“No Religion” Third Largest Religious Group

churchI saw a link to this article come across Twitter today. It is posted on the Huff Post Religion page.

The article shares that people who claim no religious affiliation make up the third largest segment of the world’s population. Christianity is listed first, followed by Muslims.

There are also some interesting stats about belief in God or a Higher Power. My initial thought is that it points to that fact that people, especially in the US, consider themselves spiritual, but not necessarily connected with a church or religious group.

Interesting article and something for the church today to think about.

People with no religious affiliation make up the third-largest global group in a new study of the size of the world’s faiths, placing after Christians and Muslims and just before Hindus.

The study, based on extensive data for the year 2010, also showed Islam and Hinduism are the faiths mostly likely to expand in the future while Jews have the weakest growth prospects.

It showed Christianity is the most evenly spread religion, present in all regions of the world, while Hinduism is the least global with 94 percent of its population in one country, India.

Overall, 84 percent of the world’s inhabitants, which it estimated at 6.9 billion, identify with a religion, according to the study entitled “The Global Religious Landscape” issued by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life on Tuesday.

The “unaffiliated” category covers all those who profess no religion, from atheists and agnostics to people with spiritual beliefs but no link to any established faith.

“Many of the religiously unaffiliated do hold religious or spiritual beliefs,” the study stressed.

“Belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of unaffiliated Chinese adults, 30 percent of unaffiliated French adults and 68 percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults,” it said.