Religion News Service
U.S., December 2011 (RNS, by G. Jeffrey MacDonald): Billed as the most comprehensive and reliable study to date, the Pew Research Center’s “Global Christianity” reports on self-identified Christian populations based on more than 2,400 sources of information, especially census and survey data.
Findings illustrate major shifts since 1910, when two-thirds of the world’s Christians lived in Europe. Now only one in four Christians live in Europe. Most of the rest are distributed across the Americas (37 percent), sub-Saharan Africa (24 percent) and the Asia-Pacific region (13 percent). The count in Europe and America is decreasing, whereas there is a rise in Asia and, more markedly, Africa.
In two out of three countries in the world, the majority of the population identifies as Christian,” said Conrad Hackett, lead researcher on the “Global Christianity” report. “I had no idea about that. … I was surprised.”
For its part, Europe is more religiously diverse than it was in 1910, when 94 percent was Christian. Today, 76 percent of Europeans self-identify as Christian.