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The list of religious populations article provides a comprehensive overview of the distribution and size of religious groups around the world. This article aims to present statistical information on the number of adherents to various religions, including major faiths such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and others, as well as smaller religious communities.
The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, though this is not a uniform practice. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative degrees of civility in different societies, [2] but this concept of a ranking order has since fallen into disrepute in many contemporary cultures.
According to Mark Juergensmeyer of the University of California, "popular Protestantism" (that is to say all forms of Protestantism with the notable exception of the historical denominations deriving from the Protestant Reformation) is the most dynamic religious movement in the contemporary world, alongside resurgent Islam. [30]
World religions is a category used in the study of religion to demarcate at least five—and in some cases more—religions that are deemed to have been especially large, internationally widespread, or influential in the development of Western society.
Some academics studying the subject have divided religions into three broad categories: world religions, a term which refers to transcultural, international faiths; Indigenous religions, which refers to smaller, culture-specific or nation-specific religious groups; and new religious movements, which refers to recently developed faiths. [5]
This is an overview of religion by country or territory in 2010 according to a 2012 Pew Research Center report. [1] The article Religious information by country gives information from The World Factbook of the CIA and the U.S. Department of State .
Growth of religion involves the spread of individual religions and the increase in the numbers of religious adherents around the world. In sociology, desecularization is the proliferation or growth of religion, most commonly after a period of previous secularization.
Reliable data on religious demography is difficult to obtain because an official nationwide census has not been conducted in decades. U.S. government estimates indicate a population of approximately 30.4 million, with Sunni Muslims comprising 80% of the population, Shia Muslims making up about 19%, and other religious groups comprising less than 1%.