Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
In many places surveyed, 20% or more of all adults have left their childhood religious group. Christianity and Buddhism have had especially large losses.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Many religions are heavily concentrated in a few countries
Half of the world’s population lives in just seven countries. But some of the world’s religious groups are even more concentrated than that.
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Restrictions on religion rose in most regions in 2023 but declined in sub-Saharan Africa
Median levels of government restrictions and social hostilities rose in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the Middle East and North Africa.
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More Countries Had Elevated Levels of Social Hostilities Involving Religion in 2023
The number of countries with high or very high social hostilities rose for the third year in a row; government interference in worship also increased.
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3. How important is following a specific religion to national belonging?
Across the 36 countries surveyed, people’s views on the importance of religion to national identity vary widely. Large shares in middle-income countries say being a member of the historically predominant religion in their country is very important to truly sharing the national identity – for example, to being truly Filipino or truly Nigerian. In high-income […]
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1. Number of countries with ‘very high’ government restrictions increases in 2022
Of the 198 places analyzed, 24 scored “very high” in our measure of government restrictions, up from 19 in 2021. For social hostilities, “very high” score totals were unchanged.
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12. Religion in the Middle East and North Africa
Every religious group grew in count in the Middle East and North Africa – a Muslim-majority region – between 2010 and 2020.
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2. Religious switching into and out of the religiously unaffiliated group
Read about where religiously unaffiliated populations have had the largest net gains, and how those who’ve joined the “nones” identified previously.
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Why is Buddhism shrinking worldwide?
The global population of Buddhists shrank by roughly 5% between 2010 and 2020, the sole major religious group to decline.
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3. Identifying with a religion because of culture, ethnicity or family background
Identifying with a group for reasons “aside from religion” – such as ethnically, culturally, or because of family background – is somewhat rare. Religious Landscape Study by Pew Research Center.