New book counts believers: Islam, Hinduism gain

NEW YORK (AP) -- Christianity remained the world's biggest religion while Islam and the non-religious population posted notable increases in the 20th century, according to a major religious reference book.

	GRAPH
The world's most populous religions

Hinduism showed a slight gain relative to world population during the century, but Buddhism and Judaism lost ground. The biggest declines occurred among traditional ethnic creeds, especially in China and Africa.

The trends are reported in the second edition of the "World Christian Encyclopedia" (Oxford University Press), a compilation of statistical estimates and descriptions for each religious group in each nation.

"Christianity has become the most extensive and universal religion in history," the encyclopedia states, and has a majority of the population in two-thirds of the world's 238 countries.

In addition, "Christianity has become massively accepted as the religion of developing countries in the so-called Third World."

Even so, no one in 1900 would have predicted the sweeping defections from Christianity that took place "in Western Europe due to secularism, in Russia and later Eastern Europe due to Communism, and in the Americas due to materialism," the book says.

Christianity began and ended the century as the world's biggest religion, the encyclopedia says, with 555 million believers in 1900 or 32.2 percent of world population and 1.9 billion or 31 percent as of last year.

Counted Christians are divided among 33,820 denominations or similar distinct organizations. Some 386 million believers are in "independent" churches apart from the historic Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant branches, the book reports. Christians counted as belonging to other groups have quadrupled since 1970, with huge increases noted among Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.

Islam ranks second, and during the last century grew from 200 million or 12.3 percent of population to 1.2 billion or 19.6 percent.

The total for non-religious people increased from a negligible 3 million in 1900 to today's 768 million or 12.7 percent of the world population.

Other current totals: Hinduism, 811 million; Buddhism, 360 million; Sikhism, 23 million; and Judaism, 14 million.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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