Growth of religion

Some faiths grow exponentially at first (especially, for example, along trade routes[31] or for reasons of social prestige[32]), only for their zeal to wane (note the flagging case of Zoroastrianism).

[33] Buddhism is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha, who was born in modern day Nepal and lived and taught in India in the 5th century BC.

[39] Buddhism is the majority religion in the following nine countries: Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Bhutan, Mongolia, Japan and Singapore.

[66] According to various scholars and sources Pentecostalism – a Protestant Christian movement – is the fastest growing religion in the world,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] this growth is primarily due to religious conversion.

[84][85] According to scholar Paul Freston of Wilfrid Laurier University Pentecostalism continues to grow in Latin America, "both by conversion and by high birth rates".

[86] According to scholar Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University "converts to Protestantism find their incomes, education levels, hygiene and social networks expanding".

[91] According to Pew Research Center, "largely through the efforts of missionaries and churches, Christianity has grown rapidly in South Korea over the past century",[90] and has grown from 1% in 1900,[90] to 20.7% in 1985 and to 29.3% in 2010,[53] And the Catholic Church has increased its membership by 70% in the last ten years,[92] according to Pew Research Center, "the growth of Catholics has occurred across all age groups, among men and women and across all education levels.

[124] According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey from the University of Melbourne, since the 1960s there has been a substantial increase in the number of conversions from Islam to Christianity, mostly to the Evangelical and Pentecostal forms.

[125] Khalil Bilici, while admitting that the limitations of their 2007 study database are too small, found a good number of Middle Eastern people are likely to convert to Christianity after leaving Islam.

[127][128][129][132][133][134][135] Christians of Muslim background communities can be found in Afghanistan,[136][137] Albania,[138][139][140][141][142] Algeria,[143][144][145][146][147] Argentina,[148] Australia,[149] Austria,[150][151] Azerbaijan,[152][153] Bangladesh,[154][155] Belgium,[149] Bosnia and Herzegovina,[149] Bulgaria,[156] Canada,[149] Denmark,[157][158] Egypt,[149] Ethiopia,[149] Finland,[159][160] France,[149][161] Georgia (Abkhazia),[162] Germany,[163] Greece,[164][165] India (kashmir),[166] Iran,[167][168][169][170][171][172] Iraq,[173] Kazakhstan,[174] Kosovo,[175][176] Kyrgyzstan,[177][178] Lebanon,[179] Malaysia,[180] Morocco,[181][182][183][184][185] the Netherlands,[186][158] Nigeria,[149] Russia,[149] Saudi Arabia,[149] Singapore,[187] Sweden,[188][189] Syria,[190] Tanzania,[149] Tajikistan,[191] Tunisia,[192][193] Turkey,[194][195][196][197] United Kingdom,[198][199] the United States,[200][201] Uzbekistan,[202] and other countries.

[149] According to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2007, experts estimated that thousands of Muslims in the Western world converted to Christianity annually, but were not publicized due to fear of retribution.

[219][220] Some scholars and media reports indicate that in the Middle East there been increasing numbers of conversions to Christianity among the Berbers,[221][222][207] Kurds,[223][224][207] Persians,[212] and Turks,[225] and among some religious minorities such as Alawites and Druze.

Singapore, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia are said to have the fastest-growing Christian communities and the majority of the new believers are "upwardly mobile, urban, middle-class Chinese".

[284] Syria is home to the largest Druzite community in the world, according to a study published by Columbia University, the number of Syrian Druze increased from 684,000 in 2010 to 730,000 in mid of 2018.

[43] According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Hinduism (1.52%) is one of the six fastest-growing religions in the world, with high birth rates in India being cited as the major reasons of the Hindu population growth.

[301][302] According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as of 2007 estimated that the fastest-growing religion of the world to be Islam (1.84%), high birth rates as the reason for the growths.

Based on the data from 49 Muslim-majority countries and territories, he found that Muslims' birth rate has significantly dropped for 41% between 1975 and 1980 to 2005–10 while the global population decline was 33% during that period.

The main reason for this is the social and legal repercussions associated with leaving Islam in many Muslim majority countries, up to and including the death penalty for apostasy.

[349] The Pew Research Center notes that "the data that we have isn't pointing in the direction of 'Eurabia' at all",[350] and predicts that the percentage of Muslims is estimated to rise to 8% in 2030, due to immigration and above-average birth rates.

[398] Additionally, while in principle Reform Judaism favors seeking new members for the faith, this position has not translated into active proselytism, instead of taking the form of an effort to reach out to non-Jewish spouses of intermarried couples.

[402] The diaspora countries, by contrast, have low Jewish birth rates, an increasingly elderly age composition, and a negative balance of people leaving Judaism versus those joining.

[393] According to the Pew Research Center published on 2010, religious conversion may have little impact on the Jewish population between 2010 and 2050; Jews are expected to lose 0.3 million adherents, between 2010 and 2050.

[430] Yet, rather than being a cultural spread from either Iran or North America, in 2001, sociologist David Barrett wrote that the Baháʼí Faith is, "A world religion with no racial or national focus".

[442] In 1989 the Universal House of Justice named Bolivia, Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Liberia, Peru, the Philippines, and Taiwan as countries where growth in the religion had been notable in the previous decades.

[444] However, since around 2001 the Universal House of Justice has prioritized statistics of the community by their levels of activity rather than simply their population of avowed adherents or numbers of local assemblies.

[505][470][506][507] Johnson and Barrett (2004) estimate that the global Sikh population increases annually by 392,633 (1.7% per year, based on 2004 figures); this percentage includes births, deaths, and conversions.

[509] The American Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143% for the period 1990 to 2001 (from 8,000 to 134,000 – U.S. data / similar for Canada & Australia).

[515] It served as the state religion of the ancient Iranian empires for more than a millennium, from around 600 BCE to 650 CE, but declined from the 7th century onwards following the Muslim conquest of Persia of 633–654.

[541] The database groups adherents into 18 broadly-defined categories: Agnostics, Atheists,[b] Baháʼís, Buddhists, Chinese folk-religionists, Christians, Confucianists, Daoists, Ethnoreligionists, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, New Religionists, Shintoists, Sikhs, Spiritists, and Zoroastrians.

[30] Religious switching is a sensitive topic in India,[544][23] and carries social and legal repercussions including the death penalty for apostasy in Muslim-majority countries.