According to research by the Pew Research Center (in Washington, D.C.), along with demographers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, whose content was reproduced later by the World Economic Forum, by 2050 there will be significant changes in the markets of religious beliefs, largely affected mainly by demographic evolution. According to the Pew Research Center, whilst there have been other predictions on the future of religion, “these are the first formal demographic projections using data on age, fertility, mortality, migration and religious switching for multiple religious groups around the world.”
Starting with the sub-universe of believers, the first assertion is the concentration and dominant position of two monotheistic faiths – Christianity and Islam – which, in total, currently hold 65.3% of this sub-universe, and are expected to represent 70.4% by 2050. These are also the two religions that historically used States as instruments for the “propagation of the faith”, conquering and submitting peoples to their respective salvific beliefs, that have invested heavily in the internationalization of their product – with abundant waves of missionaries and vast implantation of temples, schools and assistencial & social works on a planetary scale – and, more recently, have bet on mass communication via television and cable broadcasting (USA and Brazil being good exemples as regards Christianity).
Christian believers will continue to be the largest market, rising from 2.17 billion (Bi) in 2010 to 2.92 Bi in 2050 (maintaining 31.4% of the total). Interestingly, by 2050, 4 out of 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa. In the USA, Christians will decline from >3/4 of the population in 2010 to 2/3 in 2050, and Judaism will be overtaken by Islam as the largest non-Christian religion.
Higher fertility rates will make the population of Muslims grow even faster than that of Christians, from 1.6 Bi in 2010 (23.2% of the total) to 2.76 Bi in 2050 (29.7% of the total). By 2050, 10% of the population in Europe will be Muslim. By 2070, the oveall number of Islamic believers in the planet is expected to surpass that of Christians.
Hindu believers will grow (from 1.03 Bi in 2010) to 1.38 Bi in 2050, but maintain the overall percentage of 15%. By then, the majority of India‘s population will continue to be Hindu, but this country will also have the largest Muslim population in the world, surpassing Indonesia. The global Buddhist population will have roughly the same number of followers in 2050 as it did in 2010 (0.49 Bi), but will decline from 7.1% of the total in 2010 to 5.2% in 2050. The market for “folk religions” grows slightly to 0.45 Bi in 2050, but loses global relevance (from 5.9% to 4.8%). Sikhism will surpass Judaism, both growing in population, but maintaining little relevance (0.3% and 0.2% of the total), as well as “other religions” (0.5% of the total).
Today, 6 of the G7 nations have Christian-majority populations. By 2050, of the world’s top 15 economies, only 4 will have a Christian-majority population – the USA, Brazil, Mexico and Russia. The other mega-economies in 2050 include 5 Muslim-majority countries (Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Egypt), 1 with a Hindu majority (India), and 5 with high levels of beliefs diversity (China, Japan, Germany, UK, France).
Another important finding of these projections is that the overall number of believers will continue to far outnumber that of non-believers (termed, in both surveys, as “unaffiliated” and including atheists, agnostics, and other people who are not affiliated with any religion). Although increasing in Western countries (USA, France, NZ) non-believers will suffer a reduction from 16.4% of the world’s population in 2010, to only 13.2% in 2050. In an era when education and access to scientific knowledge have become widespread, it is surprising how many people continue to need divinities in their lives. Along with the huge number of organizations that make a living from exploiting this need.
When we observe in recent decades a growth of religious fundamentalisms – especially in predominantly Islamic countries (with the Sharia being imposed in a growing number of them), but also in some mostly-Christian countries and in mostly-Hindu India (Hindutva) – and intolerance towards divergent thought, with a radicalization of discourse on the part of many leaders of expanding religious movements, non-believers cannot but be deeply apprehensive about the foreseeable path that lies ahead. And the same aprehension is certainly shared by the [minority] believers of “other” “infidel” or “heretical” beliefs, often subject to persecution and acts of violence and barbarity.
