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Growth of religion

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. Statistics commonly measure the absolute number of adherents, the percentage of the absolute growth per-year, and the growth of converts in the world.

Studies in the 21st century suggest that, in terms of percentage and worldwide spread,[1][2] Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world.[3] A comprehensive religious forecast for 2050 by the Pew Research Center predicts that the global Muslim population will grow at a faster rate than the Christian population – primarily due to the average younger age, and higher fertility rate of Muslims.[4][5][6] Religious conversion has no net impact on the Muslim population growth.[7][8] In fact, conversion will have little impact on the size of religious groups.[9] Pew projects that religious people will increase by 2050 due to increasing fertility rates in religious countries and decreasing fertility rates in less religious countries.[10]

It is projected that birth rate – rather than conversion – will prove the main factor in the growth of any given religion.[11] While according to other various scholars and sources Pentecostalism – a Protestant Christian movement – is the fastest growing religion in the world,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][excessive citations] this growth is primarily due to religious conversion and denomination switching among Christians.[21][22]

Counting the number of converts to a religion can prove difficult. Although some national censuses ask people about their religion, they do not ask if they have converted to their presently espoused faith. Additionally, in some countries, legal and social consequences make conversion difficult. For example, individuals can receive a capital punishment if they openly leave Islam in some Muslim countries.[23][24][25][26][27]

Statistical data on conversion to and from Islam are scarce.[28] According to a study published in 2011 by Pew Research, what little information is available may suggest that religious conversion has no net impact on the Muslim population, as the number of people who convert to Islam is roughly similar to those who leave Islam.[28][29][30]

Some religions proselytise vigorously (Christianity and Islam, for example), while others (such as Judaism and Hinduism) do not generally encourage conversions into their ranks. Some faiths grow exponentially at first (especially, for example, along trade routes[31] or for reasons of social prestige[32]), only for their zeal to wane (note the flagging case of Zoroastrianism). The growth of a religion can interact with factors such as persecution, entrenched rival religions (such as established religions), and religious market saturation.[33]

  1. ^ Johnson & Grim 2013.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference mjohnson was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "The Future of Global Muslim Population: Projections from 2010 to 2013" Archived 23 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine Accessed July 2013.
  4. ^ "The Future of World Religions p.70" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2015.
  5. ^ Whitehead, Nadia (25 December 2015). "A Religious Forecast For 2050: Atheism Is Down, Islam Is Rising". NPR. This growth has to do with the relatively young age of the Muslim population as well as high fertility rates.
  6. ^ "Why Muslims are the world's fastest-growing religious group". Pew Research Center. 23 April 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2016. The main reasons for Islam's growth ultimately involve simple demographics. To begin with, Muslims have more children than members of the seven other major religious groups analyzed in the study. Muslim women have an average of 2.9 children, significantly above the next-highest group (Christians at 2.6) and the average of all non-Muslims (2.2). In all major regions where there is a sizable Muslim population, Muslim fertility exceeds non-Muslim fertility.
  7. ^ "The Future of World Religions" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2015.
  8. ^ "The Future of the Global Muslim Population". 27 January 2011. there is no substantial net gain or loss in the number of Muslims through conversion globally; the number of people who become Muslims through conversion seems to be roughly equal to the number of Muslims who leave the faith
  9. ^ "The Future of World Religions" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2015.
  10. ^ "Key Findings From the Global Religious Futures Project". Pew Research Center. 21 December 2022.
  11. ^ The Future of the Global Muslim Population (Report). Pew Research Center. 27 January 2011. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  12. ^ Miller, Donald E; Sargeant, Kimon H; Flory, Richard, eds. (9 September 2013). Spirit and Power: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism. Oxford University Press Scholarship. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199920570.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-934563-2. Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing religious movement in the world
  13. ^ Anderson, Allan; Bergunder, Michael; Droogers, Andre (9 May 2012). Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods. University of California Press Scholarship. doi:10.1525/california/9780520266612.001.0001. ISBN 9780520266612. With its remarkable ability to adapt to different cultures, Pentecostalism has become the world's fastest growing religious movement.
  14. ^ "Pentecostalism—the fastest growing religion on earth". ABC. 30 May 2021.
  15. ^ "Pentecostalism: Massive Global Growth Under the Radar". Pulitzer Center. 9 March 2015. Today, one quarter of the two billion Christians in the world are Pentecostal or Charismatic. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in the world.
  16. ^ "More Religion, but Not the Old-Time Kind". The New York Times. 3 August 2005. The world's fastest-growing religion is not any type of fundamentalism, but the Pentecostal wing of Christianity.
  17. ^ "Witnessing The New Reach Of Pentecostalism". The Washington Post. 3 August 2002. Pentecostalism is widely recognized by religious scholars as the fastest-growing Christian movement in the world, reaching into many different denominations.
  18. ^ "Canadian Pentecostalism". McGill–Queen's University Press. 9 February 2009. One of the most significant transformations in twentieth-century Christianity is the emergence and development of Pentecostalism. With over five hundred million followers, it is the fastest-growing movement in the world. An incredibly diverse movement, it has influenced many sectors of Christianity, flourishing in Africa, Latin America, and Asia and having an equally significant effect on Canada.
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Georgia State University was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ A. Elwell, Walter (2017). Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Baker Academic. ISBN 9781493410774. Pentecostalism arguably has been the fastest growing religious movement in the contemporary world
  21. ^ "Protestantism: The fastest growing religion in the developing world". The Manila Times. 18 November 2017. At the heart of this religious resurgence are Islam and Pentecostalism, a branch of Protestant Christianity. Islam grew at an annual average of 1.9 percent between 2000 and 2017, mainly as the result of a high birth rate. Pentecostalism grew at 2.2 percent each year, mainly by conversion. Half of developing-world Christians are Pentecostal, evangelical or charismatic (all branches of the faith emphasize the authority of the Bible and the need for a spiritual rebirth). Why are people so attracted to it?.
  22. ^ "Why is Protestantism flourishing in the developing world?". The Economist. 18 November 2017. Pentecostalism grew at 2.2 percent each year, mainly by conversion. Half of developing-world Christians are Pentecostal, evangelical or charismatic.
  23. ^ "The Future of World Religions p.182" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 February 2018. This analysis of religious switching draws on surveys in 19 countries where Muslims constitute a majority of the population. Generally, however, there are few reports of people disaffiliating from Islam in these countries. One reason for this may be the social and legal repercussions associated with disaffiliation in many Muslim-majority countries, up to and including the death penalty for apostasy. It is possible that in the future, these societies could allow for greater freedom to religiously disaffiliate. The demographic projections in this report do not seek to predict the likelihood of such changes in political and social dynamics, or to model what the consequences might be.
  24. ^ "The Future of the Global Muslim Population". 27 January 2011. There are a number of reasons why reliable data on conversions are hard to come by. Some national censuses ask people about their religion, but they do not directly ask whether people have converted to their present faith. A few cross-national surveys do contain questions about religious switching, but even in those surveys, it is difficult to assess whether more people leave Islam than enter the faith. In some countries, legal and social consequences make conversion difficult, and survey respondents may be reluctant to speak honestly about the topic. Additionally, for many Muslims, Islam is not just a religion but an ethnic or cultural identity that does not depend on whether a person actively practices the faith. This means that even nonpracticing or secular Muslims may still consider themselves, and be viewed by their neighbors, as Muslims.
  25. ^ Laws Criminalizing Apostasy Archived 11 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Library of Congress (2014)
  26. ^ Apostasy Archived 4 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine Oxford Islamic Studies Online, Oxford University Press (2012)
  27. ^ "The countries where apostasy is punishable by death". indy100. 7 May 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  28. ^ a b "The Future of the Global Muslim Population". 27 January 2011. there is no substantial net gain or loss in the number of Muslims through conversion globally; the number of people who become Muslims through conversion seems to be roughly equal to the number of Muslims who leave the faith
  29. ^ "The Changing Global Religious Landscape". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. 5 April 2017. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
  30. ^ Cite error: The named reference auto33 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  31. ^ Wick, Peter; Rabens, Volker, eds. (28 November 2013). Religions and Trade: Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross-Cultural Exchange between East and West. Dynamics in the History of Religions. Leiden: BRILL (published 2013). p. xi. ISBN 9789004255302. Retrieved 12 November 2021. Trade is a prominent generator of intercultural contact and is thus one of the most important triggers of religious contact. Through trade-based interactions, not only is merchandise traded but sooner or later religious goods are also 'traded' and interchanged.
  32. ^ Kong, Lily; Nair, Seeta (6 March 2014). "Geographies of Religious Conversion". In Rambo, Lewis R.; Farhadian, Charles E. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press (published 2014). p. 75. ISBN 9780199713547. Retrieved 12 November 2021. Some of the positive aspects of conversion include upward mobility in social circumstances, increased economic opportunities, and access to religious-affiliated institutional and social services (such as education, health care, and charity relief). For example, Christianity in India was mostly adopted by members of lower castes and tribal peoples for whom religious conversion offered a way out of their low social status and lack of economic opportunities.
  33. ^ Young, William W. (2018). Listening, Religion, and Democracy in Contemporary Boston: God's Ears. Ethnographies of Religion. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 119. ISBN 9781498576093. [...] smaller churches such as Emmanuel face the sharp and troubling question of what they are for—why this church is needed in this particular place and time, when there is virtually market saturation for religious consumers.

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