Posted on 01/21/2016 11:31:56 AM PST by presidio9
By the end of the century, Muslims could outnumber Christians for the first time in history, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center.
"Another way of thinking about it is Christianity had a seven-century head-start on Islam, and Islam is finally catching up," says Alan Cooperman, the director of religion research at Pew.
Christianity is currently the world's largest religion, making up a third of the world's population with 2.2 billion adherents. Pew research shows that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. The religious group will make up 30 percent of the world's population by 2050, compared to just 23 percent of the population in 2010. That means the number of Muslims in the world will nearly equal the number of Christians by 2050.
If Islam's growth spurt continues, Pew data shows, Muslims could outnumber Christians soon after the year 2070.
That's not to say that the total number of Christians is decreasing; Christianity's growth rate is just not as fast as Islam's. While the number of Christians will increase from about 2.1 billion to 2.9 billion by 2050, Muslims will jump from 1.6 billion to 2.8 billion.
This growth has to do with the relatively young age of the Muslim population as well as high fertility rates. Other religious groups have aging populations. Among Buddhists, for example, half of adherents are older than 30 and��‹ the average birth rate is 1.6 children. By contrast, in 2010, a third of the Muslim population was under 15. What's more, each Muslim woman has an average of 3.1 children, while the average for Christian women is 2.7.
The Pew research revealed two other interesting shifts in world religious perspectives, Cooperman says.
Atheists, agnostics and those who do not affiliate with religion will make up a smaller percentage of the world's total population by 2050 — even though the group is growing in the U.S. and Europe. The decline is primarily because those who are unaffiliated religiously have low fertility rates, with women bearing an average of 1.7 children in their lifetime.
Between now and 2050, the hub of Christianity will also shift - from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2010, the majority of the Christian population - 25.5 percent - lived in Europe, but sub-Saharan Africa will become home to nearly 40 percent of the world's Christians by 2050. Fertility rates are also behind this change. Christians living in sub-Saharan African have the highest fertility rates among Christians worldwide: Each woman has, on average, 4.4 children.
Cooperman emphasizes that a lot could change between now and 2050.
"We're not saying that this will happen; it's if current patterns and trends continue," Cooperman says. "We do not know what's going to happen in the future. There could be war, revolution, famine, disease. These are things no one can predict and that could change the numbers."
2050 I will be 81........I hope I am in Heaven.
2050 I will be 81........I hope I am in Heaven.
The left is going to take out Islam after they get done with Christianity. The real battle is not with Islam, it’s with the left.
If you want to call it a religion.
Rarely does any forecast go in a straight line for 35 years.
In 35 years - the shia and sunni will kill millions of each other.
In 35 years - Christianity may convert the whole of China.
In 35 years -There may be several crusades...
NPR - radio for useful idiots...(on the taxpayers dime)
World population will also drop by billions
Because?
I can see a situation where Iran detonates a nuke on Israel and then Israel destroys the rest of the middle east. That will cause one billion dead Muslims, right there.
I really detest how much replay this Pew study gets. Take a look at this explanation from the study about how fewer than half the nations in the world were modeled for religious switching— an important variable— especially for Christians who practice evangelical and mission outreaches:
“Countries With No Switching Modeled
The 43 countries and territories that were projected but lack switching data are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bhutan, Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, China, Comoros, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Estonia, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, India, Israel, Kosovo, Laos, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mongolia, Namibia, Nepal, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Somalia, Suriname, Swaziland, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.”
What jumps out of this incoherence are at least two countries:
1. China
2. India
So no one between now and 2050 in India or China is going to become Christian among a population of more than 2.2 billion people or roughly 1/3 of the world’s population.
In fact, there is very good reason to believe that in China:
1. The current estimates of Christians is too low
2. The potential switching to Christianity is massive.
Examine’s pew’s review of the China calculations. Notice Pew chooses to change the the Number of Muslims to twice the number officially known— based on their own preferences for that number while explicitly rejecting multiple studies showing higher Christian populations and higher potential Christian growth than what is rendered by Pew.
http://www.pewforum.org/files/2011/12/ChristianityAppendixC.pdf
If the Pew refusal to suggest that religious switching toward Christianity in China is taken into account, it is highly unlikely Islam will surpass Christianity for any foreseeable future. An area of problems arise in the fact that Christian countries allow individuals to report their switching to secularism without fear of apostasy laws killing them while dozens of nations have apostasy laws that result in death for reporting religious switching out of Islam.
How is this study credible since it decides to make religious switching an irrelevant datapoint.
It is even debatable whether the demographic assumptions of the Islamic world are accurate. There is evidence of impending demographic implosions.
The Pew study cannot reliably assert that in 2050 that Muslims will surpass Christianity. In fact, it is quite likely that Christianity will be an even larger proportion of the global population 35-40% than it is today [32%]
Various conservative studies a few years ago have suggested that the number of Christians in China would exceed those in the US and Mexico, combined, by 2030.
What those studies did not take into account was China lifting the "one child" policy. It goes without saying that Christian families are more likely than atheists to have two or even multiple children.
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