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Protestants with a strong religious identity continue to increase as Catholics with a strong religious identity continue to decline, according to a March study by the Pew Research Center. The proportion of Catholics reporting strong religious affiliation declined by almost twenty percentage points over the last few decades, from 46 percent of Catholics in 1974 to 27 percent in 2012. Protestants reporting strong religious affiliation increased more than ten percentage points during the same period, from 43 percent to 54 percent. The contrast between Protestant and Catholic trends is not as straightforward as the numbers suggest. The data tell us...

Before we talk about comparative birth rates in Muslim and Christian nations, we have to talk about a weakness that 21st Century Christianity faces in its competition with Islam. A Martyr in the Christian religion is one who dies for his faith. A Martyr in the Muslim religion is not just one who dies for his faith, but one who kills for his faith. How is Christianity going to compete with people who are not just willing to die for their religion, but to kill for their religion? Birth rates among almost all Western Christian nations are below replacement, and...

Deep in China’s heartland is a region known as “The Bethlehem of China,” where, more than a thousand years ago, Western missionaries first brought Christianity to the area. It is here, in a series of caves hidden in the hills, where members of China’s underground Christian Church tell FRONTLINE/World and Chicago Tribune reporter Evan Osnos how they have kept the religion alive. For years, they moved from place to place to avoid government detection, until they found safety in these hills. “When we were in an underground state, we would gather here to meet,” Zhang Yinan, a pastor who’s chronicling...

“Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions,” asserts the promise of God from the book of Joel. Yet some of those men reportedly seeing visions and dreams are neither Jews nor Christians … but Muslims. What’s more, Middle East evangelists report the dreamers are coming to Christianity because of their visions of Jesus. According to a CBN report, Christian Middle East evangelist Hazem Farraj’s television program “Reflections” is reaching a large Muslim audience. Farraj told CBN that he hears from Muslims who report having dreams or visions of Jesus. Tom Doyle, an evangelist, pastor...

The report ranks the most and least “Bible-minded” cities by looking at how people in those cities view the Bible.... Regionally, the South still qualifies as the most Bible-minded. The top ranking cities, where at least half of the population qualifies as Bible-minded, are all Southern cities. This includes the media markets for Knoxville, TN (52% of the population are Bible-minded), Shreveport, LA (52%), Chattanooga, TN (52%), Birmingham, AL (50%), and Jackson, MS (50%). Other markets in the top 10 include Springfield, MO (49%), Charlotte, NC (48%), Lynchburg, VA (48%), Huntsville-Decatur, AL (48%), and Charleston, WV (47%). The least Bible-oriented...

An Archaeologist has discovered what he believes to be the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen. The find has led to theories that there may have once been a Christian church in Mecca. A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of the Holy City, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2254657/Was-church-Mecca-Chiselled-stonework-Christian-figure-discovered-holy-site-Yemen.html#ixzz2GmL9IgsA Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen, leading to theories that there may have once been a church in Mecca. A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of Mecca, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Paul Yule, an archaeologist from Heidelberg in Germany, has dated the 5feet 7inch tall relief which shows a man with chains of jewellery, curls and spherical eyes to around 530AD. ... The figure is barefoot, which was typical of Coptic saints....

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For two millennia, the birth of Christ has been seen as the greatest event in world history. The moment Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, God became man, and eternal salvation became possible. This date has been the separation point of mankind's time on earth, with B.C. designating the era before Christ, and A.D., anno domino, in the Year of the Lord, the years after. And how stands Christianity today? "Christianity is in danger off being wiped out in its biblical heartlands," says the British think tank Civitas. In Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, Christians face persecution...

I'm often asked, "What is the world's fastest growing religion?"Questioners are stirred both by hope -- that "our" religion is so evidently the best that it is sweeping the world -- but also by the fear that "they" (usually Muslims) are going to overwhelm us. Actually, that growth question crosses faith boundaries. Wikipedia's entry on "Claims to be the Fastest-Growing Religion" collects many such boasts, which variously claim the prize for Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Wicca, Deism, the Falun Gong, Scientology, and other competitors. Obviously, even compiling such a list has the tongue-in-cheek implication that most such claims are bogus or...

An international Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life poll has found that Christianity remains the religion with the most adherents worldwide, while roughly one-third of people around the globe have no religious affiliation. The comprehensive poll examined more than 230 countries worldwide, and asked respondents to identify which religion, if any, they belong to. The results determined that 32 percent of the world's population, 2.2 billion people, are Christians, 23 percent or 1.6 billion are Muslim, 15 percent or 1 billion are Hindu, and that 7 percent or 500 million are Buddhists. African, Asian, Native American and...

There has been a huge 13 percent drop in the number of people in Britain identifying themselves as Christian, according to new data released from the 2011 Census. The shocking statistics reveal that the number of Christians has fallen from 37 million to 33 million since 2001. Christians now make up only 59 percent of the population, as opposed to 72 percent in 2001. Meanwhile, the number of Muslims has risen from 1.5 million to 2.7 million - or 5 percent of the population - while the number of people describing themselves as having no religion rose by 10 percent...

Christian folks in the West are in the process of becoming a minority. With the contraceptive pill, the profanation of marriage, and easy abortion, we don't reach anymore the threshold required for the reproduction of our civilization. Our Christian nation is self-aborting. It's a phenomenon akin to a civilizational suicide. RUSSIA:

According to a new study by the Pew Forum, Protestants are, for the first time in history, not a majority in the United States of America. I don’t think that’s anything for evangelical Protestants, or anyone else, to panic about. Several years ago, I pointed out here that studies were showing a declining Protestant majority, and projections were being made for this very reality. Now, the surveys says we have a 48 percent plurality of Protestants. I wasn’t frantic about that several years ago, and I’m still not. When working toward our “God and country” badges, my childhood Boy Scout...

Pope Benedict XVI at the April 18, 2012 general audience. CNA file photo. Vatican City, Oct 9, 2012 / 12:34 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Arab Christians are reacting positively to the decision to include Arabic as one of the official languages used at the Pope’s weekly general audience. “In this way, in the wake of his recent trip to Lebanon and the publication of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation ‘Ecclesia in Medio Oriente,’ the Holy Father intends to express his perpetual concern and support for Christians in the Middle East, and to remind everyone of their duty to pray and work...

A few months ago we looked at a survey that showed that the vast majority of Americans have no idea whatsoever what percentage of the population is gay.Mainstream studies indicate that percentage is somewhere in the low single digits, but Americans believed — on average — that 25 percent of the population is gay. Yes, 25 percent. This includes data showing that 35 percent of Americans think that more than 25 percent of the population is gay.I’ve long wondered why it is that Americans are so wrong on this, but I can’t help but think that the mainstream media plays...

According to Grey Matter Research, Americans think our country is far more religiously diverse than it actually is. In a survey of 747 adults the research and consulting firm found that most underestimated the size of Christianity and over-estimated the size of atheists, Muslims, and other religious minorities. “The typical American adult pegs religious affiliation in the U.S. as follows:  24% Catholic, 20% Protestant, 19% unaffiliated, 9% Jewish, 9% atheist or agnostic, 7% Muslim, 7% Mormon, and 5% from all other religious groups. In reality, according to the 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Americans...

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets:(Proverbs 1:20)What a privilege and opportunity for any nation to be able to host an Olympics. The opening ceremony is a unique opportunity to display the glories of the host country. But that would presuppose that the presenters actually believe in the validity of their own national story. IÂ’ve been told that an unprecedented one billion people around the world witnessed this yearÂ’s London opening ceremony. I also was eager to see how the narrative of the nation of Shakespeare, Donne, Churchill, the Puritans, Wilberforce and countless other of the remarkable...

Though ostensibly dealing with a building, a recent report demonstrates how Turkey’s populace—once deemed the most secular and liberal in the Muslim world—is reverting to its Islamic heritage, complete with animosity for the infidel West and dreams of Islam’s glory days of jihad and conquest. According to Reuters: Thousands of devout Muslims prayed outside Turkey’s historic Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday [May 23] to protest a 1934 law that bars religious services at the former church and mosque. Worshippers shouted, “Break the chains, let Hagia Sophia Mosque open,” and “God is great” [the notorious “Allahu Akbar”] before kneeling in prayer...

For centuries the alleged ideal of communism had come to the world as a messianic and millennial creed. Various seers, notably Joachim of Fiore, had prophesied the final state of mankind as one of perfect harmony and equality, one where all things are owned in common, where there is no necessity for work or need for the division of labor. In the case of Joachim, of course, problems of production and property, indeed of scarcity in general, were "solved" by man no longer possessing a physical body. As pure spirits, men as equal and harmonious psychic entities spending all their...