The World*s Religions in Figures: An Introduction to International Religious Demography

Created by two of the field’s leading experts, this unique introduction to international religious demography outlines the challenges in interpreting data on religious adherence, and presents a contemporary portrait of global religious belief.

• Offers the first comprehensive overview of the field of international religious demography – detailing what we know about religious adherents around the world, and how we know it
• Examines religious freedom and diversity, including agnostics and atheists, on a global scale, highlighting trends over the past 100 years and projecting estimates for the year 2050
• Outlines the issues and challenges related to definitions, taxonomies, sources, analyses, and other techniques in interpreting data on religious adherence
• Considers data from religious communities, censuses, surveys, and scholarly research, along with several in-depth case studies on the global Muslim population, religion in China, and the religious demography of recently created Sudan and South Sudan
• Argues against the belief that the twentieth-century was a ‘secular’ period by putting forward new evidence to the contrary
• Provides resources for measuring both qualitatively and quantitatively important data on the world's religious situation in the twenty-first century

Todd M. Johnson is Associate Professor of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. He is Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA) at Boston University, where he co-edits the World Religion Database. Professor Johnson is the co-editor of the Atlas of Global Christianity (with Kenneth Ross, 2009) and co-author of World Christianity Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition (with David Barrett and George Kurian, 2001) and World Christian Trends (with David Barrett, et al, 2001). He is also the editor of the World Christian Database.

Brian J. Grim is Director of cross-national data and Senior Researcher in religion and world affairs at the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington, D.C. Dr Grim is also Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, where he co-edits the World Religion Database. He is co-author of The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the 21st Century (with Roger Finke, 2011).