[Vicomte13]

Interesting.

I got my numbers off of some religious data website (can't remember which).

Interesting that there would be such a tremendous variance.
What that tells me is that nobody knows, and that these numbers are a guess.

I suppose an "independent" is someone who says he's a Christian but says he doesn't belong to or believe in any particular sect. I wonder if they include Mormons and Christian Scientists as Protestants?

[Verginius Rufus]

They don't explain who is included as "independent" but cite the 2004 Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the Year as the source of their figures. Besides Mormons and Christian Scientists there are other groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses which may be kept out of the "Protestant" category. There are some Eastern churches which have theological differences with the Orthodox Church, such as the Coptic Church, but I'm guessing they are counting the Copts in the Orthodox category (they have almost 37 million Orthodox in Africa, which would roughly approximate the total of Ethiopian Christians plus Egyptian Copts).