World Population by religions

Source: IslamiCity January 22, 2002

According to David Barrett et al, editors of the "World Christian Encyclopedia: A comparative survey of churches and religions - AD 30 to 2200," there are 19 major world religions which are subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups, and many smaller ones. Most people in the world follow one of the religions listed in the table below. Included is the name of the religion, the approximate date of its origin, its main sacred or ethical texts (if any) and its estimated numerical strength (both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the world's population.)

These data are based on census or public opinion data.Thus, a person is considered to be of a particular religion if they say that they are of that faith.

Statistics of the world's religions are only very rough approximations.

Religion	Date Founded	Sacred Texts	Members	% of World
Christianity	30 CE	The Bible	2,015 million	33% (dropping)
Islam	622 CE	Qur'an & Hadith	1,215 million	20% (growing)
No religion *	No date	None	925 million	15% (dropping)
Hinduism	1,500 BCE	The Veda	786 million	13% (stable)
Buddhism	523 BCE	The Tripitaka	362 million	6% (stable)
Atheists	No date	None	211 million	4%
Chinese folk rel.	270 BCE	None	188 million	4%
New Asian rel.	Various	Various	106 million	2%
Tribal Religions	Prehistory	Oral tradition	91 million	2%
Other	Various	Various	19 million	<1%
Sikhism	1500 CE	Guru Granth Sahib	16 million	<1%
Judaism	No consensus	Torah, Talmud	18 million	<1%
Shamanists	Prehistory	Oral Tradition	12 million	<1%
Spiritism			7 million	<1%
Confucianism	520 BCE	Lun Yu	5 million	<1%
Baha'i Faith	1863 CE	Most Holy Book	4 million	<1%
Jainism	570 BCE	Siddhanta, Pakrit	3 million	<1%
Shinto	500 CE	Kojiki, Nohon Shoki	3 million	<1%
Zoroastrianism	No consensus	Avesta	0.2 million	<1%

* Persons with no religion, agnostics, freethinkers, humanists, secularists, etc.

The map shows concentration of Muslim population by region.
There are about 6 - 7 million Muslims in the US.

References:

J.W. Wright, Editor, "The Universal Almanac, 1996", Andrews & McMeel, Kansas City.
Greg H. Parsons, Executive Director, "U.S. Center for World Mission," Pasadena, CA; quoted in Zondervan News Service, 1997-FEB-21.
Quoted in Religion Today's Current News Summary for 1999-OCT-19.
2000-JAN data from the Global Evangelization Movement as reported in ReligionToday on 2000-JAN-10. Based on a total world's population of 6,091.351,000 people.