In 2020, around 28.8 percent of the global population were identified as Christian. Around 25.6 percent of the global population identify as Muslims, followed by 14.9 percent of global populations as Hindu. The number of Muslims increased by 347 million, when compared to 2010 data, more than all other religions combined.

The World Religion Project (WRP) aims to provide detailed information about religious adherence worldwide since 1945. It contains data about the number of adherents by religion in each of the states in the international system. These numbers are given for every half-decade period (1945, 1950, etc., through 2010). Percentages of the states' populations that practice a given religion are also provided. (Note: These percentages are expressed as decimals, ranging from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates that 0 percent of the population practices a given religion and 1 indicates that 100 percent of the population practices that religion.) Some of the religions (as detailed below) are divided into religious families. To the extent data are available, the breakdown of adherents within a given religion into religious families is also provided.

The project was developed in three stages. The first stage consisted of the formation of a religion tree. A religion tree is a systematic classification of major religions and of religious families within those major religions. To develop the religion tree we prepared a comprehensive literature review, the aim of which was (i) to define a religion, (ii) to find tangible indicators of a given religion of religious families within a major religion, and (iii) to identify existing efforts at classifying world religions. (Please see the original survey instrument to view the structure of the religion tree.) The second stage consisted of the identification of major data sources of religious adherence and the collection of data from these sources according to the religion tree classification. This created a dataset that included multiple records for some states for a given point in time. It also contained multiple missing data for specific states, specific time periods and specific religions. The third stage consisted of cleaning the data, reconciling discrepancies of information from different sources and imputing data for the missing cases.

The Global Religion Dataset: This dataset uses a religion-by-five-year unit. It aggregates the number of adherents of a given religion and religious group globally by five-year periods.

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.

As of 2020, Christianity was the largest religion in the world, with around 2.5 billion believers. In the second place was Islam, with around 1.9 billion adherents.

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.

Christianity was the largest religion in a high number of the countries included in the survey. Of the countries, Peru, South Africa, and Poland had the highest share of Christians at around 75 percent. Moreover, around 90 percent in India and Thailand stated that they believed in another religion, with Hinduism and Buddhism being the major religion in the two countries respectively. Sweden and South Korea were the only two countries where 50 percent or more of the respondents stated that they did not have any religious beliefs.

World Religions Across Regions

Analyzing Adherence Across Regions, States and the Global System

By Correlates of War Project [source]

About this dataset

The World Religion Project (WRP) is an ambitious endeavor to conduct a comprehensive analysis of religious adherence throughout the world from 1945 to 2010. This cutting-edge project offers unparalleled insight into the religious behavior of people in different countries, regions, and continents during this time period. Its datasets provide important information about the numbers and percentages of adherents across a multitude of different religions, religion families, and non-religious affiliations.

The WRP consists of three distinct datasets: the national religion dataset, regional religion dataset, and global religion dataset. Each is focused on understanding individually specific realms for varied analysis approaches - from individual states to global systems. The national dataset provides data on number of adherents by state as well as percentage population practicing a given faith group in five-year increments; focusing attention to how this number evolves from nation to nation over time. Similarly, regional data is provided at five year intervals highlighting individual region designations with one modification – Pacific Ocean states have been reclassified into their own Oceania category according to Country Code Number 900 or above). Finally at a global level – all states are aggregated in order that we may understand a snapshot view at any five-year interval between 1945‐2010 regarding relationships between religions or religio‐families within one location or transnationally.

This project was developed in three stages: firstly forming a religions tree (a systematic classification), secondly collecting data such as this provided by WRP according to that classification structure – lastly cleaning the data so discrepancies may be reconciled and imported where needed with gaps selected when unknown values were encountered during collection process . We would encourage anyone wishing details undergoing more detailed reading/analysis relating various use applications for these rich datasets - please contact Zeev Maoz (University California Davis) & Errol A Henderson _(Pennsylvania State University)

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How to use the dataset

The World Religions Project (WRP) dataset offers a comprehensive look at religious adherence around the world within a single dataset. With this dataset, you can track global religious trends over a period of 65 years and explore how they’ve changed during that time. By exploring the WRP data set, you’ll gain insight into cross-regional and cross-time patterns in religious affiliation around the world.

Research Ideas

• Analyzing historical patterns of religious growth and decline across different regions
• Creating visualizations to compare religious adherence in various states, countries, or globally
• Studying the impact of governmental policies on religious participation over time

Acknowledgements

If you use this dataset in your research, please credit the original authors. Data Source

License

License: Dataset copyright by authors - You are free to: - Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially. - Adapt - remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. - You must: - Give appropriate credit - Provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. - ShareAlike - You must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. - Keep intact - all notices that refer to this license, including copyright notices.

Columns

File: WRP regional data.csv | Column name | Description | |:-----------------|:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Year | Reference year for data collection. (Integer) | | Region | World region according to Correlates Of War (COW) Regional Systemizations with one modification (Oceania category for COW country code ...

Dataset

This dataset was created by Sara Fergus WPS

Contents

This dataset describes the world’s religious makeup in 2020 and 2010. We focus on seven categories: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, people who belong to other religions, and those who are religiously unaffiliated. This analysis is based on more than 2,700 sources of data, including national censuses, large-scale demographic surveys, general population surveys and population registers. For more information about this data, see the associated Pew Research Center report "How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020."

This dataset represents the popular baby names for each religion with genders.

Among the people surveyed in 26 countries around the world, a slight majority of the baby boomer generation were Christians. By comparison, only 42 percent of Generation Z stated that they were Christians. Millennials was the generation with the highest share of people stating that they had a religious belief other than Islam and Christianity.

This folder consists of files for a case study of the methods used by Pew Research Center to make direct and indirect estimates for our report on The Religious Composition of the World's Migrants. Two subfolders demonstrate the procedures of the algorithm using two statistical programs, which mirror one another.

"Between October 2011 and November 2012, Pew Research Center, with generous funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation, conducted a public opinion survey involving more than 30,000 face-to-face interviews in 26 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The survey asked people to describe their religious beliefs and practices, and sought to gauge respondents; knowledge of and attitudes toward other faiths. It aimed to assess levels of political and economic satisfaction, concerns about crime, corruption and extremism, positions on issues such as abortion and polygamy, and views of democracy, religious law and the place of women in society.

"Although the surveys were nationally representative in most countries, the primary goal of the survey was to gauge and compare beliefs and attitudes of Muslims. The findings for Muslim respondents are summarized in the Religion & Public Life Project's reports The World's Muslims: Unity and Diversity and The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society, which are available at www.pewresearch.org. [...] This dataset only contains data for Muslim respondents in the countries surveyed. Please note that this codebook is meant as a guide to the dataset, and is not the survey questionnaire." (2012 Pew Religion Worlds Muslims Codebook)

Global Share of Scientific Publications Among the World's 10% Top-Cited Publications in Religious Studies by Country, 2023 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

Religious beliefs and moral attitudes.

Thopics: perceived change in violence on the streets, bribery, adultery and tax evasion during the last 10 years; justifyability of tax evasion (scale); justifyability of death penality; attitude towards: homosexual adoption, right to commit suicide, men more right for job than women; attitudes towards abortion in different circumstances (scale);
individual or public responsability for pensions; cuts in unemployment benefits; smoking ni public buildings; goals in education of children: indepdendence, obedience, creativity; attitudes towards income differeces; attitudes towards homeless people in neighbourhood; acceptance of nepotism (Kohlberg); Criteria for selecting patients for important surgery in hospitals; attitudes towards euthanasia; rules about good and bad; source of morality (scale); control over life; solving problems: individual vs. society; social orientation; volunteering: religious organizations, non-religious organizations; geographical mobility; residence of best friend; nationality of respondent; nationality of mother; nationality of father; attitudes towards migrants (ethnocentrism); political interest; party preference; least preferred party; reception of political news; concept of god; beliefs about life after death; salvation; conditions of salvation; theodizee (scale); respondent´s religiosity (self-assessment); beliefs influence daily life; beliefs influence important decisions; spiritual life; church attendance; frequency of praying; religious services: birth, marriage, death; conceptions of jesus; conceptions of the bible; dramatic change around millennium; denominational membership; closeness to church; women as priests; conversion experience; church attendance at age 12; transcendental experiences; possession of holy object; power of holy obejct; possession of talisman or lucky charm; power of talisman or lucky charm; consult horoscope; take horoscope into account in daily life; share of friends with different religion; perceived percentage of religious people in country; role of religion in world; attitudes towards: girls cover heads, take soft drugs, prevent blood transfusion, commit suicide; attitudes towards religious groups (enrichement, cause of conflict, other religious teachings, Jehovas witness, scientologist); truth in religion; religious symbols in schools; financial support: religious schools, religions; attitudes towards: oath with reference to God; consult religions in making laws, nurse may refuse legal abortion; attitutes towards science; desired influence of churches on politics; perceived influence of churches on politics;

Demographics: gender; age (year of birth); highest level of education; emloyment status; status of unpaid work; secondary job; marital status; steady life partner; partner´s highest level of education; partner´s religion; partner´s church attendance; number of children; household (number of children +18; 13-17; 5-12; less than 4); net household income; acceptance of cut in income for solidarity with poorest countries; community size; national ranking of community size; history of church membership;

Additionally coded: length of interview; year of interview.

Optional questions (not asked in all countries): importance of freedom; importance of equality; God concerned with every individual; God is valuable in humankind; life has meaning because of a God; sorrows have meaning if beliefs in a God; sorrows receive meaning from yourself; death is natural resting point; death is passage to another life; life has meaning if yourself give meaning; Virgin Mary was taken to heaven; believe in saints; father´s religion at age 12; father attend religious services at age 12; mothers´s religion at age 12; mother attend religious services at age 12; education in religious schools; profession (ISCO); partner´s profession (ISCO), community size (not grouped); pope hinders unity of Christians; religious services: sober; religious services: music and ceremonial clothes; pope should adapt his message; laity involvement; meaning of Christmas; month of interview; father´s highest level of education; mother´s level of education; number of household members

Additional questions in the BELGIAN questionnaire (only substantial questions. No country specific versions of questions from the masterquestionnaire): meaning of marriage in church; homosexuals may marry; light candle when enter church; water from Lourdes at home; pilgrimage; ...

Initial data source was UNESCO web site, supplemented by individual work on different countires/regions;A database of cultural heritage sites assembled by volunteers at the Archaeological Computing Laboratory, University of Sydney

Metron is interested in taking a data science approach to gleaming deeper insights into matters of spirituality, religion and extranormal experience. Data scientists at all levels of experience are encouraged to participate in this analysis.

This data set contains several public files of religious and spiritual texts. Also included is a “wildcard” file on the subject of machine super intelligence. This file is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Switzerland License. More information can be found at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ch/deed.en

Metron is interested in various text analysis techniques that can further an understanding of concepts that assist in furthering development of a body of knowledge on the topic of comparative religion and spirituality. Also other interesting observations that will fuel further lines of inquiry and questions are highly desirable.

Suggested Analysis Types: Scatter plot analysis - Metron would like to see a scatter plot of frequently recurring words in the texts If possible, can this be taken to the level of deriving conceptual correlations? Example, we may be able to state that “unconditional love” was the primary concept conveyed from the dataset. Followed by “communion” etc.

Word cloud analysis - create a scatter plot that uses a horizontal position indicating most popular words and a vertical position that indicates (some other type to be defined of) popularity.

Topic modeling - identify common topics found in the set of documents. Drill down to most common words per topic.

Word & document frequencies (tf-idf) - word frequency measurement and comparison across all documents. Charts of the highest tf-idf words in each text within the corpus.

Word dendrogram cluster - graphical representation of hierarchical word clusters.

Pairwise correlation - Words most correlated with other words in chart format.

Sentiment analysis - the most common words in texts associated with sentiments. Example: sentiment = creation. Associated words: God, genesis, Ein Sof, Allah, primordial, etc.

Word Network using tf-idf as a metric to find characteristic words for each description field rather than using counts of words.

Note: the above techniques can be found in “Data Science from Scratch - First Principles with Python” and “Text Mining with R - A Tidy Approach” both books from O’Reilly publishing.

The files are:

St. Augustine City of God 108 Upanishads 7 Tablets of Creation vols 1 and 2 Advaita Vendanta Aryan sun myths Autobiography of a yogi The Book of Illumination”

Attributed to Rabbi Nehunia ben haKana Bhagavad Gita Bible KJV Collected Fruits of Occult Teaching by A.P. Sinnett Epistle to the Son of the Wolf

Hidden Nature-The Startling Insights of Viktor Schauberger HILDEGARD OF BINGEN: SELECTED WRITINGS History of Zoroastrianism by

Maneckji Nusservanji The Philosophy of the Kaivalya Upanishad Kitab-i-Iqan (Book of Certitude) Knowledge of the Higher Worlds Rudolf Steiner Kularnava Tantra The Life of Buddha Machine Super Intelligence The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants By Eros Urides (A Martian) THE NATURE OF THE GODS. M. Tullius Cicero (“nature-gods”) OCCULT THEOCRASY BY LADY QUEENBOROUGH Urantia Book The Book of the People: POPUL VUH THE DHAMMAPADA VEDIC HYMNS Vedic Hymns, Part II Secret Instructions of the Society of Jesus THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF GENESIS THE KITAB-I-AQDAS THE PATH OF LIGHT The Buddha's Way of Virtue The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Book of the Spiritual Man by Patañjali The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja The Kybalion Buddhism, in Its Connexion with Brahmanism and Hinduism, and in Its Contrast

World religion data in this dataset is from the World Religion Database.The map shows the percentage of the majority religion by provinces/states and also included in the database is Christian percentage by provinces/states. Boundaries are based on Natural Earth, August, 2011 modified to match provinces in the World Religion Database.*Originally titled

The 2008 Conversion Recontact Survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, is a follow-up to the 2007 "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey." One of the most striking findings from the Landscape Survey was the large number of people who have left their childhood faith. The Landscape Survey found that more than one in four American adults (28%) have changed their religious affiliation from that in which they were raised. This number includes people who have changed from one major religious tradition to another, for instance, from Protestantism to Catholicism or from Judaism to no religion. If change within religious traditions is included (e.g., from one Protestant denominational family to another), the survey found that roughly 44% of Americans now profess a religious affiliation different from that in which they were raised.

The Conversion Recontact Survey is designed to offer a fuller picture of this churn within American religion, with a special focus on the reasons that people change religious affiliation. The Conversion Recontact Survey is based on follow-up interviews with Landscape Survey respondents, including those from the largest segments of the population that have changed religious affiliation as well as those who still belong to the religious faith in which they were raised. Interviews were conducted by telephone with a nationally representative sample of 2,867 adults living in continental United States telephone households. The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International (PSRAI). Interviews were conducted on landline telephones in English and Spanish by Princeton Data Source (PDS), LLC from Oct. 3 to Nov. 7, 2008. Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. A full report on the survey's findings, "Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.," is available on the Pew Forum's "http://www.pewforum.org/2009/04/27/faith-in-flux/" Target="_blank">website.

The start of 20 years of International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) surveys within New Zealand by Professor Philip Gendall, Department of Marketing, Massey University.A verbose rundown on topics follows.Attitudes towards religious behaviours. Topics: Personal estimation of

happiness; assessment of responsibility of the state regarding job

creation and income levelling; stronger punishment and the death

penalty as measures to combat crime; attitude to pre-marital sexual

intercourse and affairs; attitude to homosexuality and abortion;

judgement on role distribution in marriage and attitude to working

women; honesty in paying taxes and attitude to honesty of citizens with

the state; trust in institutions such as the Federal Parliament, business,

industry, authorities, churches, judiciary and schools.

Attitude to non-religious politicians and office-holders; influence on

voters as well as government through church leaders; judgement on the

power of churches and religious organisations; doubt or firm belief in

God; perceived nearness to God; development of personal belief in God;

belief in a life after death; belief in the devil, heaven, hell and miracles;

conviction regarding the Bible; fatalism; the meaning of life and

Christian interpretation of life; contact with the dead; religious ties at a

turning point in life; religious affiliation of father, mother and

spouse/partner; frequency of church attendance of father and of

mother; personal direction of belief and frequency of church

attendance in adolescence; frequency of prayer and participation in

religious activities.

Self-classification of personal religiousness; attitude to school prayer;

personal conscience, social rules or God’s laws as basis for deciding

between right and wrong; attitudes to prohibition of religious criticism

in literature and films; superstition; belief in lucky charms, fortune

tellers, wonder doctors, signs of the zodiac and horoscopes; conversion

of faith after crucial experience; idea of God; judgement on world and

people as good or bad.

Living together with partner; type and temporal extent of vocational

employment; private or public employer; professional independence

and number of employees; superior function and span of control;

number of colleagues; union membership; unemployment; party

inclination and behaviour at the polls; self-classification on a left-right

continuum; religious affiliation; religiousness; self-classification of social

class affiliation; residential status; training and employment of

spouse/partner as well as parents; size of household; household

income. Also encoded were: region; rural or urban area; city size; ethnic

identification.