(AURN News) — The United States now ranks second in the world for the number of people with no religious affiliation — trailing only China and surpassing Japan — according to new findings from Pew Research Center.
It’s a shift that may not be obvious on Sunday mornings. But in the data, the trend is unmistakable.
Pew’s latest global analysis, which tracks religious affiliation from 2010 to 2020, found that the number of religiously unaffiliated people worldwide surged by 270 million, reaching 1.9 billion. That group — including atheists, agnostics and those who identify with no faith — now makes up a larger share of the global population than ever before.
While Christianity remains the world’s largest religion, with 2.3 billion adherents, it did not grow as quickly as the global population. Christians declined as a share of the world’s population by 1.8 percent during the decade.
Meanwhile, Islam posted the biggest gains. The global Muslim population grew by 347 million people between 2010 and 2020 — more than all other religious groups combined — making it the fastest-growing faith.
Buddhism declined by 19 million followers, continuing a gradual contraction in several Asian countries.
Pew also reported a geographic power shift in Christianity. For the first time, sub-Saharan Africa surpassed Europe in total Christian population — a sign of the faith’s changing center of gravity.
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