Pew report: How the global religious landscape changed from 2010 to 2020

While Christianity remained the largest global religion from 2010 to 2020, the latest Pew Re-search study found that followers of Islam outpaced every world religion in population over the course of the decade.
The recently released report, “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2020,” includes data from over 2,700 sources, including national census, demographic surveys, and population registers. Some of the estimates made in the report originate from data about 2020 that was not made available till 2024 due to the COVID-19 pande-mic, which delayed census data in at least 65 countries. The report covered 201 countries, focusing on seven religious categories: Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, people who be-long to other lesser-known reli-gions, and religiously unaffiliated.
According to the report, the total number of Christians rose by 122 million from 2010 to 2020, while the total number of Muslims rose by 327 million – “more than all other religions combined.” The global Christian population rested at 2.3 billion in 2020, while the global Muslim population came to 2 billion.
Apart from Muslims, the only other group that grew as a per-centage of the global population were those who identify as having no religion, known as “nones.” The report described this pheno-menon as “striking” because reli-giously unaffiliated people are typically older and have lower fertility rates, putting them at a “disadvantage” for population growth. By the end of 2020, how-ever, “nones” made up 24.2% of the global population, making it the third-largest group in the study, following Christians and Muslims.