How many protestants are there in the world

It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Newsletters Donate My Account. Research Topics. In Luther nailed his 95 theses to a door of the nearby Schlosskirche, helping to spark the Protestant Reformation. Share this link:. Neha Sahgal is an associate director of religion research at Pew Research Center. Facts are more important than ever.

For example, the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which is evangelical Protestant, estimates that there are currently 47, denominations. This survey relies upon the same methodology as the World Christian Encyclopedia , which it apparently deems credible. And remember, Gordon-Conwell is evangelical Protestant. But the debunkers are right.

To say there are tens of thousands of Protestant denominations—while perhaps technically accurate according to some sociological research standards—really does seem like an exaggeration. To really assess the scandal of Protestant disunity, we must turn elsewhere. So, in the absence of an authoritative count, this author had to dig into actual lists of denominations and tally them up himself.

One starting point is the Pew Research Center. For their report on changing religious affiliation they include an index of major Protestant denominations.

But once you start going through it, it becomes clear the list needs some trimming. The Pew list has its limitations. However, the only list that was readily accessible on their site enumerated every single religious group they track—which includes Judaism, Hinduism and Muslims.

So once again, the list has to be whittled down to just Protestant denominations. Once that was done the tally was The study is based primarily on a country-by-country analysis of about 2, data sources, including censuses and nationally representative population surveys.

Christians are diverse theologically as well as geographically, the new study finds. About half are Catholic. See Defining Christian Traditions. Clearly, Christianity has spread far from its historical origins. For example:. The Pew Forum study suggests at least four possible answers, depending on how one divides up the world:.

This reflects the fact that the total population of the Global South is about 4. Another way of looking at the distribution of Christians around the world is by region.

Numerically, at least, Europe no longer dominates global Christianity the way it did years ago. Rather, the bulk of Christians are in:. The three countries with the largest Christian populations — the United States, Brazil and Mexico — are in the Americas. But sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region now have a combined population of about million Christians, roughly the same as the Americas.

However, Christianity is also practiced on a smaller scale in regions, including the Middle East and Indonesia. In 15 nations, Christianity has been deemed the state religion.

These nations include England, Greece , and Iceland. Nations with high numbers of Christians or members of any religion but no official state religion and where religion does not play a role in policymaking are secular countries.