In 2022, around 31.6 percent of the global population were identify as Christian. Around 25.8 percent of the global population identify as Muslims, followed by 15.1 percent of global populations as Hindu.

As of 2010, Christianity was the religion with the most followers worldwide, followed by Islam (Muslims) and Hinduism. In the forty years between 2010 and 2050, it is projected that the landscape of world religions will undergo some noticeable changes, with the number of Muslims almost catching up to Christians. The changes in population sizes of each religious group is largely dependent on demographic development, for example, the rise in the world's Christian population will largely be driven by population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, while Muslim populations will rise across various regions of Africa and South Asia. As India's population is set to grow while China's goes into decline, this will be reflected in the fact that Hindus will outnumber the unaffiliated by 2050. In fact, India may be home to both the largest Hindu and Muslim populations in the world by the middle of this century.

From 2022 to 2060, the worldwide population of Muslims is expected to increase by 45.7 percent. For the same period, the global population of Buddhists is expected to decrease by 12.2 percent.

At the end of 2023, the population of Israel reached almost 9.7 million permanent residents. Jewish residents formed the largest religious group, with just over 7.15 million people. The Muslim population in the country, formed the largest religious minority at over 1.7 million individuals. Conversely, the smallest religious group was that of the Druze with about 151,000 people.

In 2023, 27.5 percent of Americans were unaffiliated with any religion. A further 13.4 percent of Americans were White evangelical Protestants, and an additional 13.3 percent were White mainline Protestants. Religious trends in the United States Although the United States is still home to the largest number of Christians worldwide, the nation has started to reflect a more diverse religious landscape in recent years. Americans now report a wide range of religious beliefs and backgrounds, in addition to an increasing number of people who are choosing to identify with no religion at all. Studies suggest that many Americans have left their previous religion to instead identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular, with many reasoning that they stopped believing in the religion's teachings, that they didn't approve of negative teachings or treatment of LGBTQ+ people, or that their family was never that religious growing up. Christian controversies Over the last few years, controversies linked to Christian denominations have plagued the nation, including reports of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Christian churches have also been accused of supporting discriminatory actions against LGBTQ+ people and people belonging to other religious groups. In addition, there have been increasing concerns about Christian nationalism, the political ideology that asserts that America was founded to be a Christian nation. Although the majority of Americans still think that declaring the United States a Christian nation would go against the U.S. Constitution, studies found that most Republicans would be in favor of this change.

In 2023, over 87 percent of Indonesians declared themselves to be Muslim, followed by 7.4 percent who were Christians. Indonesia has the largest Islamic population in the world and for this reason is often recognized as a Muslim nation. However, Indonesia is not a Muslim nation according to its constitution. The archipelago is a multifaith country and officially recognizes six religions – Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism.

Not all provinces in Indonesia are Muslim majority
The spread of Islam in Indonesia began on the west side of the archipelago, where the main maritime trade routes were located. Until today, most of the Indonesian Muslim population are residing in Western and Central Indonesia, while the majority religion of several provinces in Eastern Indonesia, such as East Nusa Tenggara and Bali, is Christian and Hindu, respectively.

Discrimination towards other beliefs in Indonesia The Indonesian constitution provides for freedom of religion. However, the Government Restrictions Index Score on religion in Indonesia is relatively high. Indonesians who practice unrecognized religions, including Indonesia’s indigenous or traditional belief systems, such as animism, dynamism, and totemism, face legal restrictions and discrimination. Indonesian law requires its citizens to put one of the recognized religions on their national identity cards, with some exceptions for indigenous religions. Although legally citizens may leave the section blank, atheism or agnosticism is considered uncommon in Indonesia.

According to a survey conducted in South Korea in 2023, over 60 percent of respondents reported no religious affiliation, while approximately 20 percent identified as Christians and 16 percent as Buddhists. Religious population South Korea is a multi-religious society where Christianity, Buddhism, and various other religions coexist with shamanism. According to a previous study, the domestic religious population appeared to decline over time after reaching its peak in 2005, at nearly 25 million people. In contrast, the share of people who are religiously unaffiliated has increased in recent years. Within the last two decades, the religiously unaffiliated population has increased from about 40 percent to more than 60 percent. Shamanism Shamanism has continued to significantly influence the daily lives of many South Koreans. According to a survey conducted in 2023, about 40 percent of respondents reported having consulted a fortune-teller within the past year. Roughly 80 percent of those respondents were already affiliated with a religion.

This graph shows the ratio of religious adherents to population in the United States in 2010, by state. In 2010, about 79 percent of Utah's population were adherents to a religion.

This graphic shows the forecasted number of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, religiously unaffiliated people, believers in folk religions and in other religions in France in 2022. With almost 36 million people identifying themselves as Christians, Christianity was the most represented religion in France. Furthermore, about 24.2 million people considered themselves as religiously unaffiliated.

Historically, Portugal has been a country of Catholics. The 2021 census demonstrated that this trend has not been inverted, as over 80 percent of the population in Portugal identified as Catholic. Protestant or Evangelic believers accounted for more than two percent of the population, while Jehovah's Witnesses constituted one percent of residents. Among non-Christian faiths, Muslims were the most representative group, making up 0.42 percent of the population.

Religious but generally not practicing the faith

In the same year, Catholics numbered more than seven million people spread throughout the country, conquering the religious majority in the mainland and in the two autonomous regions. Citizens without religion totaled more than 1.2 million, which made of them the second most numerous religious group in Portugal. Young people presented the same religious trend, with young Catholics being the most representative group, followed by non-religious. Among youngsters, the attendance of religious events was mostly conducted occasionally, while a quarter did not participate in such proceedings at all.

The contribute of immigration to the growth of Evangelical Christianity

Despite being the minority, non-Catholic Christian and non-Christian faiths have been growing in Portugal. In 2011, Evangelical believers totaled 75.6 thousand, more than doubling ten years after. Such growth was partially motivated by the increase in Brazilian immigration, as more than 61 percent of new members of Evangelical churches in 2023 were of Brazilian origin. In fact, Brazil was the place of origin of almost 82 percent of all the immigrant Evangelical Christians residing in Portugal. However, more than a quarter of new Evangelical Christians were Portuguese, which shows that other religions, namely Christian Catholicism, have been losing members to Evangelical Catholicism.

According to a survey conducted in Spain in September 2024, 37.6 percent of respondents stated they considered themselves lapsed Catholic. The second-largest denomination was practicing Catholics, with nearly 20 percent of respondents.

In Sweden, a large majority of the population define themselves as Christians. Based on a representative survey reflecting 7.9 million of the Swedish population, 5.1 million of these define themselves as Christians, with 240,000 of these being very religious.

In 2023 roughly half of the Dutch population did not identify with any religious denomination. Of the religious population, the largest number of people at 17 percent identified themselves as Roman Catholics. That is particularly interesting, as the dominating church in the Netherlands since the Reformation had been the Protestant church. According to the source, approximately 13 percent of the Dutch population considered themselves a member of the three main protestant churches, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. The category 'other' includes not only the smaller protestant churches, but also religions that are newer to the Netherlands, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. According to this statistic, Muslims made up six percent of the population in the Netherlands.

The Finnish Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. More than 65 percent of the inhabitants in Finland were part of the Christian community in 2023. The largest Christian community in Finland is the Evangelical Lutheran Church, followed by the Orthodox Church. However, around 1.88 million people were not members of any religious community. People from other religious groups amounted to roughly 20,500, followed by 24,057 from the Muslim community.

Immigration to Finland

While the number of immigrants to Finland remained below 35 thousand in the past decade, this number has started to increase noticeably since 2021. As of 2022, almost 50 thousand people immigrated to Finland, almost 73 percent more compared to the previous year. The significant increase in immigrants was caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine which started on February 24, 2022. That year, over six thousand people immigrated to Finland from Russia, over twice as many as in the previous year.

The Finnish population is aging

While the number of individuals belonging to the younger age groups in Finland declined from 2018 to 2023, the age group of 60 years and older continued to increase. By the end of 2023, its size was over 1.6 million. The growing number of individuals aged 60 or older reflects the change towards an older population structure of the country. In total, the population of Finland amounted to roughly 5.6 million as of 2023. The largest age groups were 20- to 39-year-olds, and 40- to 59-year-olds, which together made up over half of the population.

In 2021, the largest religion in England and Wales was Christianity, with approximately 27.52 million adherents. Although Christianity was the largest religion, the number of followers has declined when compared with ten years earlier, when there were almost 33.27 million Christians.

In 2022, 99 percent of Hindus and Buddhists worldwide lived in Asia-Pacific. In comparison, 43 percent of Jews lived in North America, and 45.4 percent lived in the Middle East and North Africa. Christians were more evenly divided around the continents.

In 2021, more than 92 percent of the Thai population were Buddhists. This was followed by 5.4 percent of Thais who were Muslim, and 1.2 percent declared to be Christians. While Buddhism is prevalent all over the country, the Muslim community is primarily found in the southern provinces.

This statistic shows religious diversity in North America in 2010, by share of religious population. In 2010, about 77 percent of population were Christians.

The biggest religious organization in Iceland in 2023 was the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland, with more than 227,000 members. Ranked second was the Roman Catholic Church with about 15,000 members. Moreover, 73,000 had another religious stance or did not state their life stance, and 30,000 did not belong to any religious organization.

According to a survey conducted in South Korea in 2021, around 59 percent of respondents in their 60s identified with a religion. The age group between 19 and 29 showed the lowest level of religious affiliation.