New Delhi. The global population of Christians is decreasing across the world. This has been revealed in a recent report. According to the recently released report of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world, but its share in the total population is continuously decreasing. The special thing is that the traditional center of this religion is shifting from Europe and America and is now rapidly moving towards sub-Saharan Africa.

Study based on data from 201 countries

The report is based on an analysis of more than 2,700 censuses and surveys in 201 countries and territories.

As of 2020, approximately 2.3 billion people (28.8%) in the world identified themselves as Christians.

In 2010, this number was 2.1 billion, an increase of about 6% over the decade.

But during the same period, the share of Christians declined from 31% to 28.8%, as the global population and non-Christian communities grew by 15%.

That is, despite the increase in numbers, their proportion in the total population of the world decreased.

Two major reasons behind the decline

The report explains the main reasons behind this change:

Declining birth rates in many countries

The growing trend of leaving religion as adults

According to the study, for every one new Christian, approximately 3.1 people have left their religion in recent years. Most of these people did not convert to another religion, but rather declared themselves to be without any religious identity.

Major change in geographic center

The distribution of the Christian population is also rapidly changing.

The number of Christians in Europe has declined to about 500 million, a decrease of about 9%. In North America, the number has declined to about 230 million.

In contrast, the Christian population in sub-Saharan Africa grew by 31% to reach 690 million.

The distribution of the global Christian population as of 2020 was as follows

31% – Sub-Saharan Africa

22% – Europe

24% – Latin America and the Caribbean

10% – North America

The report recorded a major religious shift of at least 5 percentage points in 41 countries, with the majority seeing a decline in Christian share.

Current percentage of the world’s religions

According to the 2020 Global Religious Outlook:

28.8% – Christians

25.6% – Muslim

14.9% – Hindu

4.1% – Buddhist

24.2% – People who do not identify with any religion

Thus, 75.8% of the world’s population is affiliated with some religion, while about a quarter of the population (24.2%) consider themselves to have no religious identity.

What do these figures indicate?

Experts say this shift isn’t just about numbers, but also reflects changes in religious identity, population growth rates, and social change. The religious map is expected to become even more regionally diverse in the coming decades.