Poll: Christians Most Numerous Worldwide; 'Nones' Majority in Six Countries

Christian Post ^ | 12/19/2012 | Stoyan Zaimov

[SeekAndFind]

A new study (PDF) out today by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life looks at numbers from 2010 and finds that 16.3% of the global population (approximately 1,126,500,000 people) have no religious affiliation:

Considering how this study analyzes 2,500 different sources of data from 232 countries, it’s about as rigorous as a study can get. Keep in mind that since it relied on self-identification of your religious group, there may still be a large percentage of people who called themselves, say, Catholic, without actually believing any of the doctrine. In other words, the “1-in-6-are-non-religious” headline is very likely an underestimate.

Still, the 1-in-6 number is the big takeaway from the study:

“Something that may surprise a lot of people,” said Conrad Hackett, a primary researcher on the report, “is that the third-largest religious group, after Christians and Muslims, is the religiously unaffiliated. There may have been some guesses floating out there before, but this is the first time there are numbers based on survey data analyzed in a rigorous and scientific way.”

Where do the Nones live? According to “The Global Religious Landscape,” as the study is called, most of us live, not surprisingly, in Asia and the Pacific (mostly China):

In fact, the Unaffiliated constitute the majority of the population in six countries: the Czech Republic (76%), North Korea (71%), Estonia (60%), Japan (57%), Hong Kong (56%), and China (52%).

In the U.S., the number (circa 2010) is around 16.4%, though more recent Pew studies put the percentage a little higher, closer to 20%.

Though the U.S. only has about 4.5% of the global unaffiliated population, that still amounts to 50,980,000 people. Imagine how much political clout we could have if even a fraction of that number decided to advocate for church/state separation and socially liberal policies…

[Sigurdrifta]

Could you please explain your last sentence to all of us here at FR?

[SeekAndFind]

Could you please explain your last sentence to all of us here at FR?

I posted the article as is. I didn't write a sentence of my own.

[SeekAndFind]

Here is the link where I got the chart and map from:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/12/18/pew-study-worldwide-one-in-six-has-no-religious-affiliation/

The comments are entirely the author’s and NOT MINE.

[353FMG]

“Christians, however, made the majority of Europe, North America....”

.
‘Christians’ are not of much use when they vote for Obama.

[ansel12]

Many Catholics tell us that those aren’t really Catholics, for instance in America, about 54% of the Catholics don’t really exist, and can’t be counted.

[dangus]

>> Though the U.S. only has about 4.5% of the global unaffiliated population, that still amounts to 50,980,000 people. Imagine how much political clout we could have if even a fraction of that number decided to advocate for church/state separation and socially liberal policies… <<

The author obviously didn’t see the last election results. The religiously hostile DID vote as a block.

[dangus]

If you are comparing the religious adherence of Catholics to any given Protestant group, you need to consider that those brought up as Catholics identify as Catholic until they find some other broad category to identify with. This is in contrast to say someone who was brought up as a Southern Baptist. The moment he dissents from the Baptist faith enough to quit going to weekly services, he will instead identify himself as a “Baptist,” a “Protestant,” a “Christian,” or “unaffiliated.”

When pollsters ask the political choices of Catholics, they find that 25% of Americans identify themselves as Catholics. This is roughly equal to the proportion of Americans who affiliate with all Protestant churches combined. Does that mean that Catholics are as numerous as Protestants? Of course not. They are outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1! But all those religiously inactive Protestants no longer identify themselves by their former church, as ex-Catholics tend to do, unless they go evangelical.

To get a sense of comparing religious convictions, you need to compare church-going Catholics to say, evangelicals. Or you need to compare Catholics to Western-culture non-Catholics. But you can’t compare self-identified Catholics to self-identified evangelicals because their reasons for identifying themselves are different.

[ansel12]

What a load of nonsense.

Pollsters ask your religious identity, if you are a current member of the Catholic denomination then you are counted as Catholic, if you are a Christian who is not a Catholic, or a Catholic who is still a Christian but no longer identify as Catholic, then they lump you in as a Protestant, with no interest in your denomination whether it is the gay lesbian church, a black denomination like Reverend Wrights, Episcopalian or Southern Baptist, or even if you have never been baptized and don’t belong to any church.

The “Protestant” category is more than twice as large as the members of the Catholic denomination.

The “protestant” vote has gone democrat 3 times in history, the Catholic vote all but 5 or 6 times depending on the source.

The point is, that when it is pointed out how Catholics vote, such as for Obama in both elections, Clinton and Gore, many Catholics start claiming that those voters are not Catholics.

My question is, where are they on a thread like this, shouldn’t those posters be pointing out that the world’s Catholic numbers are vastly, humongously, over-inflated?

Either the majority of Catholics vote for abortion and the homosexual agenda, or this articles numbers on Catholics need to be corrected.

[dangus]

>> What a load of nonsense. <<

Sorry, I mistook you for someone who could handle complexities of thought. My mistake. I won’t let that happen again.

[Oratam]

Oh, fer crisakes! We used to call ‘em the “little pagan babies.” I think we got this in the bag.

[ansel12]

Nonsense is nonsense, calling it complexities of thought, is just more nonsense.

[TrueKnightGalahad]

These Pew findings differ so significantly from other widely-cited sources - e.g., the CIA World Factbook - that I think Pew’s methodologies and analyses must be closely examined to see if their conclusions have any correlation to reality.

[TrueKnightGalahad]

BTW, it’s interesting that while Jews constitute only two hundredths (!) of one per cent. of the world’s population, we control the entire globe and everything that happens on it. Whoo-Hoo!

[Salvation]

Did you think that Catholics should have been separated from the other Christian denominations?

I’m puzzled.

[Salvation]

LOL!

[ansel12]

Really, you are puzzled? Why are you puzzled?

[dangus]

U.S. Protestants established an anti-clerical, socialist regime in Mexico which killed 20,000 priests, nuns and catechists. Nonetheless, the traditions of Catholicism survived: abortion is almost unheard of in Mexico; its court-ordered legalization in Mexico City resultes in an infinitessimal number of abortions. Marriage and family life are very strong. Divorce is rare. But socialism is still prevalent.

Of the Mexicans who leave their homeland, Only 38% affiliate with the Catholic church in any way. Only 12% ever attend church. 89% of them vote Democrat, if they can legally vote at all.

This horribly skews the “Catholic vote.”

The truth is that while the overwhelming majority of Protestants in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, etc., vote Democrat; the majority of Catholics in all those states vote Republican. The only states where a majority of Catholics voted Democrats are in the southwest and Maine.

In North Carolina, Romney won by 10% among Protestants, but by 32% among Catholics.

Romney won among Catholics in Connecticut, but lost by 18% among Protestants.

He won by 6% among Catholics in New York, but by 38% among Protestants. (And yes, that’s despite the Puerto Rican vote!)

Among Catholics, he won by 11 points in Ohio, 12 points in Wisconsin, 10 points in Virginia, 11 points in Michigan, 8 points in New Hampshire. Romney even won among Catholics in Illinois.

And this counts non-church-going Catholics as Catholics, but does not count unaffiliated Protestants as Protestants. Among the unaffiliated, Obama won North Carolina by 48 points, Wisconsin by 48, Ohio by 47, Michigan by 59, Virginia by 54, Florida by 46, and Pennsylvania by 49. 80%+ of these unaffiliated come from PROTESTANT traditions.