Islam to grow faster than other major religions, study predicts
Christianity and Islam will hold near equal shares of the world’s population by the year 2050
Recent projections from the Pew Research Center cite fertility rates, religious conversions and the size of youth populations among the main reasons for a coming change in the world’s religious landscape.
Christians will remain the largest religious group for the next four decades according to the nonpartisan fact tank’s study. But Islam is projected to grow more rapidly than any other major religions.
In 2010, Christianity—with its estimated 2.2 billion adherents, which is close to a third (31 percent) of all 6.9 billion people on earth, was by far the world’s largest religion.
At that same time, Islam — with 1.6 billion followers — claimed 23 percent of the world’s population. Muslims will almost catch Christians in number by the middle of the 21st century if current demographic trends continue.
Between 2015 and 2060, the earth’s population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion people, a 32 percent increase. The number of Muslims is on pace to increase by 70 percent; the number of Christians is estimated to rise by 34 percent according to the study. All other major world religions are predicted to make up a smaller percentage of the global population in 2060 than they did in 2015.
One cause for the forecasted change can already be seen in the number of babies born to Muslims as compared to Christians. Less than 20 years from now, the number of live births to Muslim mothers will eclipse that of live births to Christian mothers.
According to pewforum.org, projections indicate that “between 2030 and 2035, there will be slightly more babies born to Muslims (225 million) than to Christians (224 million).
The fact tank said it assumes in its estimates that children tend to inherit and identify with their mother’s religion until young adulthood. It does not, however, assume that all babies will remain as adherents of their mother’s religion.
Christianity was projected to suffer the most loss due to religious “switching,” a term used in the projections, which refers to conversion into and out of major religious groups.
Pew Research Center stated:
“… projections attempt to incorporate patterns of religious switching in 70 countries where surveys provide information on the number of people who say they no longer belong to the religious group in which they were raised.”
The research body estimates that 5 million people are expected to become Christians between 2015 and 2020. But 13 million are expected to leave the faith to join the “religiously unaffiliated.” The net change shows that Christianity will lose more than 8,000,000 adherents in the five-year period.
As for Islam, projections show it will gain 7,570,000 adherents due to religious switching.
Another important factor in the findings was the current age distribution of religious groups. The median ages of Muslims sit at 24 years. Christians average 30 years, which matches the global median. Considering prime childbearing years lay ahead for these age groups, the data supports predictions of rapid sustainable growth for Islam.
In addition to birth rates, religious conversion and age distribution, the Pew Research Center findings took into account the affect of mortality rates, regional differences and geographic shifts and distributions on the world’s major religions.
Pew Research said it stopped its projections at the year 2050 because “there is a chance that unforeseen events—war, famine, disease, technological innovation, political upheaval, etc.—will alter the size of one religious group or another.”
Repeating their disclaimer, the research body acknowledged that if population trajectories cited in their report were projected into the second half the century, Christianity and Islam would each share roughly 32 percent of the world’s population by 2070.
Islam would surpass Christianity thirty years later to become the largest religious group on earth.
