 94,250,000 269,021,000 408,968,000 75,398,000 8,452,000 981,465,000 16.9 249 

  Protestants 114,726,000 45,326,000 79,534,000 34,816,000 121,361,000 8,257,000 404,020,000 7.0 236 

  Orthodox 25,215,000 13,970,000 171,665,000 460,000 6,390,000 650,000 218,350,000 3.8 105 

  Anglicans 27,200,000 650,000 28,357,000 1,089,000 6,300,000 5,540,000 69,136,000 1.2 158 

  Other Christians 68,357,000 148,931,000 7,037,000 10,486,000 46,093,000 1,354,000 282,258,000 4.9 118 

  unaffiliated Christians 60,234,000 11,561,000 29,376,000 12,164,000 54,148,000 4,937,000 172,420,000 3.0 215 

  affiliated Christians 300,640,000 291,566,000 526,238,000 443,655,000 201,394,000 19,316,000 1,782,809,000 30.7 260 

Atheists 440,000 175,450,000 40,845,000 3,010,000 1,850,000 600,000 222,195,000 3.8 139 

Baha'is 1,923,000 3,230,000 95,000 722,000 357,000 77,000 6,404,000 0.1 210 

Buddhists 38,000 321,985,000 1,563,000 569,000 920,000 200,000 325,275,000 5.6 92 

Chinese folk religionists 13,000 220,653,000 120,000 68,000 100,000 17,000 220,971,000 3.8 60 

Confucians 1,000 5,050,000 4,500 2,500 27,000 1,000 5,086,000 0.1 12 

Ethnic religionists 70,250,000 30,350,000 1,150,000 1,042,000 45,000 108,000 102,945,000 1.8 104 

Hindus 1,986,000 786,991,000 1,650,000 760,000 1,365,000 323,000 793,075,000 13.7 94 

Jains 59,000 4,835,000 16,000 4,500 4,500 1,000 4,920,000 0.1 11 

Jews 165,000 4,257,000 2,432,000 1,084,000 5,836,000 92,000 13,866,000 0.2 134 

Mandeans 0 45,000 0 0 0 0 45,000 0.0 2 

Muslims 308,660,000 778,362,000 32,032,000 1,356,000 5,530,000 385,000 1,126,325,000 19.4 184 

New-Religionists 21,000 103,361,000 803,000 919,000 900,000 11,000 106,015,000 1.8 27 

Nonreligious 3,567,000 752,759,000 90,389,500 16,053,000 21,315,000 2,845,000 886,928,500 15.3 226 

Parsees 1,500 185,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000 190,500 0.0 10 

Shintoists 0 2,893,000 1,000 1,000 1,500 1,000 2,897,500 0.0 12 

Sikhs 37,000 18,465,000 494,000 9,000 496,000 7,000 19,508,000 0.3 21 

Spiritists 4,500 1,120,000 18,000 8,834,000 315,000 1,000 10,292,500 0.2 30 

Other religionists 90,000 100,000 450,000 190,000 1,072,000 50,000 1,952,000 0.0 182 

Non-Christians 387,256,000 3,210,091,000 172,064,000 34,625,000 40,135,000 4,720,000 3,848,891,000 66.3 262 

Total population 748,130,000 3,513,218,000 727,678,000 490,444,000 295,677,000 28,973,000 5,804,120,000 100.0 262 

See as table:

      Continents. These follow current UN demographic terminology. UN practice began by dividing the world into 5 continents in 1949, then into 18 regions (1954), then into 8 major continental

  areas (called macro regions in 1987) and 24 regions (1963), then into 7 major areas and 22 regions (1988),  and most recently into the 6 major areas shown above and 21 regions (1994).

  See United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 1994 Revision (New York: UN, 1995), with populations of all continents, regions, and countries covering the period 1950–2025. The

  table above therefore combines its former columns "East Asia" and "South Asia" into one single continental area, "Asia," which also now includes the former Soviet Central Asian states.

  Note also that "Europe" now extends eastward to Vladivostok, the Sea of Japan, and the Bering Strait.

Countries. The last column enumerates sovereign and nonsovereign countries in which each religion or religious grouping has a numerically significant following.

Rows. The list of non-Christian religions is arranged in alphabetical order.

Adherents. As defined and enumerated for each of the world's countries in World Christian Encyclopedia (1982), projected to mid-1996, adjusted for recent data.

Christians. Followers of Jesus Christ affiliated with churches (church members, including children: 1,782,809,000) plus persons professing in censuses or polls though not so affiliated.

Other Christians. Denotes Catholics (non-Roman), marginal Protestants, crypto-Christians, and adherents of African, Asian, Black, and Latin-American indigenous churches.

Atheists. Persons professing atheism, skepticism, disbelief, or irreligion, including antireligious (opposed to all religion).

Buddhists. 56% Mahayana, 38% Theravada (Hinayana), 6% Tentrayana (Lamaism).

Chinese folk religionists. Followers of the traditional Chinese religion (local deities, ancestor veneration, Confucian ethics, Taoism, universism, divination, some Buddhist elements).

Confucians. Non-Chinese followers of Confucius and Confucianism, mostly Koreans in Korea.

Hindus. 70% Vaishnavites, 25% Shaivites, 2% neo-Hindus and reform Hindus.

Jews. Adherents of Judaism. For detailed data on "core" Jewish population, see the annual "World Jewish Populations" article in the American Jewish Committee's American Jewish Year Book.

Muslims. 83% Sunnites, 16% Shi'ites, 1% other schools. Up to 1990 the ethnic Muslims in the former U.S.S.R. who had embraced communism were not included as Muslims in this table.

After the collapse of communism in 1990–91, these ethnic Muslims were once again enumerated as Muslims if they had returned to Islamic profession and practice.

New-Religionists. Followers of Asian 20th-century New Religions, New Religious movements, radical new crisis religions, and non-Christian syncretistic mass religions.

Nonreligious. Persons professing no religion, nonbelievers, agnostics, freethinkers, dereligionized secularists indifferent to all religion.

Other religionists. Including 70 minor world religions and a large number of spiritist religions, New Age religions, quasi religions, pseudo religions, parareligions, religious or mystic systems,

  religious and semireligious brotherhoods of numerous varieties.

Total population. UN medium variant figures for mid-1996, as given in World Population Prospects: The 1994 Revision (New York: UN, 1995).

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